Britain raped India. And China. And Africa.

And the
Middle East. And and and. Great, Britain!
Great work!
Work of great energy, bravery, and determination,
yes! And also work of great arrogance, great
selshness, great spiritual blindness, and great
small-mindedness. Consider all of the brutalization,
suffering, and dehumanization brought to humanity
by that cruel work!
And the work, no doubt, of many of my ancestors.
Sir Richard Grenville, (1542-1591), renowned English
sea captain, was the rst cousin once removed of a
direct ancestor of mine, George Grenville (who died in
1580). Sir Richard Grenvilles grandfather, also named
Richard Grenville, was the brother of Georges father,
Digory Grenville (d.1539). Sir Richard Grenvilles
great-grandfather, Sir Roger Grenville (1477-1523),
was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-
great-great-great-great grandfather (12 greats). Sir
Roger Grenvilles father was Sir Thomas Grenville
(1450-1513), who among other things was a close
assistant to King Henry VII. Sir Thomas Grenville was
descended from yet another Sir Richard Grenville, who
was a brother of Robert Fitzhamon and one of the
Twelve Knights of Glamorgan.
Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591) had sought to lead
an expedition that would have made the rst British
voyage around the world (second in all--after
Magellan), but that honor was given to Sir Francis
Drake. He and Drake were both privateers -- pirates,
sanctioned by the British government to prey on others
(the Spanish, who were returning to Europe with vast
fortunes of gold and silver stolen from South America).
Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591), also cousin to Sir
Walter Raleigh and Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir
Francis Drake, was the Admiral and the General, and a
ships captain, of the second British expedition to the
site of what would shortly later become the rst British
attempt to establish a colony in the Americas. This
attempt, which was on the Outer Banks of what is
today North Carolina, failed, and is known to history as
the Lost Colony. Apparently, Sir Richard Grenville
himself strongly contributed to the development of the
very bad relations between the English would-be
colonists and the local Indians, which somewhat later
contributed to the failure (and disappearance) of this
proto-colony.
Sir Richard Grenville is just one of my ancestors who
were covered in imperialisms blood. There were
numerous others, some of whom are mentioned above.
The great bloody work--the work of creating an
empire--springs almost straight from the
selshness that is intrinsic to human life--to
biological life.
Note that I wrote springs almost straight.
We would much better steer our course even more
true--not to create an empire, in law or fact, or any
such bloody selsh thing, but to create integrity, in
the midst of this chaos!
That would be worthy work! That work would
leave a worthwhile legacy. Having done that work,
we would have cause to feel good. Having done that
work, we would have done Gods work.