The Rest Is History - 68. The British Empire

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

The British Empire: good, bad or neither? And how does its legacy shape us today? Journalist Sathnam Sanghera, author of “Empireland”, joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to explore this timely, fascinating and hugely controversial subject. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The British Empire, Sir John Seeley famously opined at the end of the Victorian period, was acquired in a fit of absence of mind. It's become a very popular way of summing up the way in which the British Empire came together, but lots of historians have disputed it, and among those historians is the noted chronicler of Victorian battles, high life and depravity Sir Harry Flashman. George Macdonald Fraser's great anti-hero in Flashman and the Mountain of Light novel published in 1990 scoffs at Seeley's judgment. Presence of mind if you like

he says and countless other things such as greed and Christianity, decency and villainy, policy and lunacy, deep design and blind chance, pride and trade, blunder and curiosity, passion, ignorance, chivalry and expediency, honest pursuit of right and determination to keep the bloody frogs out. Dominic, who do you side with uh seeley or um sir harry flashman oh the flat i mean you've always got i think we should all start all our podcasts with flashman i mean the good you know it's going to be a good podcast you also know that nothing anybody says will be as as good again in the in the next 45 minutes but um i'm a flashman man on this so clearly i mean the great thing about that quote we talked about flashman in the historical fiction episode. And the great thing about Flashman, the account of the 19th century

in the British Empire, is that it's actually, there's layer upon layer of ambiguity and irony and nuance. And there absolutely is all that in that quotation, isn't there? Because so much is packed in. And I think there's so much complexity there that actually reflects the imperial experience, greed, missionary spirits, keeping the frogs out, valour, decency, villainy, corruption, all those things are there. And that's what makes this story so rich, but also so controversial, that you can actually see in it, as the Flashman quotation suggests, you can see in it whatever you like. And so that is essentially contemporary attitudes to the British Empire. I mean, it's an absolutely live issue. And I got that quote from a book that's not only a survey of that, but has become a vital contribution to the entire debate,

Satnam Sanghera's Empire Land, which came out, I think, at the beginning of this year. And we are hugely honoured to have the author with us on the podcast. And before I introduce him fully, probably, I should just mention Jeet Baines, who was the matchmaker over this. He introduced us on Twitter. I mean, we all followed each other, but he kind of suggested that Santa come on and talk about it. So thank you very much, Jeet. And above all, thank you, Santa, for coming on and talking to us. Pleasure. I'm a fan of the podcast. I'm hoping we can all get cancelled as a result of this conversation.

Well, I think Dominic's the likeliest to get cancelled. I think I've probably been cancelled already. I've been cancelled so many times I've got the scars. On the topic of Flashman, to begin with, we talked about him. We had an episode on historical fiction. And I said that I thought that I was surprised that Flashman hadn't been cancelled, to be honest. Because, you know, I mean, the voice is that of a very racist Victorian adventurer. And I wonder what your perspective on that.

I mean, do you find Flashman funny? Do you find him convincing as a historical voice? You know, I mainly think of David Cameron, because people always compare the two, don't they? And so I now cannot read Flashman without thinking David Cameron's reading it. And actually, I was reading Our Island Story yesterday, which David Cameron picked as his favourite children's book of all time. And I couldn't believe, I mean, it's one of the most famous history books of all time, isn't it? I just couldn't believe how it barely touched upon empire. And when it did, it was talking about the black hole of Calcutta, the mutiny, the Indians behaving terribly after

the mutiny. If that's your view of empire, and then you become prime minister, you're going to be in trouble, man. So let's cut to the chase because when I was kind of previewing that you were coming on the podcast, and I was reading your book, and I quoted from the book, and it gave me a sense of what, obviously, you've been living through

ever since it came out, essentially, which is that you've become the focus for the kind of the rival perspectives on this, that you've become lauded by, say you've got quotes from James O'Brien on the front, for instance, but you've also had, I mean, you've had a firestorm of abuse and often incredibly racist abuse over this, haven't you? Yeah, actually, it's on both sides. I've got to say, some right-wingers have also liked it. Chris Patton, Andrew Marr.

Yeah, it's been a shit show, basically. Can I say a shit show on the podcast? Yeah, absolutely. They'll put a little E, and that means that anyone under 15 won't listen to it. Well, people will just assume with the E that Tom's talking about general mutilation again. I'm sure we'll get on to that at some point. Well, a lot of left-wingers, the socialist worker reviewed it last week and said it wasn't angry enough.

And so I get quite a lot from left-wing, and I've had a lot of abuse people saying, if I hate Britain so much, why don't I get back to where I came from, i.e. Wolverhampton? And loads of racist abuse, which I didn't really consider significant because it's par for the course nowadays if you're a journalist. But then The Guardian wrote a story, and they interviewed William Dalrymple, who's been writing similar stuff to me for many more decades.

