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. 🥹

I didnt say anywhere I don’t care about other groups

So why would we exclude them from a full understanding of the empire?

I binge watched all 3 episodes of David Olusoga's Empire series last weekend. Partly because I was ill, partly because I think he is absolutely gorgeous and partly because it was excellent. I thought he was very even handed, well balanced and thoughtful in his presentation.

The thread asks whether people were aware of the history explored by David Olusoga in his series ‘Empire’, which focuses on the British empire. I don’t think anyone imagines it was the only one.

Have you read the book, do you know what he actually says in it. Is there anything in his book that you disagree with? You clearly don't like him because he is "a theologian a crank and a Tory peer". 'Hmm, nothing wrong with being a theologian or a Tory peer. I've no idea whether he's a crank or not.
So if the Ethics and Empire project was heavily criticised- who did the criticism? And it's blindingly obvious that he is being slated by those who are keen to push the Evil British Empire narrative. It seems to me that being peer reviewed and not engaging with contemporary scholarship isn't a bad thing, it means you're not a sheep looking for approval and publicity about how liberal you are and attempting to build a career by pandering to what's fashionable in academia. You don't need to be a formal historian to write history books - history books are for everyone to read, not just academics.
You sound as if you would like to have his books banned, because you don't agree with him and he's not following the accepted dogma.
It's good to read books with differing opinions to your own, that's what I did when I was at university

I'm referring to the British working class and the African traders and dealers who traded with the British empire.

I haven’t read that book, so can’t comment, but I loved the Jan Morris Pax Britannica trilogy. They mix the macro geopolitics with incidental trivia that injects incredible dry wit. Sometimes simply stating a fact, such as a particular individual or group thought or cosines something, is enough to shine a light on their limited world view, while also getting under the skin of how people justified things to themselves. It’s so extensive too. Morris seems to have travelled the globe and read perhaps more extensively than anyone else on this topic. It’s a masterpiece.

Unless I'm mistaken The National Trust hasn't issued any apology about slavery and empire. It covers the history, but doesn't apologise.

I'd like to recommend Niall Ferguson's Empire to everyone reading this thread. Apart from being readable and engaging, he manages to tease out some of the good things the Empire created around the world. Common law is probably the greatest.

Why would the National Trust feel any need to apologise?

The Commonwealth is voluntary.
Empire was in most cases certainly not.

The Commonwealth is mostly composed of former colonies, but not exclusively. Mozambique applied to join, was accepted, and is the only country that was not part of the British Empire.

But it is voluntary.

Well - yes.

My point is that everything that happened as a result of the empire can’t have been horrendous - given some countries voluntarily maintain their links with the UK.

When we visited Sri Lanka during the later phase of the Tamil civil war for seven weeks, our taxi driver said that the worst thing the British did was to give the country independence too soon, in the early 1960s. Progress stopped. Whatever atrocities people want to attribute to the British Empire, less developed countries valued the infrastructure investment and the jurisprudence.

Gosh, I suggest you look at your own tendency to project, your paranoia about ‘dogma’, and maybe do a bit of research on how academia works. Research in a field that isn’t rigorously peer-reviewed by peers in that field isn’t credible, for very good reasons. It has nothing to do with ‘fashion’. It has to do with knowledge. Biggar is never going to be without a significant bias as a historian, even in the loosest sense of the term. He is a C of E priest who thinks that the spread of Christianity via Empire was a good thing. He’s a Christian apologist. The ‘research’ was conducted via the Oxford Centre for Theology and Ethics, and was about rehabilitating colonialism as a justified moral enterprise, and obviously of interest to the nationalist far right. Well, those who can read.

And I have never suggested anything be banned — we need more discussion of colonialism, not less. The protests about the project were about the University of Oxford funding a project they viewed as ‘very bad history’. He was entitled to hold whatever views he wanted, but it wasn’t representative of the university, or its historians. Plus the book was on the Times’ bestseller list, so it didn’t lack for readers. And Nigel Biggar was perfectly charming in person.

Yes, appalling.
Not dissimilar to GB's compensation being paid out by to slave owners not to the objects of their criminality, the actual slaves! Our disgust/horror at slavery didn't go very deep.

Rwanda also joined that way. Both gorgeous countries these days. The Commonwealth is a missed opportunity for deeper connectivity in many ways. It could be like the EU with free trade etc.

It’s impossible to say whether that wouldnt have come anyway (without all the mass slaughter and subjugation and being in charge of it yourself as a country) your taxi driver is commenting on an outcome that is impossible to say is better because we only have the empire outcome story

take India for example - as a result of empire it deindustrialised and began using its raw materials producing for the British - so it was halted in its industrial journey for its own country

I am familiar with academia, I couldn't care less about peer reviewed books and articles, I want to read books that are factually correct and not being pushed because they support a popular agenda.
Alice Roberts writes peer reviewed history books but has a medical degree, does this make her a proper historian?
You seem quite irate about this. Best to try and chill

Exactly. And the biggest omission of all, the lack of information about the role of England in Ireland, (over 800+ years) the original colony. I know of no school in England that has dared to have it on its curriculum.

A favourite trick of eg the Elizabethan Occupiers was to line the approaches to their ill-gotten estates with the heads of the massacred men, women, children they had dispossessed, so that their tenants would be suitable intimidated when they came to pay their rent etc.

The Irish were sent to the Caribbean and it was only when they proved unsuitable for work in such a hot climate that we turned to Africa etc.

Not to mention speeches in the House of Commons welcoming the Great Hunger of 1845-50 etc as due retribution by God on a lazy, worthless people and a welcome method of solving the 'Irish Problem' once and for all.

By the 19th Century the Irish had been turned off around 93% of their land.
No wonder many/most of us are confused, bewildered about the 'Troubles' etc. when we have been kept in ignorance by our Governments and 'educators'.

Yes what are they called the estates king James 1st took and gave to his own cronies

there’s a word for them…

i agree - people wonder why people in Ireland are prepared to spend their whole lives getting justice

Plantation of Ulster!!!

I actually find him very interesting. I should get over myself with his voice. It's just this very specific well to-do geordie accent that irritates me.

i don’t think you are familiar with academia— who exactly do you think is going to check whether a history book is factually correct, other than peers who have pertinent expertise in the same period/field and familiarity with the sources and archives? Or do you imagine an editorial assistant just googles dates?

Alice Roberts, after her undergraduate degree in medicine, did a doctorate in paleopathology, and went on to do research in osteoarchaeology and physical anthropology. Her books straddle anatomy, anthropology and archaeology, the fields in which she has expertise.