EMPIRE- did you know this history?

[Needacupofteaandcrackers]

Just watched Empire on BBC….. I didn’t realise the timelines of how long it was tolerated. I’ve been to a few trust sites and only now I’m made to connections on wealth. 🥹

Where did you think ‘old money’ wealth comes from? If they weren’t personally exploiting people in colonised countries they were investing in businesses that did.

If they weren’t exploiting people in other countries they were exploiting workers in this country from the feudal system where the people were literally owned by the lord of the manor through to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution.

I thought this might be a thread about ‘Empire’ the podcast (which is very good).
Don’t know exactly what you’re talking about - slavery?

I assume it's about David Olusoga's current 3-part series on BBC2, which is also extremely good, and that OP is talking about slavery and indentured labour.

It's all there if you look, but until recently most people weren't looking. In Mansfield Park, published in 1814 before the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, Jane Austen is perfectly clear that the Bertram family have a plantation on Antigua. I read that in my teens and just didn't think about it, but now it's obvious that they had become immensely wealthy and were living lives of luxury as a direct result of exploiting enslaved workers. It's right that the National Trust should recognise this.

I think Paxman's book on the subject is better than the TV series.

Also try Kwasi Kwarteng's "Ghosts of Empire" (KK is a better historian than he was Chancellor of the Exchequer).

Nothing beats Jan Morris's books though. Not fashionable today as s/he saw the Empire in a positive light.

Not sure what you mean by "tolerated" though???

Didn't you learn about it at school? We did loads on the Empire, the slave trade triangular route, East India Company.

If you are under 40, you may well have studied this at school. I'm in my mid 60s and we didn't.

Yeah I'm 41 and was super shocked when I took a post colonial module in 2003 at uni. Then quite angry that we spent so much time on bloody Henry VIII!

I didn’t realise the timelines of how long it was tolerated
Sorry, what do you mean?
I watched for a bit, but gave up as I find Olusaga irritating.

Following on from the Mansfield Park comment, in Persuasion the hero sorts out the financial concerns of Mrs Smith (?) In the West Indies.

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'm 67 and this was covered extensively in my school

He does. Which is seen as a Good Thing.

Fwiw, what's wrong with people educating themselves (horrible phrase)?
I didn't do history at O level, but have always been interested in the subject.
And my husband, in his 70s, remembers being taught about the slave trade at school, so it's not a hidden history, as some claim.

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…!

Depends on your exam board. I did history up to A level, and a little bit at undergrad before I changed courses, and we didn’t touch slavery, apart from a bit on the abolition of serfdom in Russia.

It’s not an age thing.

Do you think that there were any positive benefits of it?

Do you think this programme is absolutely unbiased?

If you answer No and Yes, then fair enough but I might suggest that it is always a good idea to read something from another viewpoint because the truth usually lies somewhere in between,

Do you think this programme is absolutely unbiased?
No. DO has an agenda. Which is fine (as long as one is aware of it) but reduces him as a historian IMO.

Same. I'm going to watch David Olusoga's series though. He is such a good presenter.

Of the stately homes near me, the wealth of one was built on coal mining, another on iron works and another was built on slavery. The estate built on slavery is very open, and apologetic about it.

I haven’t listened to the series - Empires were the way of the world for so much of human history- the Ottoman Empire, Russian empire, Spanish empire, Persian empire, Roman Empire, Byzantine etc.
I’m going off my dodgy memory here but I think the British was the biggest in the sense of most far-reaching/sprawling.
Democracy is still in its infancy in comparison

I think the danger is to divide the issue into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’.

Plenty of Africans got rich as a result of the slave trade, as well as Europeans.
A white Englishman campaigned to end it.
And there were millions of people caught up in it, who suffered terribly.

At the end of the day it was about abuse of power and inequality, which hasn’t gone anywhere.

I’d rather deal with the manifestations of that which are still everywhere today, than feel better about myself because someone put a red sticker on a painting in an art gallery to show it used to belong to a slave owner.

I don’t get why people are talking about school, and whether or not it was on the curriculum — that Britain had a huge empire whose wealth generation was profoundly implicated in slavery is general knowledge! That shouldn’t be news to anyone!

Read up on what the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch were up to at the time. Makes the English East India Company look like a hippy commune.

And yet you’re doing exactly that, by deciding that your own method of dealing with contemporary abuses of power, whatever it is, is more of a ‘goodie’ thing than an art gallery indicating which paintings used to belong to slave owning families.

I'm in my late 60s and I did. It probably depends which O level exam board you had.
I'll never forget the lesson where we learned about the Black Hole of Calcutta. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I knew most of it, but not the bit about the "black loyalists" who were given help to leave the US. It's a good series. Olusoga's book Black And British is great too (and obviously touches on a lot of aspects of empire).

I don't think anyone needs to apologise for stuff that was done centuries before they were born, but they do need to acknowledge facts, which museums and historic houses are increasingly doing in relation to the slave trade, and good for them.