And William said in his 20 or 30 years of being a historian of colonial India, he hadn't got one message of the kind I get, not one. And that made me realize it's about my colour. You know, when you're talking about empire, you're talking about race, you're talking about white people conquering brown people generally. And the thing is, until now, the imperial story has been told mainly by white men. And so suddenly when you get brown people like David Yoyosoga and me to a much more minor degree coming up and saying, oh, you know, empire wasn't quite like you think it was, it triggers a certain kind of person who can't see past your color and it becomes this

toxic conversation about race and there's no escaping it but the interesting thing about that though sanam um is that i mean your book absolutely isn't a diatribe is it i mean tom and i were talking about this before the show about the you know show, you know, you take us into the historiographical debate. So, you know, was it acquired in an absence of mind or wasn't it? Did it contribute to Britain's economy or was it even a drain on Britain's economy? And often you end up saying that there isn't an easy answer to a lot of these things. And in fact, at the beginning, I'm really struck that right at the beginning the beginning i mean that right at the outset you say you don't believe in doing moral audits of empires and it's obviously incredibly simplistic to say i mean we talked about this in

our episode about global empires it's very simplistic to talk about any huge amorphous historical phenomenon say all good all bad or any of those kinds of things so did you so so you sort of it's no wonder i guess that you think you think that the abuse is directed at you personally rather than at the book basically yeah it's really great to hear that from you guys because you guys are mega brains and that flashman quote is the only way to approach empire because it was bloody complex we're talking about 500 years of history lots of things happened across the quarter of the planet. The idea that you're going to give it a five-star review, like a podcast, you know what I mean? It's insane,

but that is the only way the British really see empire. I mean, Tom asked people to suggest questions for this podcast. I had a look at them just now. I'd say 75% of them were about whether British empire was good or bad. That is, I blame Niall Ferguson. You know, we've had this obsession in this country about talking about whether Empire is good or bad. And now it's been seized upon by conservative ministers. You know, we're not allowed to, you know, do down British history. And it's such a silly way of looking at complex history. I mean, what does that mean? When you say you're proud of imperial history, what does that mean? You're proud of slavery? You're proud of abolition?

But I suppose it goes the other way, doesn't it? I mean, it's equally ludicrous to say that you feel crippled with a sense of guilt, or you feel ashamed. So I suppose it cuts both ways, right? Totally. And so Jeremy Corbyn was saying a few years ago, we need to teach the crimes of empire. I've got no time for that. Then Michael Gove was saying, we need to teach the glories of empire. I've got no time for that. The only way to teach this stuff is by nuance and not to make it a balance sheet thing. But it's really hard to get away from that. I bet you we'll end up talking about that. I end up talking about it sometimes too. I'm sure we will. But one way to frame it, which I was kind of reflecting on, is that the argument over whether we should celebrate or feel ashamed of empire, which is obviously incredibly current

at the moment, it's nothing new. And in fact, it's a theme that has run throughout the entire span of British imperialism. And we got a question from Mistress Gilbert Esquire, who I think teaches at Colston School, but just got renamed in Bristol. So the beginnings of British, I guess, English imperialism. She says, I've just taught the Tempest to year eight. What was the Jacobean attitude to empire? It seems it's okay to mock and demean the indigenous peoples, Prospero with Caliban. So I would say about the Tempest that actually it's incredibly ambivalent that Prospero is a complex figure and our attitudes to him vary. There are times where we feel great sympathy, I think, for Caliban. Certainly feel sympathy for Ariel, these figures from the island that Prospero has essentially enslaved.

That sense of ambivalence is there right from the beginning, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's as much of a British tradition to moan about British empire as it is to celebrate it. The figures throughout history who attacked empire, I mean, go from George Orwell to Robert Graves, Saki, Gladstone, who ironically, you know, had a lot of his family wealth from slavery. We forget, actually, Colston's a good example. who ironically, you know, had a lot of his family wealth from slavery. We forget, actually, Colston's a good example. The guy who put up that Colston statue struggled to raise the money because not many people wanted that statue. Clive, Robert Clive, wildly unpopular in his lifetime, dragged in front of Parliament. Samuel Johnson saying, you know, he slashed his throat

because he was overwhelmed by his own crimes. But then, you know, 100 years later, his statue is being put up in Whitehall. And the Viceroy of India is saying, you know what, this is needlessly provocative. But then now you have people celebrating it. And so, yeah, it's complex, isn't it? And these narratives change. But that anti-imperial narrative is as British as anything else, I'd say. So interesting. There's an interesting tension though here, right? Because at the end of your... I mean, one of the things in your book is you say

we should try and get to a kind of national consensus about the history of the empire. But in a way, the lesson of your book, and indeed of all the history of Britain's engagement with empire, is that there never has been a consensus. And you could argue, I mean, one of the things about any national story is that there never will be. I mean, could argue, I mean, one of the things about any national story is that there

never will be. I mean, by definition, the past, because it's political, is always going to be divisive. So do you think there's an element that, you know, that the idea of a sort of everybody joining hands and saying, hurrah, we've united around a sort of a consensual account of our imperial past. I mean, to me, at least, that seems unlikely, shall we say. Yeah, no, history is argument. And so there's always going to be argument. There needs to be argument.

