EMPIRE- did you know this history?

Yes. For me the single most interesting thing about the Barbados section of the first episode of Empire was the difference between two documents dated 14 years apart from a particular sugar estate. The first one listed the full names and rights and how much time they had left to serve of European indentured workers. The one from 14 years later had no indentured workers, but a whole new category of enslaved Africans whose names weren’t given, just the Anglo nicknames they’d been given since being enslaved, who had no rights, because they were racialised estate property, not employees, and who had no amount of time left to serve, because their slavery had no endpoint.

It’s a disturbingly quick shift to the wholesale dehumanisation of an entire category of people to fuel a growing appetite for sugar. There’s some astonishing stat like Britain consuming six times as much sugar in 1770 as it had in 1720, almost all from the Caribbean colonies.

The Commonwealth is mostly composed of former colonies, but not exclusively. Mozambique applied to join, was accepted, and is the only country that was not part of the British Empire.

Yes what are they called the estates king James 1st took and gave to his own cronies

there’s a word for them…

i agree - people wonder why people in Ireland are prepared to spend their whole lives getting justice

It was a different time.

I think yes there were regrettable things that happened… but, you can’t judge the Victorian era by the standards of today.

And - it wasn’t all bad. Look at the commonwealth, many countries actually like the links to the UK.

And it wasn’t just us - all the Europeans were at it…!

I’d stop now before you embarrass yourself further.

So you're a well read person and 'familiar with academia" but you criticise an author and his books without having read them.
Very professional.
By the ways, thanks to the posters who suggested some books, must have a look at them. I'll read them before I comment on them.

i don’t think you are familiar with academia— who exactly do you think is going to check whether a history book is factually correct, other than peers who have pertinent expertise in the same period/field and familiarity with the sources and archives? Or do you imagine an editorial assistant just googles dates?

Alice Roberts, after her undergraduate degree in medicine, did a doctorate in paleopathology, and went on to do research in osteoarchaeology and physical anthropology. Her books straddle anatomy, anthropology and archaeology, the fields in which she has expertise.

It came from the colonies. I acknowledged that they were a source of raw materials.

Most of the economic value is not in the raw materials but in turning them into finished products. That's why the countries that get rich are those like China that make things rather than those that simply export raw materials.

The UK got rich by being the first country to work out how to make things at industrial scale. Colonialism contributed to our wealth but it wasn't the main factor.

A good many businesses still are exploiting workers by not paying them a living wage and not providing them with safe working conditions. There's plenty of modern slavery about in the UK and sweatshops and plantations in poorer countries overseas where many UK companies have suppliers. Too many consumers either can't afford to buy ethically or can't be bothered to check.

I am familiar with academia, I couldn't care less about peer reviewed books and articles, I want to read books that are factually correct and not being pushed because they support a popular agenda.
Alice Roberts writes peer reviewed history books but has a medical degree, does this make her a proper historian?
You seem quite irate about this. Best to try and chill

Oh, maybe you’re right, and I misread the tone.

Exactly. And the biggest omission of all, the lack of information about the role of England in Ireland, (over 800+ years) the original colony. I know of no school in England that has dared to have it on its curriculum.

A favourite trick of eg the Elizabethan Occupiers was to line the approaches to their ill-gotten estates with the heads of the massacred men, women, children they had dispossessed, so that their tenants would be suitable intimidated when they came to pay their rent etc.

The Irish were sent to the Caribbean and it was only when they proved unsuitable for work in such a hot climate that we turned to Africa etc.

Not to mention speeches in the House of Commons welcoming the Great Hunger of 1845-50 etc as due retribution by God on a lazy, worthless people and a welcome method of solving the 'Irish Problem' once and for all.

By the 19th Century the Irish had been turned off around 93% of their land.
No wonder many/most of us are confused, bewildered about the 'Troubles' etc. when we have been kept in ignorance by our Governments and 'educators'.

That’s why it’s still relevant and reparation is needed

we are beneficiaries big time of this

Gosh, I suggest you look at your own tendency to project, your paranoia about ‘dogma’, and maybe do a bit of research on how academia works. Research in a field that isn’t rigorously peer-reviewed by peers in that field isn’t credible, for very good reasons. It has nothing to do with ‘fashion’. It has to do with knowledge. Biggar is never going to be without a significant bias as a historian, even in the loosest sense of the term. He is a C of E priest who thinks that the spread of Christianity via Empire was a good thing. He’s a Christian apologist. The ‘research’ was conducted via the Oxford Centre for Theology and Ethics, and was about rehabilitating colonialism as a justified moral enterprise, and obviously of interest to the nationalist far right. Well, those who can read.

And I have never suggested anything be banned — we need more discussion of colonialism, not less. The protests about the project were about the University of Oxford funding a project they viewed as ‘very bad history’. He was entitled to hold whatever views he wanted, but it wasn’t representative of the university, or its historians. Plus the book was on the Times’ bestseller list, so it didn’t lack for readers. And Nigel Biggar was perfectly charming in person.

When we visited Sri Lanka during the later phase of the Tamil civil war for seven weeks, our taxi driver said that the worst thing the British did was to give the country independence too soon, in the early 1960s. Progress stopped. Whatever atrocities people want to attribute to the British Empire, less developed countries valued the infrastructure investment and the jurisprudence.

The Commonwealth is mostly composed of former colonies, but not exclusively. Mozambique applied to join, was accepted, and is the only country that was not part of the British Empire.

Niall Ferguson once made the point that one of the better things about the British Empire was that it wasn’t the French Empire.

Haiti is such a poor country because they were paying reparations to the French for ending slavery well into the second half of the 20th century, I believe.

Have you read the book, do you know what he actually says in it. Is there anything in his book that you disagree with? You clearly don't like him because he is "a theologian a crank and a Tory peer". 'Hmm, nothing wrong with being a theologian or a Tory peer. I've no idea whether he's a crank or not.
So if the Ethics and Empire project was heavily criticised- who did the criticism? And it's blindingly obvious that he is being slated by those who are keen to push the Evil British Empire narrative. It seems to me that being peer reviewed and not engaging with contemporary scholarship isn't a bad thing, it means you're not a sheep looking for approval and publicity about how liberal you are and attempting to build a career by pandering to what's fashionable in academia. You don't need to be a formal historian to write history books - history books are for everyone to read, not just academics.
You sound as if you would like to have his books banned, because you don't agree with him and he's not following the accepted dogma.
It's good to read books with differing opinions to your own, that's what I did when I was at university

The Commonwealth is voluntary.
Empire was in most cases certainly not.

The Commonwealth is mostly composed of former colonies, but not exclusively. Mozambique applied to join, was accepted, and is the only country that was not part of the British Empire.