I know it’s a bit of a weird question but over dinner last night I was talking about history with my dad his dad and a few of my mates, what I noticed was kinda interesting; me, my dad and my mates who either read or watched horrible history’s growing up were more willing to speak ill of the British empire and the past uk in general, My friend who had seen it occasionally growing up was willing to condem some parts but was much more likely to defend the government, and my grandfather and friend who have either never seen/watched it or has seen a couple of episodes over the paper because his grandson had it on were much more defensive of the empire.

After the meal I was chatting to my dad and he said that he had learned more about what the empire was like after leaving school and he said he wasn’t super sure how much the teaching had changed but it hadn’t seemed to when I was going through secondary school but even when I was in secondary I wasn’t exactly pro empire.

The reason I am asking you guys is because I never had the view that the British empire was this wholly good or at least better than the alternative thing, and thinking back to what I read and watched as a kid a lot of the message in horrible history’s was “yeah we did some fucked up shit”. Which I believe influenced my later beliefs and made me question what I was being told, and seemingly my friends who had similar experiences agreed and my friends who didn’t grow up with it do tend to take what teachers told them at face value. So I’m wondering if this was just a weird coincidence or if there’s something inherently “question everything” about horrible history’s