We need to learn how to argue about this stuff in a more civilised way. Having said that, there are facts. And so lately, in the last few weeks, we've had a certain person writing in a mainstream press questioning the Tasmanian genocide about whether it happened and why it happened. And you know what, in all the, I think I've read nine or 10 different accounts of that, even from people like John Morris, who are very nostalgic about empire, none of them deny it as a fact, but suddenly it's been questioned. And I think there are such things as facts. And I do think there's something, there is fake history now in the way there was fake news.

And because we know so little, the public debate is very thin. So on the topic of, say, of the Tasmanians, essentially, I mean, a genocide that actually inspired, you know, it's name checked at the beginning of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, kind of one of the great anti-imperial novels, because essentially the War of the Worlds is a visitation on London of makes the exercise of British imperial power increasingly toxic in the second half of the 19th century, I think, is what you were talking about earlier, which is the transformation of race into something supposedly scientifically based. And I guess that every great imperial people have tended to assume that they're the best, because essentially, if you don't think you're best, you're not going to have the self-confidence to go out and conquer people. And I can think of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, I mean, everybody, you know, in their imperial heyday, they say we're the best. What's peculiarly toxic about the British manifestation of that, it seems to me,

is that a kind of cod Darwinism provides supposedly a scientific rationale for it. And even though that, I mean, basically, you know, the whole basis of that gets incinerated by the Nazis and it becomes a taboo subject. But your sense, and speaking as someone who is obviously kind of in the eye of this particular storm, your sense is that that has left an enduring legacy, even though it is not taught. Very, very few people would stand up and say, yes, I'm a scientific racist. But the legacy of that endures. Absolutely. Yeah. I would say it endures in our racial violence. I mean, when black people were being attacked in London in 1950s,

the British Empire was still doing terrible things with the Mau Mau at the same time in Kenya. And the attitudes were the same towards black people in London as they were in imperial Kenya. And you see it, I would say, in the colour bar that ran through, you know, late empire and through British society in the 60s and 70s and 80s. I mean, working men's clubs in Wolverhampton had a colour bar until 1984, you know. Even now, I'd say there's certain pubs you go to if you're white or brown in Wolverhampton and certain pubs you don't go to. And I think there's a very powerful legacy.

The reason we have institutional racism in this country is that we had the institution of empire, which was in the 19th century racist, but I'm proud of it. But we've got to remember that race as a concept didn't exist between the 13th and 16th centuries. It's quite a modern idea, right? And also you've got this bizarre, as these scientific theories emerged in the 19th and 16th centuries. It's quite a modern idea, right? And also you've got this bizarre,

as these scientific theories emerged in the 19th century, you have this bizarre Aaron theory. Do you know about this? That encompassed Indians and Sikhs. It's part of the reason why we Sikhs were regarded as, you know, a martial race and kind of almost good brownies. But it's quite a lot to get my head around that. And, you know, Hitler is still quite popular in India, partly because of this air and race theory.

So, I mean, on that, but that's also the other side, I guess, of, say, the British engagement with specifically India, is that the discovery of Indo-European languages is kind of bred of a fascination on the part of many of the British officials who are in India with the civilization around them. So if there's a sense of cultural superiority and increasingly racial superiority, bewilderingly, it's interfused with a sense of fascination and kind of almost inferiority, because these officials who are studying Sanskrit are blown away by its beauties, by its power. They're saying that the masterpieces of Sanskrit literature are greater than those of Greek and Latin. So that is part of what makes it so difficult, isn't it? To get a handle on the empire,

that the same people who are perfectly capable of shocking racism are equally capable of saying, you know, we were painted savages in the woods while the people in India were creating these great masterpieces. No, absolutely. And the same thing happened with the attitude towards the racial mixing in like interracial relationships

they were more or less encouraged during a certain phase of the East India Company history you know I think the East India Company would pay for weddings between British people and India Indian wise but then the Victorians come along and it becomes possible for you know white women to travel to India and suddenly it's a taboo You'll lose your job if you have a mixed race relationship. And that's the same empire just over a few decades. Salim, I wanted to ask you about, you mentioned being a Sikh, and I thought that was one of the most interesting parts of your book. You talk about the experience of writing as a Sikh.

I mean, people sort of use the word Indian very vaguely, but the experience of specifically being a Sikh, and as you said, of Sikhs being seen as martial and as, inverted commas, good Indians. And you're quite interesting about how much that was constructed, that kind of, because some historians think this is an identity that's completely constructed and sort of foisted onto Sikhs by the British.

But you seem to think that that's not quite the whole story. Is that right? It's not quite the whole story because there was, we had our own martial theory, you know, history. The 10th Guru turned the Sikhs into a martial kind of creed. They had to because they're being persecuted and created an identity. But we were fading in numbers, you know, around the time of the

Indian mutiny. You know, the Sikhs were at risk of being merged into the Hindu mass, you know, and it was the British when we took the side, when the Sikhs took the side of the British during the mutiny, decided that we were trustworthy and therefore fetishized us, even published books explaining why we had exactly the right physique for being fighters, as I'm sure you can tell from me. We had the right size noses, the right shoulders. And it blew my mind that not only the way we see ourselves, the Sikhs, was created by British, was not created, but accelerated by British Empire.

