to what people might swift be referring? how is it significant that gullivver takes a stand here?

Most of the time in Gulliver's Travels when Gulliver tells the details of a society's ways of living, Swift is satirizing something wrong with English society. Gulliver denies the Emperors request to finish off the enemy and turn the empire into a province for the Emperor. This clearly reflects the colonial powerhouse that England was and Swift's critique of English hunger for power and control at any cost.