The British Empire, history, and the culture wars

When King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrived in Samoa to officiate at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) in late October, they probably little realised the strength of feeling that was percolating among a number of the participants. The underlying sentiment, notably among the Caribbean nations, was a determination to address the issue of slavery reparations. It was undoubtedly appropriate that this issue should be discussed at the Commonwealth, a descendent of the British Empire in which the formerly colonised now far outnumber their former colonisers.

In recent years the legacy of slavery – and Empire at large – has returned with a vengeance. In the UK, the global Black Lives Matter movement found its greatest visual expression in the toppling of a six-metre bronze statue of former slaver Edward Colston, whose likeness was subsequently dragged and thrown into the harbour at Bristol, once one of the most prosperous ports of the Atlantic slave trade.

Colston, a director of the Royal African Company, was long feted as a philanthropist, with schools, concert halls and streets all named after him in Bristol. The symbolic toppling showed that old certainties are being challenged.

So it comes as little surprise that Caribbean nations are also examining the impact of slavery on their societies and economies – and putting the issue of reparations front and centre.

Dark imperial chapters

In an incisive chapter of this wide-ranging book, “What about slavery?,” Bronwen Everill, the director of the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge University, writes: “Atlantic slavery, in which the British Empire participated, was different from other forms of slavery in both its scale and its contribution to financial development.” But The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism – edited by Alan Lester, professor of historical geography at the University of Sussex – does not only tackle the legacy of slavery. The recent openness to discussing tough issues of the UK’s past extends to the Empire at large.

The interests of the book’s contributors extend to China, India, Australia and Canada. Seven chapters tackle “the realities of colonialism around the world,” while five chapters offer surveys on “historiography and race”.

As to be expected in a book which is advertised as a riposte to “history’s appropriation by apologists, racists and culture warrior,” the essays focus on the bloodier incidents and eras of colonialism.

The slaughter of the original inhabitants of Tasmania, described as a genocide, is sharply drawn by Lyndall Ryan. Other historians tackle the “civilising mission” in colonial India, Stamford Raffles in Southeast Asia, Imperial Britain’s relations with China, and the “misuse” of indigenous history in Canada.

No account of the more shameful aspects of colonialism would be complete without a nod to the South African War – and Saul Dubow’s essay on Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner and the South African War offers damning insight into colonialism at its most mercenary.

Culture warriors?

While the book offers useful historical snapshots in its own right, as a whole it is largely set up as a challenge to recent texts that offer a more generous interpretation of colonial history, such as Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. In his foreword, Lester says the book “allows other specialist historians to engage specifically with Biggar’s popular moral defence of British colonialism and consider what has happened to their fields of research more broadly in recent culture war discourse”.

The argument that historians are desperate to avoid getting their hands dirty in a culture war suffuses Lester’s earnest introduction, which argues that right-wing attacks threaten academic history.

“Lately our field has become a battle-field in a culture war, but we have not come together to fuel the divisions. We doubt that many committed participants in the culture war will change their minds about Britain’s colonial past because of the historical evidence we supply and our interpretation of it.

“The culture war is about politics rather than historical understanding. For its most avid participants, interpretations of the past are simply a weapon to be wielded in a struggle between progressive and reactionary philosophies and instincts.”

Staying with the evidence

Instead, Lester insists that academics in this book entered the fray out of a “genuine curiosity” about the colonial past rather than a bid to wade into political debate. “We are intent on telling the truth based on the evidence we have analysed and debated over many years. We leave it to readers to judge the strength of our analysis and decide how those truths should be deployed in the dilemmas facing society today.”

By contrast, he argues: “For culture warriors, where one stands on Britain’s colonial history is determined by one’s political orientation, not by serious research or interest.”

It’s a combative intro, and one that serves as a platform for the book’s shocking and well-researched material on the Empire. But whether it represents a diversion from the culture wars, or an immersion in them, remains up for debate.

The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism

ISBN: 9781911723097

400pp