But arguably, they saved us as a community because it became so popular to become you know a Sikh martial race employee of the British empire that the numbers increased massively in the decades afterwards and even Hindus joining the Indian army were encouraged to do the Sikh kind of religious ceremonies in order to sort of prove their martial valor yeah so can I jump in and ask you a quick follow-up to that? I'm fascinated. You talk a lot in the book, and you've got a very funny line that I think I've quoted in one of my own books, actually,

about taxi drivers asking you where you're from, and you say, I'm from Wolverhampton. And, you know, people saying, go back home, and you say, well, I'm actually from Wolverhampton. Do you want me to jump on a train from Houston or whatever? When you were talking about the Sikhs in India, you used the word we to mean the Sikhs, and they was the British.

So did you find yourself kind of, when you're writing the book, and when you're thinking about these kinds of issues, do you find yourself consciously or unconsciously slipping between kind of subjectivities, if you know what I mean? To be honest, it's entirely unconscious. Loads of people have commented on the fact that I keep saying we when I talk about being British about the British

Empire I say we and apparently an historian I sent because I'm not a historian I sent the book out to five different historians before publication and they all said you can't say we it's the number one rule thing you get told as an undergraduate stop saying saying we, it's not you. But I wanted to say we, because that's the way I feel. And I wanted it to be an inclusive thing and not accusatory, because so much of this conversation is about cancelling people and demonising the other side. And, you know, as a Sikh, I don't feel that way. I feel as implicated in empire as probably you and Tom. Because I reckon that there is a kind of strange, maybe it's not strange,

but I mean a really telling ambivalence in the relationship of the British to the Sikhs in the 19th century. Because there seems to be a kind of certain measure of guilt on the part of British officials and generals over the conquest of the Sikh Empire. So Napier, who leads the campaign, I mean, he says it's a rascally business. And there's, I think it's Elphinstone, who is governor of Bombay, says that, because this is just after the Afghan war, the disaster of the Afghan war, which provides the theme of the first Flashman novel, complete disaster. And then the British

go in and conquer Sindh. And he kind of says that it's like a street bully who's been beaten up, who goes in and beats up his wife. And those are the kind of sentiments that you might expect to hear it from a woke academic at Churchill College today, but coming from the very British officials who did it. And then once they've conquered it, they're modeling a lot of their imperial approaches on that of the Sikhs. So the idea of using the Kaiba Pass as a kind of gateway, I mean, it was the Sikhs who began that. I think it's nearly all go back to the fact

that the Sikhs almost beat the British. Yes, completely. It was absolutely in the balance. And so, again, the more you look at it, the more complicated it comes to seem. Yeah, and I should say, actually, when necessary, the British did murder the Sikhs in large numbers and brutally sometimes tied to the ends of cannon.

You know, there's a particular Sikh sect who were blown to smithereens. And the point of that punishment of being tied to the end of a cannon is that you can't have conventional funeral rites, you know, because your body's parts are scattered across a large area. So complex, basically. And you talk in the book, you talk in your book about the, obviously, I mean, this has devastating effect on the person who gets blown out of a cannon. But also rather strikingly,

you talk about the effect it may have had on the people who actually fired them. Totally. Because it's very hard to square a conviction that you're maybe a good Christian or bringing civilization with the impact of doing that. Yeah, and there were women and children in the audience, in the crowd sometimes, you know, watching people being blown to smithereens. I mean, that's got to be psychologically disturbing. It's Paul Gilroy who talks about that, about the effect of colonization upon colonizers.

And actually George Orwell, of course, in that great essay about where he has to shoot an elephant. It's called Shooting an Elephant, isn't it? And how he is made to feel ridiculous, that as an imperialist, your fear in empire is constantly that you're going to be laughed at. But actually, I would quibble with that a tiny bit. I think there's always people who do feel guilty, and that's probably been the case in all empires. People who are, their particular disposition,

maybe their temperamental or intellectual disposition is they will be haunted by shame or by regret or whatever. But actually in some ways, I mean, I take a different conclusion, which is I think a lot of people weren't traumatized and they actually loved running empires and conquering people. And actually in a way, it's a more disturbing story that actually lots of people, I mean, and they actually loved running empires and conquering people. And actually, in a way, it's a more disturbing story that actually lots of people – I mean, I can remember a great story. I mean, this is a completely different empire.

There's a story – Martin Davidson, who worked for the BBC running their history programs, tells a story about a relative of his. I can't remember if it was. They were talking about Hungary, and the relative said, Oh, Hungary, wonderful country, great scenes. You know, the women are very pretty, very handsome cities. And he was like, when were you in Hungary? And this guy said, oh, best days of my life.

You know, I was there in 1942 or something. And you think, geez, this is meant to be a very dark chapter that you're haunted by. And you're remembering it as this sort of jolly, you know, the equivalent of a gap year. And I think that's almost more disturbing, isn't it? That lots of people may have been involved in imperial atrocities or in conquering people or blasting women and children to smithereens or whatever, but actually maybe they're not traumatized by it. Yeah. Actually, I was reading Alex Renton's book, which is about him facing up to his family's history of slavery. And he tells a story about a Scottish guy who goes off to the Caribbean and on his first day, he sees another Scottish colleague of his punch a slave in the face for

serving the food wrong. And he's absolutely full of dismay. But then 10 years later, none of it bothers him. And you quote, what's it, Thomas Thistlewood, is it? The slave owner in Jamaica who, I mean, inflicts unspeakable punishments. And records it all in a diary. Records it all in his diary. Rapes, torture. I mean, so revolting that I... Yeah, I even have a class.

