I already know how to do the complexification of a real Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ by the usual process of taking $\mathfrak{g}_\Bbb{C}$ to be $\mathfrak{g} \oplus i\mathfrak{g}$. Now suppose I take the approach of trying to complexify things using tensor products. I look at $\mathfrak{g} \otimes_\Bbb{R} \Bbb{C}$ with the $\Bbb{R}$ - linear map
$\begin{eqnarray*} f : &\mathfrak{g}& \longrightarrow \mathfrak{g} \otimes_\Bbb{R} \Bbb{C} \\ &v&\longmapsto v \otimes 1. \end{eqnarray*}$
Now suppose I have an $\Bbb{R}$ - linear map map $h : \mathfrak{g} \to \mathfrak{h}$ where $\mathfrak{h}$ is any other complex Lie algebra. Then I can define a $\Bbb{C}$ - linear map $g$ from the complexification $\mathfrak{g} \otimes_\Bbb{R} \Bbb{C}$ to $\mathfrak{h}$ simply by defining the action on elementary tensors as
$g(v \otimes i) = ih(v).$
I have checked that $g$ is a $\Bbb{C}$ - linear map. Now my problem comes now in that my $f,g,h$ have to somehow be compatible with the bracket on $[\cdot,\cdot]_\mathfrak{g}$ of $\mathfrak{g}$ and $[\cdot,\cdot]_\mathfrak{h}$ of $\mathfrak{h}$. This is because I don't want them to just be linear maps but also Real/Complex Lie algebra homomorphisms.
My question is: How do we define the bracket on the complexification? A reasonable guess would be $[v \otimes i,w \otimes i] = \left([v,w] \otimes [i,i]\right)$ but this is zero.
Edit: Perhaps I should add, in the usual way of defining the complexification, the bracket on $\mathfrak{g}$ extends uniquely to one on the complexification $\mathfrak{g} \oplus i\mathfrak{g}$. Should it not be the case now that my bracket on $\mathfrak{g}$ extends uniquely to one on the tensor product then?
Edit: How do we know that the Lie Bracket defined by MTurgeon is well-defined? Does it follow from the fact that we are tensoring vector spaces, and so there is one and only one way to represent a vector in here?