EMPIRE- did you know this history?

This this this this.

Four centuries later and he’s still infamous in Ireland for his brutality.

Yes that's why his statue is outside Parliament. But he was responsible for English/Protestant colonisation of Ireland, confiscation of land oppression of catholics and death of up to 20% of the population. A good example of how history is not a simple story of goodies and baddies.

I don't follow you @XWKD.

Cromwell led Parliament's armies during the Civil War. He was at the forefront of establishing the precedent that the Monarch can only rule and levy taxes with the consent of the House of Commons.

I always find it jarring to see a statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament.

3www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/15/the-islamic-world-silent-on-its-history-of-slavery/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAOLjU9jbGNrA4uNSGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHr9ttLZLaujDJTBzShwAd1pmIz89nahP4J5vjnaEFyhMR3Il8QBHMkV1TGDi_aem_Tl-xJYE_DaDi7vlnr0CGOw

Watched the last one. This talked about Australia and how the British government wanted an alternative to sending prisoners to America. Also how the slave owners in Jamaica and Barbados planned for after slavery was abolished by recruiting indentured labour from India.

It’s the precise opposite. In Haiti the former slaves paid the compensation to Paris.

In the British colonies Westminster paid the compensation to slave owners. So ordinary taxpayer people in the United Kingdom who had never owned or a slave paid rich slave owners in those self-governing colonies the market rate for each slave to set them free. Even before that, English abolitionists were paying privately to free slaves. Often hundreds at a time.

thats how England got them to sign the act of union in 1707 by offering them access to the transatlantic trade and slavery - wouldn’t that be why they are In The cemeteries.

but yes Scot’s also active in Ulster plantations

We did nothing in school. I didn't do history for GCSE but up to that point it wasn't covered.

James I was actually Scottish by birth, not English, though. He was king of Scotland before he became king of England, too. And many plantations in Ireland were granted to Scots, too.

When it came to joining in with imperial activity, later on, Scots and Irish (both Catholic and Protestant) were disproportionately represented in the British Empire. Any 19th century cemetery in India will reveal this.

I say this as someone with Scottish, English and both Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant ancestry. The Irish Catholic ancestor was transported to Australia for stealing a ribbon or a piece of lace (!) and her great-great granddaughter could have afforded to buy a whole shop of whatever clothes she wanted. I daresay this acquisition of wealth involved taking land originally belonging to the indigenous population.

I've read Brideshead Revisited and Agatha Christie, does that count?

Fascinating period. I've read a lot of fiction written in the first half of the 20th century, which is when my parents and grandparents were born. Not that long ago, but the pace of change since then has been immense.

I didn't dislike it. I only remember that the teacher had a phrase that was meant to get the class's attention, so I would count the number of times per lesson, and I remember who I sat next to (she didn't turn up to school all that often) and a few of the lads. The classroom was quite a sunny one, which always seemed to improve the lessons.

All my friends carried on to GCSE, but I did French instead, which I'm glad I did but I feel a bit like I missed out. I read a lot and try to read widely. I read Empire by Jeremy Paxman by chance - having seen Watching the English by Kate Fox praised on here, I read it, and got annoyed by the many reference to JP, so I got The English Book and Empire.
I've not got round to reading The English yet as I've been reading about fairly recent UK politics.

(I am one of those who probably should have done History A-level. I think the next area I should read about is the first half on the 20th century. )

That's a shame. I loved History at school. It's a lingering regret that I didn't study it beyond O level.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g , that was me. I had one year of History, but it only covered the country's history (country within the UK, not England) and the Tudors. Although, strictly speaking, I did study it, reality was 2 lessons a week over one year in a class the teacher didn't have much control over.
History GCE wasn't possible because of timetable clashes. The year of it hadn't sold it to me.

I remember Roots being on tv but I think I was too young to watch it. I read the book decades later, but by then people were 'Never heard of it'.

I'm 62 and we did the slave trade from the Romans onwards, the history of the trade routes, abolition of slavery, in Europe and in the US.