Doesn't want to be talked about. Doesn't stretch to that extreme. And actually, the reason that I came across him is that he's the first person to, known person to have played a cricket match in the West Indies. Oh, wow. The idea that he's using slaves to carve out a cricket pitch. Yeah, no, he saw himself as a man of the Enlightenment, didn't he? He was reading all these books, didn't realise he was playing cricket.

Cricket has been tainted from the beginning beginning i think that's the lesson of this and maybe save that discussion for later for later but i guess i mean i guess that again though the the the great story of that uh is um conrad's um heart of darkness which then gets translated into apocalypseocalypse Now. The idea that the colonizer can enter a heart of darkness where all moral norms get dissolved. And that's a kind of very, I mean, that's a nightmare that is clearly bred of direct experience of the functioning of empire. And it challenges the, I guess, the narrative we have with abolition that we got involved in something terrible and we gradually saw the light.

It's not always the way it went. Well, I think that's the perfect point on which to have a break. And maybe we could pursue that theme a bit further on how abolition worked. No, I'm going to do that because actually I don't want to do that because I want to save slavery for another episode. Dominic, kick in. I've lost my mind.

Okay. Tom has been attempting to take us into the break, but he's completely failed. So we're going to have a break and we shall be back after the ads. See you in a minute. Goodbye. I'm Marina Hyde.

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therestisentertainment.com that's therestisentertainment.com Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom Holland was going to bring us back in, but he's given up the ghost. He's been drinking too much, he tells us. So Tom has always done these podcasts drunk, but I didn't think it would be a problem,

and now it is. Anyway, let's continue. Tom, I believe if you can get your words out, you have a question for Satnam. Thank you very much, Dominic. I do. And this is from Hazim Amin. And he asks, the British Empire shaped the modern world in the same way that the Arab empires or Chinese empires shaped their respective worlds. Wouldn't it be too simplistic to label this phenomenon, holy, good or bad? I think we I mean, I think we touched on that. But this is the interesting question.

Aren't these labels themselves influenced by the empire? So in a sense, isn't our understanding of what is good and bad in the context of imperialism itself a legacy of imperialism? Yes, I guess you guys touched upon this in your podcast about empires in general, which I learned a lot from. And it's definitely useful to remember the British Empire wasn't the only empire that ever happened, right?

And there was a survey done recently by Ipso Mori, which found that, you know, it surveyed people across Europe and found that actually people in the Netherlands were even more nostalgic than us. We were the second most nostalgic, but the Dutch, very nostalgic. And actually the Germans and the French too. And actually, the Germans and the French, too.

And actually, I think you won't meet many Sikhs who say that Sikh empire was anything other than brilliant and cosmopolitan and peaceful. I was going to ask you that. Is that the, I mean, is that the, so what is the Sikh take on their empire, that it was brilliant? It was great. It was absolutely lovely, inclusive. We celebrated Christmas, even even for the British. And I've never heard a negative word said about the Sikh Empire. And it's important for me to remember that there's something in human nature that wants us to believe the best about it.

What do Muslims and Hindus say about the Sikh Empire? Actually, I've never read it. All I've read is Sikh accounts of the Sikh Empire. I'd love to read a muslim or kind of interesting question of it yeah um there's another question that i think is fascinating and it comes at the end of your but it comes throughout your book and it's uh john andrews sort of picks up on it and he says given how awful things appear here and elsewhere i would be interested to know if satan remains as optimistic as he seems in the book that wider education about the facts of empire is enough to move this debate forward now i think this is a fascinating issue

in your book because you basically call for a lot of education about empire and and and the the sort of subtext or the assumption is the more people know about history the nicer they will be now i would i think we've done we've touched on this a few times, and I have what some people regard as an utterly deranged and heretical position, which is often the more people know about history and the more they think about it, the more likely they are to launch a preemptive strike on their neighbours.

So do you genuinely think that learning, that A, there is a history that can unify, you know, 70 million people or whatever. And B, that there is a way to teach it that will genuinely bring people more together. I do. I mean, it has been quite hard to retain my optimism in the last six months,

given it's become a culture war. I mean, the arguments about empire between the government and Black Lives Matter supporters are toxic. And it's been weaponized war. I mean, the arguments about empire between the government and Black Lives Matter supporters are toxic. And it's been weaponized by the Tories in a kind of focus group way. So they've obviously done some research as they found out that saying

that being proud of imperial history works well in the Midlands and with the people who voted for them in the last general election. The reason I'm still optimistic is that young people know a lot more than I did. And they're really keen. They're getting their information and education from the internet,

from Instagram, from films like Black Panther. And I feel like the business world has also actually embraced Black Lives Matter and history to a degree. So even though there's a massive backlash, I think in the end, young people will win. But Black Panther's a total fantasy, isn't it? It is, yeah. But there's a scene in the British Museum. Do you remember that bit?

