A Peculiarly British Amnesia
Sathnam Sanghera's Empireland is an ambitious book, which mainly delivers on its aims.
Empireland sets out an impressive manifesto. With apologies to the author for any over-simplification, he is trying to argue:
That the experience of empire is fundamental to Britain’s economy, politics, and culture. More that that, he thinks it is core to the idea of Britishness.
We have indulged in a collective amnesia, which has shaded into unwarranted nostalgia, about what Britain actually did during the period of Empire
We would be a better, healthier nation if we faced up to, and came to terms with, our past.
I’m going to gloss over the last one, because it’s more or less a rhetorical flourish on Sanghera’s part- beyond a sketched idea for a revived Empire day informed by critical thinking about our history, this is not a book with a plan of action.
The first two, though, are covered in fine style. I’ve listened to and read enough William Dalrymple not to be surprised by some of the myths of Imperial benevolence busted here, but Empireland’s sweep is extremely broad- anyone who is not a historian of empire will find a new, shocking episode to ponder- for me it was the suppression of the Mao Mao that shook me, half-remembering racist echoes from relatives who saw them as terrorists.
While Sanghera explicitly rejects an ‘Empire good/ empire bad’ approach, he clearly has to place more on the scales of the latter, because he is right- up until very recently we have had a cultural complacency about Empire which is kind of mind-boggling. As he observes, Empire pervades all aspects of British life, from the rituals of the public school, to the Notting Hill carnival. It is everywhere, and it is barely ever discussed.
Sangehera’s evidence for all this is carefully collected and weighed up- at no point does the reader feel berated or told what to think. Our self-image as the home of abolitionism is not destroyed, but it is put into the context of a country that gorged itself on the slave trade for 200 years, and got out as much in its own interest as in that of enslaved peoples.
There are two areas though where I felt his arguments could have done with a little more refinement. One is the forays into national psychology- here he is inevitably a bit more speculative, but even allowing for this, I’m not sure that he makes his case that strongly. For instance, he claims that Empire is fundamental to our distrust of intellectuals and experts- but I am not sure either that this is more true of Britain than other countries, or that what distrust exists has much to do with the fact that we used to own other countries. Perhaps the follow-up Empireworld1 will take a more robust approach and do some comparisons with other countries both Imperial and non.
The other flank on which Sanghera is open to attack was recently exploited by everyone’s favourite obscurely-funded think tank, the IEA. They have produced a report , Imperial Measurement, that argues contra Sanghera that Empire did not in fact enrich Britain, that is was a terrible drain on the Exchequer, and that what actually made us rich is the flowering of free trade and free enterprise that coincided with the period. Here is Will Hutton being unimpressed by that argument, but in the narrow way that is more or less the only way right-wingers can be right, the IEA kind of are. Empire didn’t make the British government rich. One can argue about whether it made most British people rich- what is unarguable is that the Empire is mainly responsible for the British Rich.
The statistician John Burn-Murdoch, surveying the wreckage of the British standard of living recently, argued that we are a poor country with a lot of rich people living in it. This may be an over-simplification, but I think it’s a useful way to think about this question. A relatively small number of individuals made a stack of money out of Empire- the government, and most ordinary Brits, did not, as a rule. The riches of empire were extracted in often brutal fashion, and even the IEA cannot quite argue that Empire was a plus for our colonies- in fact the report’s author Kristian Niemietz makes a not dissimilar point to my own- and yet the political conversation has reverted to ‘Empire good/ Empire bad’ in a way that I am sure Sanghera would sigh at.
Still, I think his economic analysis would have benefited from, dare I say it, a little more Marx. The triumph of Empire was a triumph of capitalists, and when it fell, they moved their interests elsewhere, leaving the government and the colonised to deal with the fallout.
In fact some of the reaction to the IEA’s report, if not the report itself, betrays exactly the kind of ignorance and wishful thinking which Sanghera so skilfully dissects. There probably can’t be a more perfect promotional strategy for this book than Kemi Badenoch seizing on the IEA’s work to deny that Britain’s riches have anything to do with slavery. I recommend that anyone tempted to go down that logical cul-de-sac gets themselves a copy of Empireland, and one for their similarly amnesic friends. It’s really that good.
I am currently reading Lanny by Max Porter. I have nothing clever or insightful to say about it, except that it is superb, like nothing I have ever read while being set in basically my town, and I don’t even mind that nothing has really happened yet.
I promise one day I will make a music recommendation that isn’t a solo female artist, but I am really in love with the new St Vincent album. So there.
I am aware that Empireworld is out, and in fact have a copy on my shelf. So the answer to this question is known- just not by me.