Now I know that I can be a "Little Britain" type who's irrationally proud of our imperial past. I know that I get irritated by people who say that we should be embarrassed by what we did (being honest I tend to think of the Monty Python sketch "What have the Romans ever done for us?" when they do), but not even I would go so fair as to claim what my colleague claimed.
I know we pretty much strip mined some places, but with the exception of China (let's face it us Brits and Frogs were the biggest drug dealers in the world -the population of China actually WENT DOWN because we got them so off their face), we gave back too.