I haven't seen it, I'm afraid. I haven't seen it. I've never seen a superhero film because I boycotted it because of Spider-Man. Oh, you should watch it. I think it's the ninth biggest film of all time. I find them so boring. I always fall asleep.

I mean, I know this is basically the words of an old man, but I actually, I never thought I would say this, but there is too much action in the plot. No, Black Panther's definitely worth watching, and it left me feeling quite optimistic. And I just know from my nieces in my life who are

in their twenties, they just really care, and they really get a lot of their stuff the classroom doesn't really matter that much i think but what is it that they're going to study that's bearing in mind that we've got 500 years of history and it spans the world and it's all incredibly complicated and we can't basically agree on anything a lot of kids do 40 minutes of history a week yeah the only statutory thing on the education in the history curriculum is the holocaust i think there's a bit of teaching of empire in key stage three, but it varies massively.

But, you know, interesting, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the Windrush inquiry both made the same conclusion, that we need to teach British empire better. And I think we go around in circles. We have a racial crisis and we're like, oh, my God, we should reflect on the reason why we are a multicultural society and teach history better. And I believe we do. And I think parts of Britain are already doing that. The Welsh national curriculum has changed already. And hopefully England will catch up.

I mean, it's a difficult one, isn't it? Because I always used to think that actually, again, another demented view of mine, I used to think that the Americans were very, I mean, there's an immigrant society I always used to marvel at the way in which they'd integrated Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, so on and so forth into their national story. But of course, what's very obvious now is that national story has always had holes. Some would say a colossal gaping, single gaping hole, and that their debate about history is even more, I mean, embittered to the sort of nth degree compared with ours.

And I don't know whether there's a European model. I don't know whether, I don't know enough about the French education system or the Dutch or whatever, about whether anybody has ever actually cracked this, of creating a model of an education system that basically most people are broadly happy with and a sort of national, a single... I mean, maybe that's the thing, that you can't have a single narrative that pleases everybody by definition.

But the Germans have with World War II, but not necessarily with their own very problematic colonialism, you know. But I think German history was... The Nazis were so monstrous, and we've talked about this several times already on the podcast, that Hitler has come to serve the West basically Shakespeare is the greatest writer. Clearly, they think that partly because he's English and we speak English. So we're more sensitive to it. But also because clearly the fact that English is the global language and we exported this idea and therefore Shakespeare has a global resonance, it makes it an easier conceit for us to uphold. But I guess that kind of holding on to things like that is something that makes lots of people quite happy, not least those who are responsible for the tourist industry. There is a sense in which, is it not human nature to big up your own civilization, your own country, your own heritage. And perhaps one of the

things that's actually striking about Britain, which again, all were pointed out, is that Britain perhaps is exceptional not for its jingoism, but for the sense of embarrassment that lots of people feel about its history. Yeah, I think that's all. The embarrassment has definitely been a prominent tradition. But I feel like the exceptionalism has accelerated in recent years. I mean, you've seen it with the coronavirus epidemic, this obsession with being world-beating. I actually listed the number of times politicians have said something was world-beating in the last year,

and it was something like 56 times. You know, the vaccines, our test and trace system which wasn't world beating um our science we have the best science in the world i think every country bigs themselves up but we take it to an extreme degree and actually our particular politicians boris johnson at the moment does it all the time you know he was doing it before he became a politician really you. This obsession with being number one. I don't think it serves any useful purpose, because as we've learned from Dominic Cummings, the government is not behaving in a

particularly world-beating way at the moment. But as Tom suggests, isn't that just... I mean, for example, you mentioned the coronavirus. Sweden, which had a sort of short-lived empire in the Baltic, and its empire was destroyed at Pultava in the early 18th century, and then became this sort of social democratic poster child.

Sweden also has a strong sense of exceptionalism, also has a belief that it led the world, and has had, at the very least, shall we say, a controversial experience during the pandemic. So I don't know that that's necessarily uniquely British, is it? I don't think it's uniquely British, but I think we do it more than anyone else. The Indians do as well at the moment. And actually, these culture wars we're talking about are occurring with Donald Trump's attempt to have a patriotic education. Modi's doing a load of stuff at the moment with Indian historians and trying to push a certain Hindu far-right view of history.

It's happening in Hungary and in Poland. Yeah. So we're not unique. But I guess on what basis would we say what Modi is doing in India is wrong? I mean, why shouldn't he push a hindu nationalist this is i've noticed this kind of post-modern tendency in your podcast to just uh say you know nothing nothing matters well it's but but it's just that in a way i can't believe we've had somebody on tom who's now analyzing our podcast and uh attacking us for being post-modernist yeah that's very postmodernist yeah but but because in a sense it seems to me

that that actually modi is whether consciously or not far more dramatically repudiating the legacy of british imperialism than say neru did um or the you know or the or the the the generations of the indian elites followed independence, which basically took for granted an essentially kind of British paradigm of there being the secular and that there's being distinct from things called religions. And that Modi, in a sense, is really trying to erase that. His sense of what Hindutva might have been may well be kind of erroneous and mythical, but it is a reaction against a view of the world that basically was spread by British and European and American imperialism more generally. And it does seem to me that as Western power retreats, so in countries like India,

