Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (Penguin 2021)
Sanghera is a British Sikh writer whose parents emigrated to Britain from the Punjab. Or to put it another way, the author is as British as anyone else. Yet the experience of living in multicultural Britain is – for those whose families were from former British colonies such as India – often baffling, in terms of the widespread ignorance, exploitation and distortions of British Imperial history. He traces the many ways in which the history of Empire shapes the ways we do things now: our community relations, our politics, the behaviour of brits abroad, what we commemorate and display in our museums and galleries and what we teach in our schools.
We are here because you were there
(Sri Lankan writer and activist A. Sivanandan)
“We are here because you were there” is quoted by Sanghera as a telling chapter title. In it he confronts the hostility met by UK citizens whose families trace their heritage to colonies of the British empire. They are the visible and most enriching legacy of Empire – communities who were invited to meet the needs of the “Mother Country”: the Windrush generation from the West Indies came to drive the buses and staff the NHS; the Indian soldiers who fought to defend Britain’s interests in 2 world wars etc. I was astonished to learn that in 1947 the UK government planned to bring in 4000 immigrants per week(!) largely driven by the then Minister for Health, and (later) poisonous racist, Enoch Powell. Such contradictions punctuate this thread of British history.
We have spent many happy days enjoying the art, architecture and lavish decorations of so many of England’s country houses, through the riches of The National Trust or English Heritage which restore and present back to us our “glorious” past. But have you ever felt uncomfortable in Osborne House or Harewood or Penryn Castle and stopped to ask, “But where did the money come from?” Because so many of our spectacular country mansions and splendid public buildings were funded by exploitation of conquered foreigners and, in many cases, slavery. Only in recent years does it seem that institutions are at last acknowledging that many British families owe their current wealth to the ill-gotten gains of their ancestors. Most shocking of all is that the reparations made by the UK government to slave-owners (not to enslaved people) was paid with debts that were finally settled in 2015!
Then there is the National Selective Amnesia. We look away rather than face up to the appalling facts of history, not least the unspeakable acts and tyrannical self-aggrandisement of such “heroes” of empire as Cecil Rhodes and Robert Clive. Perhaps sometimes we need to protect ourselves from the real horrors in order not to be disabled by shame. So we tell our own story – in schools, in history text books, in popular culture, in our public debates – leaving out the inconvenient truth. As the author researches the history that he was never taught in school, it is clear that very few of us would have heard of the Opium Wars, the “Indian Mutiny” (which should rightly be called India’s First War of Independence), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the British invention of the concentration camp in South Africa, and so on and so, tragically, on. It is sickening but it needs to be known.
Two chapters “Racism and an Empire state of mind” and “World-beating delusions” trace how this failure to face up to the ugly past allows people to cling on to a collective delusion that the British Empire was a glorious but mostly harmless episode when, yes naturally, we conquered a huge part of the globe, but gifted the world with the great benefits of the English language, cricket, the best education system in the world and ultimately peaceful transitions to democracy and independence. Such is the tone of some writers on the subject, for example the brilliant economic historian Niall Ferguson. But not only is that hogwash of the highest order but wilful distortion of the realities of brutal repression, exploitation, all too frequent massacres and sundry, almost casual, atrocities. Independence was rarely won without struggle and often terrible bloodshed. Yet the delusions of Empire persist in political discourse, not only in the unmasked racism and myth of (white) British superiority that was unleashed in the Brexit debate and since, but also in the vocabulary that our leaders use to claim that we have world-beating this-or-that. The “world-beating” Track and Trace or claims or our “world-beating” responses to the pandemic put the lie to this deep myth of exceptionalism that of course “the English, the English, the English are best” (in the words of Flanders and Swann).
Sathnam Sanghera writes with clarity, humility, even-handedness and, where necessary, devastating frankness. This is a brilliant book that we British – of all backgrounds and ethnicities – need to read. At a time when public debate is debased by the cheap polarisation of identity politics, wilful offence-taking and cancel culture, Sanghera’s voice is one of reason: a clear-sighted call for education to expand what we know about our troubled history. It is not “unpatriotic” to rebalance our understanding of the sometimes terrible events and poisoned legacy of the greatest Empire, but knowing more deepens our appreciation of where our country came from and who we are. Sanghera shares his own life story including the shocking prejudice that is all too common for ethnic-minority British people. For those of us “WASPs” for whom this experience is not our day-to-day reality, we need to listen and check our privilege. My own grandchildren however have a shared British-Asian heritage so I hope they will get a better and broader education than I received. I feel challenged, chastened and also hugely proud that we live in a country where such a book can be written and should be well known. We need to hear this.
And elsewhere …
- Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain made the Modern World (Penguin, 2012). This a characteristically provocative book, presented with dazzling tightly evidenced argument that is highly persuasive. But amongst many things, he trumpet’s Britains lead to abolish slavery, rather than its profiteering from the previous 200+ years of it. The great things attributed to the British Empire can also be seen as consequences from technological changes post the industrial revolution – Britain just happened to hold global power to disseminate industry, communications, infrastructure etc. Do read it, but be sure to stand back and question his conclusions.
- Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury, 2018) is an important book for understanding the black history of Britain and in particular the links between class and “race”. It initially presents as confrontational, but of course she is actually writing for white British people to better understand the lived experience of minority ethnics brits. Many reviewers were clearly put off and polarized by it. I learned a lot – I hope I changed.
- Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: 1876-1912 (Abacus, 1991) is a massive doorstep of a history book, but I found it riveting and horrifyingly fascinating, like looking at a slow-motion car-crash of supremacist Europe carving up a continent for its own enrichment.
- India Pale Ale – did you know it tastes so good because it matures in barrels for the length of the sea voyage to/from India. A chance discovery that is one of the tastier legacies of Empire.