I imagine different schools had different syllabi until the national curriculum was brought in.

In the days before the National Curriculum and Ofsted, there must have been huge variation in what was taught. Somebody upthread said she never studied History at all, which I find astonishing. I thought everybody educated in UK schools would have had some history lessons at some point, although only a minority would have gone on to study History to O level/CSE/GCSE. At my school both History and Geography were compulsory O levels, which I think was pretty unusual.

As far as I can remember, in what you'd now call years 7-10 we cantered through Roman Britain, raced through the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, dwelt a bit longer on the Norman Conquest and the centuries that followed, lingered on the Tudors and Stuarts, and then leapfrogged over the political and military history of the early Georgian era entirely. We went straight on to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, with a brief reference to the American War of Independence. For O level we finally studied something other than British history - World History from 1870 to the present was the syllabus. We covered British political history in the late 19th century including the battle for trade unionism, wider suffrage and the Suffragettes, and the divisions over Irish independence/self-determination; the Balkan conflicts within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the causes of World War I; the Russian Revolution; possibly a bit about the Boer Wars (it was nearly 50 years ago - the details are a bit hazy now).

Slavery would have been mentioned in passing, I'm sure, but the triangular trade was not a topic we spent any time on at all. I didn't hear that term till several decades later. There was probably more emphasis on Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery across the Empire, i.e. the bits that showed the UK up in a better light. At that age I think I was more aware of slavery as an issue in US politics than in the UK. We watched the TV mini-series Roots, which I found horrifying.

This!

I'm 59 and we did it at school too.

DO you know about the concentration camps in South Africa OP?

The house in the Estate where I live in Dublin City is built on the site of a lodge house (gate house) of a huge estate house and grounds which was originally owned by an English nobleman! Empire is very real and very recent and not that far in the dim and distant past at all! There is also a street in the capital named after this fella which means our food deliveries sometimes go astray.

I enjoyed the series. It was very familiar as it was written in part by Karl Hack of the OU. He was in charge of the history module ‘Empire 1492-1975’ that I did for my third year (my favourite module of my BA). The module focussed across several empires, not just Britain, but you could see several topic areas from the module inside the series.

If people are genuinely interested I’m sure you can pick up the course books second hand online (I have a feeling they revised/rejigged the module- I did it in 2020, so the books would be out of date and therefore cheap). The module code was A326.

i went onto do my MA and my research project, focussing on a particular family that lived on the Newton estate in Barbados- the estate with the slave burial ground in the series.

I thought it was a great introduction to the topic for your average lay person, and and engaging watch even if you knew the subject well.

@Needacupofteaandcrackers I think this thread has gone a bit off topic, but I started watching last night based on your original post.

As someone who has roots in a former colony and ancestors who were indentured labourers, no I did not know some of the things covered in Ep1. We did not learn it at my UK school.

My family hails from Calcutta, and the island they landed on has - up until about 20 years ago - kept very quiet about its roots and history. For most of my life no one discussed it. Shame, poverty and a parent wanting to assimilate into UK culture made it an unspoken truth. It still plays out in my parent's homeland too. Deep divisions exist between communities who were slaves, vs indentured labourers. There are different cultural groups eyed with suspiscion. I found Ep1 fascinating, particularly the Indian history (I knew about EIC but not about the effective acquisition of NE India).

Whatever the Empire, wherever it came from it was essentially based on greed.

Well I grew up in NI with a British education and had never heard of the plantation of Ulster. In the 80s I don’t think there even was a history curriculum for primary school! The education now is far superior to what I had. Year 8 in London does do the reformation.

i did a Wikipedia deep dive one day about Irish history. Blimey that was an education. England has a 1000 year history in Ireland. Brutal. No wonder why so many Irish people still have such a dislike for the English. It runs very deep.

and I think it is English not British as Britain became a thing during that time.

I am now wondering with all the anti immigrant protests if the notion of British is disappearing? Most English people i know consider themselves English not British.

I agree .