in China, in the Middle East, in the Muslim countries, a lot of things that were exported culturally and ideologically by European empires are going to come under question. Yeah. I mean, Modi's relationship to the British Empire is very interesting because his political tradition doesn't have a particularly good story to tell. You know, they weren't part of the fight against British Empire in particular. So, I mean, Will Dranipal

finds himself attacked quite often for his writing about the East India Company in India. But yeah, it's happening all around the world. I haven't answered your question, have I? No, no. I think not answering the question is... Well, I like the fact that it's an open conversation, actually. Because I mean, I think isn't this what's part of the trouble with when people have these arguments about the British Empire, about empires generally,

that they expect that you can come to a definitive, simple, and often morally charged answer. And I mean, one of the great things about your book it seems to me is that you actually are so open um and i wonder whether that's partly because you've come to it in a way you you have come to it as both a Sikh and and a Briton but also it's quite i'm quite interested in that you seem to have come to it with so little baggage if that makes sense i think the key thing is i've come to it as a non-historian yeah that's what you guys but i don't really read history books i've read dominion and uh maybe two other books but i don't read three books you you only read three books in your life you've read three books and one of them had to be tom's

have you read dominic's books i have a no. No, no. I've seen his TV programs. You've seen the TV programs. Thank you. I've seen the TV programs. I'll take that. Jesus. But I mean, actually, that's a very important point because I guess everyone listening to the podcast is probably someone who reads history books. Lots of people don't.

I read novels. I probably write novels. I want character, sexual intrigue, plot. There's a lot of that in this podcast. A lot of sexual intrigue. Sexual tension a lot of that in this podcast a lot of sexual intrigue sexual tension that's something else um and history doesn't give you that and also history books assume you know a lot i mean i really struggled reading books on british empire because there's basic things i didn't know also they ought way too long every history book is too oh god don't

go there don't say this why are they so so long? There's a lot to say. You've got to put in a chapter about the new romantics, haven't you? So my ambition was to write a short book on British history. That was really part of my mission because there's not anything. I think you're so right

that, of course, what most people's sense of history does not come from school, does not come from reading books. It's a kind of inchoate, vague sense. And perhaps that's why the debate over the British Empire is so toxic, because it's either slavery, racism, people blown out of cannons, or it's, I mean, the joke is railways, isn't it? And, um, both helmets, uh,

democracy and, um, whatever. Uh, and essentially they, they can exist in people's minds, completely untethered to any facts whatsoever, really.

Also, the less, you know, I'm saying the opposite of Dominic here. I think the less, you know, about British imperial history, the stronger your opinions.

I actually think it's one of those cases where actually people, if they did know more, the only possible conclusion is that you've got to be nuanced. It's the only possible conclusion, right? I think that is very optimistic because I think often people who know, I mean, it's not always the way that people who know a lot about something tend to have very nuanced views. I mean, we're all familiar with the kind of conspiracy theorist who knows more about the Kennedy assassination than you could ever learn in a lifetime, and then has some incredibly abstruse and elaborate theory about how it was done by aliens or something. So you're more optimistic than I am. And you're also more optimistic because you talk a lot about imperial

amnesia or historical amnesia in people. But I often think one of the weird things about history is those of us who are interested in history think everybody should be interested in history and should be thinking about it more than they are. But actually, a lot of people, I mean, this is kind of real heresy to the listeners of this podcast, but a lot of people just don't give a damn about history, do they? No, I think history is something you get into as you get older. And I worry about it because I think the moment you're interested more in the past than the future you're old it's over yeah I'm so old yeah I mean by that definition I've been old since I was about four well I was so into dinosaurs I mean I completely I was yeah

I've always been more interested in the past I guess but then satnam if you think that if you think it's bad to be interested so much in the past and not in the future, how come you think that we should devote so much attention to looking backwards in schools? Well, it's about how much you don't spend your entire life looking at the past. But to work out your path in the future, you need to know where you're coming from, man. How the hell? I mean, Brexit is a good example. We're trying to redefine our relationships with the world at the moment.

And often we don't remember what we did to them during the empire. And I think they find that shocking. My favourite fact in all my research was in Tony Blair's memoir, when he was handing back Hong Kong to the Chinese, he says, oh, you know what, I was very only dimly aware of the history. It's like you can bet the Chinese bloody know about the history. You can bet every Chinese school kid is told about the Opium wars now you've been disobliging about tony blair you definitely have burned your boats with tom no not at all not at all because i would say i mean you know people say that boris johnson is the most imperial uh of recent prime ministers i would say tony

blair was a long way i mean i think the iraq war was absolutely the exemplification of a kind of deep-rooted British imperial attitude that combines kind of the ruthless deployment of hard power with a kind of moralistic sense that we knew better. Absolutely, yeah. And that was basically the attitude that enabled us to conquer people and feel that it was for their good. But isn't one of these things, Tom, though, well, to both of you, I guess, that there's an assumption that when the reality, when the substance of imperial power has gone, when the colonies are independent and so on, the attitude should change overnight. And I'll often read that in books looking back at the 1950s and 1960s,

and they'll say Britain clung on to its ideals. But nations don't change, and a national imagination can't change. I mean, that's why actually when you're talking about race and racism, I mean, I was really struck by that reading the book because I thought, you know, I read a lot of books in sort of 70s, 80s, in the 70s, 80s West Midlands from the local library or something, that by today's standards would undoubtedly be considered, well, by any standards, would be considered racist. I mean, biggles or something, let's say.

