What are all the attrocities britain/the british empire has been responsible for in other countries

1. Amritsar (Jallianwala Bagh) and mass shootings of civilians

One of the most notorious single events was the Amritsar massacre in 1919, when British troops fired on unarmed civilians gathered in Jallianwala Bagh—an episode repeatedly cited as among the empire’s worst atrocities and emblematic of brutal suppression of colonial protest ^{[1] [3]}.

2. Boer War concentration camps and civilian mortality

During the Boer War the British interned Boer civilians in camps that produced extremely high mortality—estimates describing tens of thousands dead, including large numbers of children—leading historians and popular accounts to categorize the policy as making war on civilian populations ^{[2] [7]}.

3. Indian famines and contested responsibility

Multiple sources attribute catastrophic famines in India under British rule to policies that prioritized exports over local relief; scholarly estimates cited in the reporting place Indian deaths from famine during colonial rule in the millions (commonly cited ranges 12–29 million), and critics frame these famines as at least partly engineered or exacerbated by imperial policy ^{[3] [6]}.

4. Kenya (Mau Mau) and counterinsurgency brutality

The suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya is repeatedly listed among the empire’s worst abuses, with documented use of mass detention, torture, and killings during counterinsurgency operations—episodes that have spawned litigation, historical rebukes, and continuing debate over scale and redress ^{[3] [1]}.

5. Covert intervention and political destabilization (Indonesia example)

Reporting alleges British intelligence played an active role in anti-communist campaigns during Cold War-era decolonization, including propaganda and support that preceded mass killings in Indonesia after 1965; sources connect these operations to imperial goals of preserving influence and countering leftist movements ^[8].

6. Systemic exploitation, terrorisation and structural violence

Beyond headline massacres, analysts argue a structural pattern across colonies involved terrorising and immiserating populations to create cheap labour pools and extract wealth, a view prominent in commentary and critical histories of empire ^{[5] [6]}.

7. Modern-era war crimes and legacy cases

Scholarly compilations and compilatory lists frame British war crimes as a continuum from the Boer War through twentieth- and twenty-first-century conflicts—highlighting summary executions, unlawful treatment of prisoners, and Royal Navy incidents—with specific contested cases such as in Northern Ireland included in postwar reckonings ^[4].

8. Records destroyed, limited accountability, and contested memory

Multiple reports note that thousands of colonial records were deliberately destroyed or hidden, complicating efforts to measure full scale and secure accountability; contemporaneous and later governments have been slow to apologize or provide reparations, prompting calls for reckoning ^{[2] [8] [6]}.

9. Counterarguments and public perception

Defenders of imperial history point to infrastructure, legal systems, and economic development as positive legacies, and polls show a substantial minority in Britain expressing pride in the empire—an active political and cultural counter-narrative that shapes how atrocities are remembered or downplayed ^{[3] [6]}.

10. What the sources cannot fully answer

The assembled reporting documents many specific atrocities and systemic patterns but also repeatedly cautions that destroyed files and contested estimates mean precise death tolls, the full chain of command responsibility, and the total scope of covert operations remain incompletely known; the literature thus combines well-documented events with areas of ongoing archival and judicial contestation ^{[2] [6]}.