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.

Would you like to provide some statistical proof of that assertion?

Or are you just being goady?

My mother's (absent) father joined the army after abandoning her mother with two young children to care for and served in what was then Palestine during WW2 followed by what sounds like a highly successful career rising through the ranks in the colonial police service in British Malaya, Singapore and Rhodesia.

When people write about their backgrounds, a huge majority are from poor working class families totally forgotten to history, and yet anytime anyone experiences past-life regression, it turns out that they're a reincarnation of someone mega-famous like Marie Antoinette. Are we to conclude that subsistence farming brings guaranteed enlightenment and nirvana? I can see no other logical explanation. 😂

We have gone as far back as my great great grandparents who lived in the 19th century. They were poor Irish farmers & agricultural workers. Most were illiterate & there is absolutely no way they would have owned slaves, or much of anything else for that matter, except a few animals. There is nothing to suggest that their own grandparents were any different.

You’re so wrong about this.

My family is totally boring, even the ones who (a few generations ago) came from exotic/interesting places were just the basic poor people from those places, sadly no swashbuckling stories lol

No our ancestors were all white slaves of the main beneficiaries of the empire.

Oh and cannon fodder too.

My DGM was born in India to an Irish woman and an Indian-Portuguese man. I suppose that counts as being part of the British empire.

As my username suggests, I also have a relative (DGF) born in the Welsh colony in Patagonia. His DF was from Carmarthenshire and we ended up back in West Wales eventually. So maybe people have moved around more than you realise OP.

Only in so far as Granddad fought in the First World War and Father fought in the Second World War.

Aside from that I come from a family of farm labourers.

Course they were.

That's because when you go back further and further - you have many ancestors. I know about pedigree collapse - but it just takes 1 person from the past to be involved and there you go.

British Empire goes back many generations.

Do you know what ALL your ancestors did back in the 16th and 17th century?

Someone was a postmaster and seemed to be sent to somewhere abroad to set up a postoffice.

Lots of indirect involvement with empire like working in the docks or making clothes.

You realise that if you go back to the start of the British empire you have around half a million spaces on your family tree in that generation....

In that ONE generation. So saying you can account for about 50 people means exactly nothing in this context.

Not me (mine were farmers as far back as I can find) but DH's grandad was born in India to a military father and was reasonably wealthy, apparently.

My 3 x GG was from Nova Scotia and my 3 x GF was in the British Army and they met and married in Halifax, NS, presumably as he was stationed in Canada. They then moved to England and had their family.

My great grandad was from a farm in/near Fife. That's my Dad's side.

My Dad read an advert in the paper for an engineering job. He went to Rhodesia now Zimbabwe and met my mum on holiday in Zambia.

My mum's mum was half Indian, she was the daughter of an Indian woman and a man in the British army. My mums mum was stoned as a child in England for the colour of the skin so she hid the birth certificates and we never knew until she had passed. My mum's dad worked on the railways in Zambia as a railway clerk under apartheid. When they left, they weren't allowed to take any of their pensions out of the country.

I've been to both India and Africa as I thought it was interesting to visit both places .

Their coal helped fuel it.

This is not ignoring the fact that they also had a horrendous existence mining.

@Reugny Their coal helped fuel what? That is such a confident statement. What are you basing that on? The coal went to industry (the kind which caused lung diseases and cancer) and ship building and transport and fuelling homes in the U.K. While some of that might have had a knock on effect on empire it sure has hell had a bigger knock on effect in the U.K.

Look at how the Irish workers were treated in mill towns in the north! Exploration, ségrégation and hardship.

Fascinating question OP! Some of the answers show how complicated it all is.

My wider family have links to Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. However, not completely straightforward stories. One of my Grandfathers came from an incredibly working class rural background and just happened to get posted to India during the WW2. He absolutely loved it and he never have the funds to go back although he always wanted to. He also was very pro migration by all accounts.

Had a great uncle who was in the police in Malaysia but married a local woman, converted to Islam and stayed in Malaysia after independence.

I think there was a lot more moving about the world as a result of Empire than people realise. There were also quite a few people who would join, say, the army, as a potential way to change their life if they were in deep poverty, but who probably didn’t last very long to have children to pass their stories down.

Think the Imperial system could suck in and spit out the most vulnerable from all sides.

I said England specifically as I was speaking about my own, English ancestors.

My family were farmers (one side north wales, one side Cumbria) so I don't think they had any direct involvement although I guess everyone would have by association.

When did the working class start to drink tea in Britain? At some time in the 1800s the agricultural labourers in my family tree could presumably afford tea, so they were benefitting from the Empire.

Great question OP and very very interesting responses. The history curriculum in the UK has a lot to answer for. What a pity.

I don't think so - as far as I can go back, they were mill-workers and carpenters and lived in Lancashire.

@Ratsoffasinkingsauage You actually answered your own question.

The coal went to industry (the kind which caused lung diseases and cancer) and ship building and transport