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.

@Reugny Great side steps there and lovely cherry picking of my comment. You obviously have very little knowledge of the Industrial Revolution and the effects on the working class population of the the U.K. and developing U.K. industry.

So, no- my ancestors were not in any way involved in empire. What was going on was that the ruling classes who made their lives miserable, held them down with class divides and forced them into grinding poverty were also doing the same thing to people in other countries.

I love that your argument is that men (and children) forced to mine coal for pittance in dangerous conditions which caused horrific illness and early death were in some way oppressors.

And you wonder there is such a huge streak of intolerance in Northern mining communities. You can tell people who suffered that they are responsible for the evil of empire while they were being ground under the same boot and expect them to accept your ignorance.

I've never looked into my family tree but it's probably not very interesting and I'm sure a lot is lost to history, there has been a lot of moving around and changes of spellings of names and there are no written family records or pictures so I don't fancy my chances.

I 'know' only as far back as my GPs. Below is the total of my knowledge about their upbringings.

One moved from rural Ireland to Liverpool with the family when they were 2 around the time of partition, no idea what they all did for a living but they weren't rich, 11 children in that family

One was the child of a plumber in Liverpool, family had moved there for work from Wrexham, 12 DCs in that family

Another born in rural Ireland prior to partition, mother died, father disappeared, 4 DCs left alone to bring themselves up in a cottage with no running water or electricity and a dirt floor

Last one, one of 4 surviving DC of 8, child of corner shop owners, the DF was killed in an accident when they were young and their DM was left alone with 4 DCs

They were definitely not rich, influential or colonialists!!

@Ratsoffasinkingsauage you clearly know little yourself as women where sent down the mines until it was banned. The law was only repealed in the late 1980s due to sex discrimination laws.

You just can't accept that your ancestors had access, however limited, to items like tea which they wouldn't have without the British Empire.

@Reugny Do you genuinely believe that people in grinding poverty bought chocolate and sugar in enough quantities to out weigh the misery of their own oppression at the hands of the ruling classes?

Are you really trying to argue that people in mining communities were oppressors because they sometime had access to the products made in empire countries? Does that make everyone- including those in countries of the empire- overall complicit in the effects of empire, even if they had no choice in engaging in the effects of those transactions?

Some of mine were. They were working class people from Ayrshire, and when people - by which I mean what we would today call teenagers - were looking for work in the late 19th/early 20th century, the work they found - without experience, without formal higher education, but maybe through some local connections - was often on the railroads. They learned some things that were considered useful. Then one day that experience became useful to the Indian Civil Service, and new opportunities became available, at least for men.

I can't see into my ancestors' minds, but I know there was push (from Scotland, which historically has had absolutely as much class prejudice as the wider UK, plus some extra for being Roman Catholic and for being of Irish background/heritage/origin) as well as pull (to India, to something new and seemingly promising, to the hope for stable work, to the promise of money, to the lure of security).

Of course, these were not the poorest people in the UK; far from it. But they were not the richest either. It's certainly wrong to exclude Scots from the history of "building the Empah" (Glasgow was the Empire's second city, after all). But it is also wrong to think that being involved in "building the Empah" was a purely upper class pursuit. They used who they wanted to use, and people who could benefit sometimes did opt to benefit. Is it that different from the choices we have today?

Yes.

Several male ancestors fought in WWI. Grandfather spent time in Egypt after the Suez crisis.