Enid Blyton. Well, I mean, Enid Blyton is a very good example, the three gollywogs. So unless you're going to have this sort of colossal purge immediately, which no country ever really does. I mean, we had Ian Kershaw talking about denazification the other week, and that denazification was, in his words, a farce. Countries aren't going to shed.

It's almost unrealistic to imagine that a country is going to sort of shed its skin instantly. And the process of losing your imperial ideals probably is a question of centuries, do you think? Yeah, I mean, that for me was one of the most kind of destabilizing points of the book, was realizing that even though I supposedly had this brilliant education, you know, from a grammar school and at Cambridge University, I'd been colonized in the sense that, you know, I was in my final term at Cambridge before I read a single brown author. All my views of even India were through the Western eye, you know, and also learning about how the British, how they ultimately conquered a lot of Indian kingdoms was not in the battlefield, it was by sending the princes

through the English public school system. That's how you really won people, you turn them into English gents. And I know what you're saying. I think the psychological legacies of empire are fascinating, and I didn't really understand them until I read Paul Gilroy, Edward Said, you know. I wonder whether actually one of the reasons why we can't escape the legacy of British imperialism is because, in fact, imperialism was an expression of something much deeper, which was the rise of capitalism. And perhaps that's the reason why the Dutch and the English, who essentially invent capitalism, are the people who seem most kind of self-confident

in their imperial legacy. Because I think that particularly what happens in the i suppose the 19th century that explosive period of of growth is best summed up by marx in the in the in the opening pages of the um communist manifesto where he talks about the achievements of the bourgeoisie he talks about how they have utterly transformed the world in the space of a century. They have changed the patterns of everybody around the world. And basically, we still live in that world. The British Empire may be gone, but the capitalism that the British developed is still what makes the world go round. That to some extent is Neil Ferguson's argument, right? I mean, that's empire making the modern world. I was there, I was thinking I was being

a Marxist. But it turns out I'm actually a narrow conservative. Quite the opposite. I find it fascinating that one of the reasons why the city of London is slightly disconnected from the British economy now is because it developed

for empire to serve this international network and not necessarily to serve Britain, you know, and that is something we still live with now. When it comes to, you know,

the economics of empire, that was the part of the book that most made my brain want to fry because there's a consensus amongst economics, economists that actually empire didn't enrich Britain overall because it costs so much to run these colonies, to go to war, that overall it didn't enrich britain overall because it costs so much to run these colonies to go to war that overall it didn't enrich us and when you start facing up to that i don't know what that does to your theory tom but well i think i think it backs it because i was prompted to think that by reading but by reading your account of that that in a sense, what makes empires?

I mean, it's self-confidence, it's power, it's a sense of mission, but it's also the ability to persuade people that your way of life and your way of seeing the world is something that might be worth signing up to. And the British Empire featured all of those, but it featured it basically because it was an expression of, I guess, what we would now define as modernity. And the moment the British imperialism comes to seem old-fashioned, which it increasingly does, then basically it's doomed. And that's why the American variant of imperialism is so much more successful. And it's also why the Chinese variant of imperialism now is such a challenge to American imperialism, because it looks modern it looks sophisticated it's kind of stuff that people

might conceivably want to sign up to now that is a book Narfogson hasn't written and you should do that one come on Holland's literary career it's about to take a very unexpected turn and I think if I'm going to do that we'd better stop the podcast now I better go off and will you be capable of taking us out after your failure to take us into the break I can if I'm going to do that, we'd better stop the podcast now. I'd better go off and... Will you be capable of taking us out after your failure to take us into the break? I can't. My brain still feels fuddled by my over-thinking last night. I think it's quite fitting that we really... We've talked around a lot of issues, but we haven't really resolved them.

But that's how it should be. Because I think one of the lessons of Satnam Sanghera's book, Empire Land, is that actually some of these issues are very difficult, if not impossible, to resolve. And actually the interesting and fruitful thing is the argument. And to have lots of podcasts on. Or the conversation, should we say, rather than the argument.

I think actually that's one of the problems with the empire and the discussion of it, is that it tends to be an argument where it should actually be a conversation. One of the great things about Satnam's book, for those of you who haven't read it, is that there's lots of room to disagree with it to engage with it but it's it's it's written a very measured and nuanced way that is a pleasure to read and it's very funny often

and that's surprising in a book and he's from wolverhampton which is detailing a lot of not being mentioned enough and is a wolves fan like all great people are. Elgar, Sangira, Sandbrook, the Holy Trinity, as we're known in the West Midlands. And Tom, do you want to have anything to say on this or nothing? I've got absolutely nothing to add to that. Brilliant. Okay, Sadan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you. It's been an honour.

And we'll see you all next time. Thank you. thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening