Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Empire of Good Intentions

As one looks into the documentary Empire of Good Intentions, one realizes that the producers of this film are trying to give what one would see as a Eurocentric historical account of the British Empire at the turn of the 19th century. As one understand this one can understand that they do a rather good job of discussing many of the ideals that were set forth through the colonization of the countries in which they discuss. However, they fail to mention all of the remaining colonies and territories that the British Empire was involved in at that time. This being said one must identify with the “middle class white British man” that is presenting these ideals and understand that if he is to go on record as only criticizing the British Empire for their wrong doings in so many countries and not recognizing the benefits that other countries obtained because of the British colonization, he would again be looked down upon by critics of this documentary. Therefore it is my conclusion that this film does a good job of identify many positive aspects of colonization from the British Empire, yet, could use a balance of the reality and struggles of much of the colonized world to be considered a true documentary.

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