. . . The Malay States are not British Territory, and our connection with them is due to the simple fact that 70 years ago [1757] the British Government was invited, pushed, and persuaded into helping the Rulers of certain States to introduce order into their disorderly, penniless, and distracted households [departments of government], by sending trained British Civil Servants to advise the Rulers in the art of administration and to organize a system of government which would secure justice, freedom, safety for all, with the benefits of what is known as Civilization; and, of course, to provide an annual revenue sufficient to meet all the charges of a government which had to introduce railways, roads, hospitals, water supplies, and all the other requirements of modern life. Of nine States south of Siam, four asked for or accepted this help; four others, threatened by Siam, came later under direct British influence; while Johore, nearest neighbour to Singapore had, ever since the occupation of that island by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, depended for its development on the wealth and enterprise of Singapore Chinese. . . .

Source: Sir Frank Swettenham, British Malaya: An Account of the
Origin and Progress of British Influence in Malaya, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1906

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray’. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

— Bishop Desmond Tutu, 1984
Source: South Africa Sunday Times, November 26, 2000

. . . Of late years this group of import interests [British merchants] has been enormously strengthened by the demand of giant industries for colonial raw materials—rubber, petroleum, iron and coal, cotton, cocoa. The oil trusts of England and the United States have enlisted the
aid of naval and diplomatic officials in their world-wide rivalry. The cotton industry of Germany hoped to obtain from Asiatic Turkey, under German imperialist control, raw cotton for German spindles; the cotton interests of England have been striving for a generation to develop
plantations in British colonies; their French and Italian rivals have been hardly less interested in colonial potentialities. The European cotton industry, it may be remarked, as an export business and as an import business, is doubly imperialist. . . .
Source: Parker T. Moon, Imperialism and World Politics, Macmillan Co., 1926

Transforming the Face of India
. . . Failure to answer, nay, refusal to tackle that question has rendered wholly academic the discussion of abandonment. Even were it otherwise we could still look back proudly. British
brains, British enterprise, and British capital have, in a material sense, transformed the face of India. Means of communication have been developed: innumerable bridges, over 40,000 miles of railway, 70,000 miles of metalled roads, testify to the skill and industry of British engineers.

Irrigation works on a stupendous [huge] scale have brought 30,000,000 acres under cultivation, and thus greatly added to the agricultural wealth of a country which still lives mainly by agriculture. But, on the other hand, the process of industrialization has already begun. The mills of Bombay have become dangerous competitors to Lancashire, and the Indian jute [rope] industry is threatening the prosperity of Dundee. Thanks to improved sanitation (much resented by the more ignorant beneficiaries), to a higher standard of living, to irrigation, to canalization, to the development of transport, and to carefully thought-out schemes for relief work, famines, which by their regular recurrence formerly presented a perennial [continuing] problem to humane administrators, have now virtually disappeared. To have conquered the menace of famine in the face of greater longevity, of diminished death-rate, and the suppression of war, is a remarkable achievement for which India is wholly indebted to British administration. . . .

Source: Sir John A. R. Marriott, The English in India, Oxford University Press, 1932

. . . The condition of Africa when Europe entered the continent, which Isaiah so graphically describes as “the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia . . . a people
scattered and peeled,” was deplorable. On the East Coast, Arabs and half-castes were engaged in a lucrative trade in slaves for export to Arabia and to Turkish possessions. In the west, powerful armies of Moslem States depopulated large districts in their raids for slaves. Europe had failed to realise that throughout the length and breadth of Africa inter-tribal war was an ever-present condition of native life, and that extermination and slavery were practised by African tribes upon each other.

It was the task of civilisation to put an end to slavery, to establish Courts of Law, to inculcate in [teach] the natives a sense of individual responsibility, of liberty, and of justice, and to teach their rulers how to apply these principles; above all, to see to it that the system of education should be such as to produce happiness and progress. I am confident that the verdict of history will award high praise to the efforts and achievements of Great Britain in the discharge of these great responsibilities. For, in my belief, under no other rule—be it of his own uncontrolled potentates [rulers] or of aliens [foreigners]—does the African enjoy such a measure of freedom and of impartial justice, or a more sympathetic treatment, and for that reason I am a profound believer in the British Empire and its mission in Africa. . . . Source: Lord Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, Archon Books, 1965

. . . “Because India has become impoverished by their Government. They take away our money from year to year. The most important posts are reserved for themselves. We are kept in a state of slavery. They behave insolently [insultingly] towards us and disregard our feelings. . . .”

Source: Mohandas Gandhi, Indian Home Rule, Navajivan Publishing, 1938, reprinted in 1946 (adapted)

. . . Socially, the ogre [monster] of racial segregation and discrimination makes it extremely difficult for the colonial to develop his personality to the full. Education is obtainable but limited to the privileged. Hospitals are not available to the great number of the people but only to a negligible [small] minority. Public services are lacking in many respects; there are not sufficient water supplies, surfaced roads, postal services and communications systems in most communities of Nigeria. The prisons are medieval, the penal [criminal] code is oppressive, and religious freedom is a pearl of great price. . . .

— Nnamdi Azikiwe, speech on British colonialism in Africa, 1947
Source: ZIK: A Selection from the Speechs of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Cambridge University Press, 1961