Opinion: The British Empire: A legacy of violence?
An opinion in ‘The Guardian’ (June 27, 2019) states: “The UK is home to some of the world’s most violent cities.”
A number of countries on the planet can make a comparison with Britain, not least because the UK has a long history of colonialism and its post-colonial societies have been marked by violence, but for a few decades in the 19th century Britain was home to the largest empire in history. This time the statistics are staggering. The UK, with a population of 47.4m, is home to 42% of the world’s population and is second only to the US in its size and population. We also have a GDP per capita in 2018 of US$64,400.
The figure of 42% of the world’s population is not, in itself, the measure of the UK’s impact on world life. The population of the US has been halved in the past 50 years, partly through deliberate population reduction, partly as a result of migration. The UK is larger and richer than the US, but in the world economy it is only third after China and India. In terms of world population, India is the largest (1.3 billion), the US second (1.2 billion), the UK third (1.1 billion) and China fourth (1.04 billion). In terms of economic output, the US is second (GDP of $20.6 trillion) and the UK third (GDP of $17.3 trillion). It is difficult to work out which country has been the world’s most violent since the US and UK became the major world powers. In terms of the number of violent deaths, the US is the most violent, followed by the UK, then China. The US’s death rate is 3.4 million per year and the UK’s is 3.2 million. That is close to the combined death rate of Britain’s two major cities, London and Manchester (12,000 per year), and much higher than it is in Germany (8,500 per 10,000) or France (7,
