IMPERIAL system was introduced by an expansionist colonial empire and was based on ROMAN mile (the state that was built on slavery and conquest).
I don't think you should choose your units basing on ethics, but even if you do it's not a great choice :)
BTW Napoleon is to this day a hero in some countries (for example in Poland). We even have him in our national anthem :) He temporarily recreated Polish state and freed us from another military dictatorship (Tzar Russia).
I find it funny how he's viewed in English-speaking countries as "almost the Hitler" while Catherine the Great for example is perfectly fine. It's the exact opposite in Poland :)
Two days ago I finished Simon Winder's Danubia (second in his trilogy) -- a tremendously fascinating and enjoyable summary of the history of that region over the past millennium.
That whole region is chock-full of fascinating counter-factual / alternative-histories based on the tiniest 'what ifs' (someone lived an extra year, didn't die of smallpox, didn't choose to build the wrong church in that town that year, didn't stupidly assume an entire foe nation could be defeated in 6 weeks, etc).
From here (Australia, with a generally pro-British syllabus at school) Napoleon is taught as a generally successful, but ultimately bad, force.
The distance components were created (arguably) about a hundred years before bits of Europe adopted it.
When I was in Greenwich (the real one) years ago, our guide told the story, which may be apocryphal, that the Brits negotiated with the French way back about the meridian.
The Brits got to keep the prime meridian by agreeing to adopt metric.
Which they then failed do to do for a couple of centuries (and even then ...).
Unfortunately I can't find anything to substantiate this story just now.
It was at the instigation of the USA and it was partly to do with the establishment of the time zone system, and partly to do with marine navigation charts. Britain had the best charts at the time so there was a significant practical reason to bless Greenwich (with 180° being the second choice).
The French obviously did not like the result, but there wasn’t any quid pro quo about adopting the metric system.
