Thread by @ronanlyons

As someone fond of Britain - home to some of the world's most famous cultural, educational and sporting institutions - the omni-shambles that is Brexit makes me wonder what on earth it did in a past life to deserve this.

*open history books*
OK, apart from (deep breath)...

The massacres at Allahabad, Kanpur and Malerkotla, and at Ventersburg and Louis Trichardt, not forgetting the Boer Concentration Camps, then there's the chemicals weapon usage in WW1 I suppose, and of course the Baralong incidents, the Jallianwala Bagh/Amritsar massacre....

And then there's Bloody Sunday 1 (you can see where this is going), the Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre, the bombing of Dresden in breach of war conventions, their reaction to the Mau Mau Uprising, the extraordinary Partition of India - which itself might be enough...

There was the Batang Kali massacre and the Briggs Plan, an astonishing act, the massacres during the Mau Mau uprising (especially at Chuka and Hola), and closer to home Bloody Sunday 2, now the subject of an active criminal investigation...

Oh my. I think I'll stop there.

(Note that I gave Britain a pass on the whole slavery thing, not to mention the role its descendants played in the expropriation of Native American lands, as well as a pass on the repeated famines in India as well as the perhaps more famous one in Ireland.)

My point here is not to beat up on Britain or British people, incidentally. Rather, how many of these does the typical British citizen know about? If they knew about more, might their attitude to international relations be a little more cooperative?

Last thought: in a world of almost irrevocably interdependent states, almost none of which neatly overlap with nationalities, it might be good for everyone to learn in school a list of the worst/most shameful things their country did (as well as the best, which always feature).