Were your ancestors involved in the British Empire?

[timidtina]

Just curious really. In my part of the country (West Wales) most people’s family have never left the region so have been based here for hundreds and hundreds of years. Obviously there are some people who have moved around, but on the whole it’s a very old fashioned area.

When I lived in Cambridge and in London, I’d often meet people whose mum and dad or grandparents, or even further back, were involved in the British Empire. That’s to say their dad was born in Kenya or granny in India etc. It seemed a much more “global” society. Obviously now there’s a large chunk of the population whose family came to the UK because of the Empire - but I’m asking more about people whose families went out to the Empire and then came back to the UK.

Before India, British Imperialism test drove its divide and rule policy on the Irish. So, my Irish side certainly suffered. Ironically, their suffering hit boiling point under British Militarism (Cromwell). They probably welcomed Imperialism 2.0 after Cromwell’s downfall. The devil you know… but then along came the uprisings and that was that.

Where was he sent, if not Australia, @NewGreenDuck?

Of course, even in my parents generation there were people who work in old colonies/commonwealth countries. DH has an ancestor who was involved in the establishment of the Virginia company back in the 17th century. They established Jamestown, first place in the US recorded as having African slaves. MIL is from a Spanish colony, the family owned silver mines and are still very wealthy.

Scotland joined the Union to access the Empire and every bright young Scottish man made his fortune from the Empire, walk around Glasgow city centre and every street is named after a colony or colonist. Scotland went from being the poorest country in the 17th century to one of the richest and most influential by the 19th thanks to the Empire. Anywhere there is Georgian or Victorian architecture there's the spoils of Empire. I don't understand why people are so reluctant to acknowledge it. The big question is what we do about it.

I don't know. He reappears on a later census, so clearly it was either changed to imprisonment or was only transported a few years. The records on trials in Victorian times were often not complete.

As far as I know no-one was directly involved as an administrator, soldier etc.
There are some distant Irish relatives who came to England around the time of the potato famine, who were presumably affected, the rest are English labourers etc.
However - everyone in England during the Empire would have been 'involved' in terms of being influenced by the cultural impacts, trade goods etc, even if they weren't responsible for doing the 'dirty work' of creating and upholding the Empire personally.

Most of my lot were down coal mines at 10 (younger before Shaftesbury) or doing something else involving dire poverty. A great great uncle from the mining side took his family to Australia in the 1880s and according to the branch still there, "walked" a broken wheel off their waggon through the bush 3 days and 3 back after *repair. I have often wondered what his Black Country wife and gaggle of small kids thought of their new surroundings during this but they made it.

(I don't know why they didn't have a spare either!)

We were labourers mostly. I suppose a few worked on estates that benefitted from slavery but it's not something my mum, the chief researcher in these matters, has really looked into.

My sister in law's father came from St Lucia but I don't know anything about them.

DD's father 's family were Londoners for generations, printers, clerks, blacksmiths and other working class professionals, skilled, but not well paid. They may have benefited indirectly too.

Yes, very much so. Going back several generations my family has members in the armed forces, including my DF who spent a few years in Cyrpus, then many years in Germany. We have documented history going back to the late 1790s.

My 4xgreat grandfather was originally from Shropshire and joined the army in the early 19th century. His battalion travelled to Australia - supposedly as a ‘peace-keeping’ exercise - then on to India in 1819 for much the same reason. They were mostly based at Fort St. George.
He married my 4xgreat grandmother in Madras. He was her 3rd husband and they married just two months after the death of husband No.2. All three of her husbands served in the same regiment and all died of TB (although my ancestor managed to survive long enough to return to England).
I have yet to uncover how it was that she was in India. Women, other than the wives and daughters of senior soldiers, traditionally didn’t travel with the regiment. I’d love to know more of her story.

@Changethetune Were her family involved with the East India Company? They sent women out quite early on. One of my ancestors and her sisters went out as part of the ‘Fishing Fleet’ to look for husbands in the 1850s.

Yes. My great-grandfather was in the Merchant Navy and he emigrated to Canada when Britain was trying to keep the Americans out.

My great, great grandfather was born at Lisbon heights in 1812. His father was in the 96th regiment of foot and his wife went to war with him. She then gave birth to a couple of children on the way. She obviously went to do basic nursing and to cook. I quite admire her, she was an illiterate peasant, but thought nothing of doing that. She returned and gave birth to several more kids. So women did go to war.

Don’t you mean everyone in Britain?

Which at that time also included Ireland.

Mine were on the receiving end of the Empire usually.

No l! Not that I'm aware of and

Nope, I’m from a long line of miners and farm hands and disenfranchised Irish tenant farmers.

@Zeeze No connection as far as I know. Her father was a reasonably well-off shoemaker in Liverpool. As far as I can make out, she met her first husband when the regiment passed through Liverpool on their way from Limerick to Australia via Jersey. Perhaps her father paid for her passage so she could follow her husband? She certainly isn’t on any convict ship list so I’ve ruled that out.
I think she gave birth on the sea voyage to India, but her child died shortly after they made land.
I can’t help but think she may have regretted the decision to follow the regiment as conditions were dreadful and TB rife.

My great grandfather was an officer in the british forces, he was based in what is now Pakistan and like a large majority of men at war a prolific rapist who took advantage of displaced women.

No idea, but also Welsh through and through so I doubt it.

True - I have ancestors who were taken as slaves from Cornwall to Africa in the early 1700s.

@BestZebbie That’s bollocks. Are you telling me that the piss poor mining folk of Durham, who lived in terrible poverty and often couldn’t afford luxuries like chocolate and sugar, were somehow part of the oppression of empire?

What was done in the name of empire was terrible. But the ruling classes were hardly any nicer to their own people. Look at what Lord Lucan did to his tenant on his Irish estate.

Nope - I'm English but my ancestors were Welsh and Irish

You have many pakistani cousins then

I met an angry young man once who accused me of having oppressed 'his people' for generations with my ancestors' Empire. I didn't bother to find out exactly who his people were. I just pointed out that all my ancestors, as far back as we could trace, had lived at or below subsistence level and probably spent every waking hour just trying to survive. They didn't have time to be out conquering and oppressing, raping and pillaging. And the same goes for the non-British half of the family.

No, not at all. I’m like you, OP, in that my ancestors were subsistence farmers but mine were in Ireland. They had little education and no connections with governments or wealthy/ important people or the military or anyone or anything else outside of that rural world. The only educated people they would have encountered would be the local doctor & the priest.