Remembering The Real British Empire

The Myth of Empire

Ah Great Britain, this sceptred isle! Britain which once ruled the waves and had a global dominion. Glorious Britannia which brought justice, parliamentary government and “civilisation” to the world. An Empire of benevolence and morality, like a mother to her children offering the light of guidance to her colonies. It built the Indian Railways, secured international trade links and put in place good legal order and effective public administration for its colonies. It nurtured them to the point to which they could become nations in their own right. This is the myth of Empire!

This myth is a justification narrative and discourse backed up by British culture. From the poetry of Rudyard Kipling; to the works of Joseph Conrad; to the 1950s and 1960s films depicting the heroism of Empire; to the documentaries of conservative historians; Britain is depicted as the just civilising imperialist. For decades schoolchildren were taught to think positively about the British Empire. Empire Day was actively observed as an article of patriotism. Rule Britannia was sung with real pride and maps of the world with areas shaded in pink were held in true awe.

This cultural hegemony led to the British people forgetting, or perhaps mis-remembering, their imperial past. In modern times it is sustained by the notion of British exceptionalism. This is the secular nationalist idea that Britain is a natural world beater (or at least ought to be). Britain according to this is a world power with all the bombast and entitlement of a would-be superpower, despite the vast, vast majority of the British Empire no longer existing. Similar to the American ideal of manifest destiny, Britain’s manifest destiny is to shape the world and continue to lead it as a moral power at the diplomatic level. According to this, Britain is exceptional and must be independent from less exceptional international forces with full control over its laws (from the ‘Mother of all Parliaments’), money (as the first truly global capitalist superpower) and borders. Clear traces of British exceptionalism are present in the debates surrounding Brexit.

The Reality of Empire

But what was the real British Empire? The real British Empire was the Empire of racism, exploitation and domination. For over a century and a half, Britain traded and sold Africans to plantation owners in the Caribbean and the Americas, and in return Britain received sugar and tobacco amongst other goods. The transatlantic economy of the 18^th century was based on the physical enslavement of millions of Africans, facilitated by Britain. Profit and greed were the main motivators for both slave traders and imperialists alike. Even after the British slave trade was abolished in 1807, it was not until 1833 that slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. The end of British slavery resulted in large amounts of compensation being paid to slave-owners for the loss of their “property”, while the slaves themselves were left in a precarious position often leading to poverty and unemployment. They had achieved their freedom from physical bondage, but not their freedom from socio-economic bondage or from institutional racism. The British Empire and the period of the slave trade treated black people as just another commodity to be bought and sold, nothing more than a piece of property to profit from.

What about the jewel in the crown of the Empire, the Indian subcontinent? Britain’s Indian Empire alone accounted for hundreds of millions of people. Benjamin Disraeli famously adorned Queen Victoria with the title of Empress of India. But this was no “civilising mission”. The discourse of bringing civilisation is a highly racist one designed to amplify cultural notions of racial supremacy. The Indian subcontinent has a very rich history and civilisation stretching back for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the British. Starting with the ancient Indus Valley civilisation and the Brahmanism of the period; the life of the Buddha and the emergence of Buddhism; followed by the Mauryan Empire and Ashoka the Great; it witnessed the Hindu revival and the Islamic conquests; finally it saw the magnificent Mughal Empire and Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal.

The relationship of the British East India Company and later the British Raj to the Indian subcontinent was one of economic extraction. Like with the slave trade, Britain’s Indian Empire was a source of profit. The much-lauded Indian Railways were not built for the good of the Indian people, but instead to link cotton fields to British ports, so that cotton could be efficiently shipped back to Britain. The railways were expanded following the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58 to ensure more effective military transport across the subcontinent and to maintain Britain’s grip on it. Up to 3 million people died from the Bengal famine of 1943, while there continues to be a scholarly debate as to whether Britain helped to cause the famine, Britain’s poor response undermined its credibility.

The British Empire was ruled through violence. In 1919, almost 400 people were massacred by British soldiers in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar in India. The actual number could be far higher. During the 1950s, Britain brutally cracked down on the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya as it had done a century earlier in India during the Mutiny of the 1850s. During the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, Britain invented concentration camps to control the Boer population, which led to terrible human rights abuses. Colonial violence was also seen on the streets of Britain’s American Colonies and Ireland on the road to their eventual independence. Violence was also used on the domestic British population to suppress calls for democracy and political reform at home. The most infamous example of this was at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester in 1819, when 19 people were killed and hundreds injured in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre.

The Legacy of Empire

The British Empire has left behind a bitter legacy of racism, religious sectarianism and homophobia in many of its former colonies. Apartheid in South Africa owed much to the legacy of British colonialism. Britain’s terrible handling of the partition of India and Pakistan led to a million deaths and overlooked legitimate claims for nationhood from countries such as Kashmir, a conflict that continues to this day. The Arab-Israeli Conflict dates from the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948. Many countries in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and Oceania continue to have homophobic policies which date from the days of British imperial rule. Britain exported its homophobic policies and its homophobic Anglican religion to many countries with no previous history of state-imposed homophobia.

Today whole swathes of the British population are kept in ignorance of their imperial past by the imperial mythology that serves the British establishment. We look at glorious Georgian and Victorian buildings and monuments in many of our major cities, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Lancaster, Glasgow and London and fail to ask what paid for them. Some would have been paid for through slavery, others by the exploitation of distant colonists. Britain got rich off the misery of its colonial subjects. Britain’s quasi-feudal establishment gained the power and prestige of global rulers, while the legitimate demands for political citizenship from its lower middle class, working class and female population were actively suppressed. The British Empire was first and foremost a system of domination at home and abroad.

Today, the United Kingdom can rightly claim to be a great country. It is a successful (if imperfect) liberal democracy and minority rights are protected throughout society. However, we cannot overlook the fact that vast inequalities still exist on the basis of race, gender, class, sexuality and disability amongst other social characteristics. We must not overlook the injustices of our past. The British Empire was built on domination, exploitation, slavery, racism, sectarianism, classism, misogyny and homophobia. The British people should be as conscious of their controversial past as the Germans are towards the crimes of the Nazis.

Britain can build a great future, but only with true knowledge of its past. We should aim to rectify the negative legacy of the British Empire where possible. Children and adults should be properly educated about the history of British colonialism. We should free ourselves from any delusions of British exceptionalism. Britain is a great country, but one of many around the world. As a nation, if we can recognise the negative parts of our past, we can come together to build a better, brighter future, one built on liberty (as non-domination), equality and community for all.