EMPIRE- did you know this history?

It's funny how many people feel it is just something bad in past, but don't understand the consequences for today.

It made the UK significantly wealthy, and significantly wealthier than other countries (especially those colonised and those not colonising). It is the lead cause of the fact that if you get a minimal wage pay for 1 hour work in the UK and minimal wage pay for 1 hour of work in other countries to the theorerical world market, you will buy there much more there for the british wage.

As the world is slowly evening out (without the forced wealth transfer of The Empire) the UK is losing this advantage, the gap is slowly closing. And it means that the UK's life style inevitably suffers. In the end there is no real reason why a cleaner in UK should be able to buy more (on that virtual world market) than a cleaner in Poland or cleaner in Morocco.

At every school I've taught in for the last thirty years it's covered in Y9 before options. As for Austen, I don't think we should be judging what were perfectly normal attitudes at the time of writing through a modern lens.

Will other empires be covered in this series? Or is it a BBC series?
Of course not!
I'm amazed that adults, with their school years well behind them, blame those schools for their lack of knowledge.
Life is about learning stuff, grow up and accept responsibility for your ignorance.

One of the things that is fascinating - possible unique - about the British empire is that for the entirety of its existence British people were actively debating whether it should exist, what purpose it could morally exist for, how to disband it and hand it over to the peoples of each colony etc. Gladstone was very anti-Empire, yet it continued to expand u see his premiership. It had a momentum of its own. Almost like the laws of physics, it had to run its course before it could be disbanded.

But what do the others say? The Trust and others barely touch on the horror of working class life and yet fall over themselves to issue trite apologies and trigger warnings about slavery and empire. Why are they apologising? Their job is to educate. There is some really great research about empire and slavery and some sites and exhibitions do it really well, and its important. But its not the only exploitation story in history. Do the other sites apologise about exploitation in mining and industry?

We were discussing Northern Ireland not Ireland, but ok.

Thats the thing about analysing history - it’s subjective, people will have different views.

Respectfully, your take on Ireland seems spectacularly under-informed.

Analysis of history isn’t binary ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Its usually more complex than that.

I have studied the empire extensively, I probably know far more than the average person.

As I have said - many reprehensible things happened during the period of Empire. Thousands of things. But it wasn’t necessarily all bad, and was over a course of centuries - and yes, some countries value their relationship with the UK as a result of empire and felt it brought some positives to their countries.

Your analysis is based on one issue - mine is on the broader history of the empire. There was more to the empire than plantations.

Some reading needed.

A lot of reading needed.

I learnt nothing. We did Industrial Revolution, origins of ww1 and Spanish peninsula war.

I'm not sure you understand the concept of the plantations. You seem to think some Irish people just randomly decided that it was cool to be British.

How anyone has not realised the British Empire was based on exploitation and profit is beyond me, of course it was, all empires are. The Museum of Docklands is really good place to.leanr about tne East India Company and its role in establishing the Empire

If everyone thought the UK’s influence was a terrible thing in NI, we wouldn’t see an ongoing conflict as to which country the land was part of.

I believe in self-determination. If people in NI want to be British, who am I to say no you can’t you must be part of the Irish state because you’re on the same land mass.

Scotland, Wales and Ireland involve several hundred years of history. Some of it is bad yes - but I don’t think you can say all of it is.

In the mid-1970s I was the only Black pupil at my selective independent girls’ school. Across the entire curriculum the existence of Black people in the world was never once referred to - not in literature, or cookery, or religion, or science - until it came to The Slave Trade in History.

History happened to be one of my best subjects and I got on well with the History teacher. To this day I can remember the anxious glances she shot in my direction during those lessons, and the way her hands twisted nervously as she led us through the textbooks …

His comments are typical of a certain class of Indian who feel that they have more in common with wealthy Westerners than they do their fellow Indians. I have been told by a couple of wealthy Indians that it’s a shame that British rule ended because it kept lower caste Indians in their place whereas now some of them are in professional jobs and even in Parliament. The horror!

And why do some think they are British I wonder? What do you think happened there?

Interesting how we have jumped from ‘the empire wasn’t all bad’ to ‘so you think rape was ok then’.

….!

The reason there is an ongoing conflict in NI is because some Northern Irish consider themselves British, and some consider themselves to be part of Ireland.

So - they don’t see the relationship / history with the UK has a bad thing.

And - borders change over time. A map of Europe a hundred years ago looks different to today.

I haven't seen the series but it does sound interesting, I might give it a watch. I grew up in Northern Ireland so I learned a lot about British colonialism in Ireland at school, but pretty much nothing about British colonialism in other regions like India, Nigeria or Hong Kong. I have only learned about these subjects as an adult through podcasts, books and television.

Also midnight patrol, would you say about tolerance of rape in the last for example, that it was a different time, and also everyone was doing it?

We definitely learned about this in primary school in the 90s, I am always surprised that people are surprised. I think the NT near me does a great job of acknowledging it.

Sadly humans on the whole can be a bit shitty to each other, realistically anyone/group that has great wealth has generated that off the misery of others. It's not specific to any country or people, I suppose it's how we have had our incredible success compared to other animals.

What i think this show could have done is explicitly connected it to modern day slavery. Temu/shein/metal mines, I do think people struggle to make that connection from slavery of the past (seen as bad - obvs!) To slavery of today and how we might be able to not endorse it in our own little way. It can't be done perfectly but i do think it's an important take away.

Overall I really enjoy DS, he is very interesting and engaging and always tune into his programmes.

I disagree that it wasn't all bad, it pretty much all bad. As someone from a colonised country living with the impact to this day (i.e. Northern Ireland conflict).

This is why I find people who look up to/want to look like they have "old money" gross. It's so distasteful to be snobbish about it when there's nothing admirable or "classy" (hate that word and its connotations) about inheriting wealth that was made in the ways that "old money" has come about.