William Tyler
Imperial Glory or Imperial Shame?

William Tyler - Imperial Glory or Imperial Shame?

- I’m talking today about the Victorian Empire, but I may be talking about it in ways that perhaps you haven’t thought of it in the past or in ways that hopefully, might make you think differently in the future. Over half a century ago, when I first began working in adult education, the subject of the British Empire was seldom taught within the curriculum, other than biographies of what were then thought of as Victorian heroes, people like General Gordon at Khartoum, or sometimes wars. For some reason, South African wars in particular were taught, the Zulu War and the Boer War. I suspect they were taught because Britain was humiliated into the beginning of those wars, but in the end, came through and won both wars. There was little analysis 50 years ago of empire. The empire simply was. It existed. Indeed when I was at school, as a child at the age of seven or eight, we follow the progress of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh across what was then the Commonwealth. But it was very clearly, as it were taught at school as still, the empire. And we collected pictures out of the papers. We collected stamps which commemorated the coronation from all sorts of places around the world, many of which we had previously not heard of. But the analysis of empire was missing, not just in schools but in universities and indeed, of course, in adult education. All that has now changed over the last 50, 60 years. And a simple reason that it’s changed is that many former, to use a Victorian phrase, colonial subjects emigrated to Britain after World War II when Britain was in need of an expanded workforce. And their children and their grandchildren regard themselves as much British as I do.

But they challenge this non-analysis of the old Victorian Empire because of perhaps, its underlying assumptions. Its underlying assumption that, when I was a child, that all things about the empire were good. Secondly, that they are concerned about the racism within the empire and perhaps they’re concerned in a concrete form of the British Doctrine of Exceptionalism. And so these new Britains, these Black Britains from what had been the empire, and as now as British as I am, begin to say, “Let’s reexamine the British Empire” in the same way as perhaps the late 20th century feminist movement brought feminist historians to reevaluate the position of women in society and, indeed, children in society through the ages. This has been a quite natural thing to happen. And it seems to me that this is a very positive thing to happen. Why? Well, it’s positive because it has, well, it carries within it the seed of trying to work out what Britain is today. It was Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson that said right back in the early ‘50s, “Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” If I could bring Dean Acheson back to life today, he’d say, “Well, what has changed about Britain?” It still is encumbered by its Victorian imperial past, but now we have to reevaluate it. Now, there is a problem here and the problem lies in the current situation over wokeism, Wokeism forces people to take sides in terms of the debate about empire.

Is the British Empire good or is the British Empire bad? Please vote now. Well, that’s a stupid question to ask, a moment’s thought tells you it’s stupid, but the question of wokeism tends to make stupid answers. In fact, in today’s issue of The Times we read about St. Paul’s Cathedral, the following, “A post on the cathedral website, stated up to a few days ago that the former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who led Britain during the Second World War was quote, 'And in unashamed imperialist and white supremacist.’” Well, frankly, given the era in which he lived, he was born in 1874 in the middle of Queen Victoria’s rein, he is going to be that. They forget that Churchill after war, when prime minister in the 1950s wanted to ensure that anyone within what had been the empire was now the Commonwealth had the right to come to Britain. It’s not simple. People on this woke argument, vote good, vote bad, vote A, vote B. No, no, I don’t want to vote good or bad. I want to talk about it. It’s not simple. On Friday, it was changed because Churchill’s grandson complained about it when it hit the headlines in the media and it now reads, “Churchill is a figure of controversy, especially when viewed from a modern perspective.” Well, for goodness sake, anybody in the past viewed from a modern perspective is going to be controversial. If you insist on judging people born in 1874 by the standards of people born, shall we say, in 2000, it doesn’t work like that. It’s terribly unhelpful to historians to think in those terms of wokeness, good or bad. Historians seek objective truth whilst well aware that they acknowledge that objective truth is like the Holy Grail.

You can seek after it, but you know you will never find it. But that doesn’t mean that you stop seeking for objectivity. You seek objectivity even though you fail to achieve it. Anything that I write or lecture upon reflects, what does it reflect? It reflects my gender, it reflects my age, it reflects my race, it reflects my national birthplace, it reflects my education and it reflects my lifetime experience. It couldn’t be different. I can’t be different than that. So place me with an American historian, shall we say, who’s female, who’s Black, and who is 25, teaching the British Empire alongside me. Would you expect me to have the same outlook as her and would you expect her to have the same outlook as me? Well, of course not. But it will be wrong to think that one of us was wrong and one was right, because we will both be attempting to reach objectivity and we might, well, at the end of a debate, have softened our own views in response to the others. And it wouldn’t be a case of me saying the empire was good and my American colleagues saying the empire was bad. That would not be acting improper historians mode. Incidentally, it’s why I have grave reservations about Professor Norman Biggar’s book, Nigel Biggar’s book, author on “Colonialism,” which has had massive coverage in Britain. Nigel Biggar was professor in moral theology at University of Oxford.

He’s not a historian and states that. And because he’s talking about moral theology, I think, well, you need to know that he is an evangelical Christian and maybe in Britain, but certainly in America, and certainly if you are Jewish, that should be ringing bells, alarm bells, read with caution. Now I read it with caution because he was educated in the same public school in Britain as I was, which is evangelically Christian. I am not evangelically Christian. He is, and he has that, I would describe it as arrogance of someone who knows the answer. So how can people disagree with? So if you read the book and at least one person has written to me saying how excellent they find the book, that’s fine. I’ve no trouble with you finding it excellent as long as you’re aware that A, he isn’t a historian, and B, that he comes from the evangelical Christian background. So his morality is somewhat different than other people’s morality might be. He argues it isn’t, but I’m not sure about that. Now, we’re living in the third decade of the 21st century and it seems to me that we cannot continue to wallow in what Jeremy Paxman in his book “Empire” has called Collective Amnesia. There is a book list on my blog with a number of books about empire. I could have filled pages and pages of books. I’ve tried to restrict myself and it does include Biggars, “Colonialism” or books, which I think are worth you looking at. It does not mean that I agree with everything in any of the books, but it means that this is an introduction to the subject.

So let me just read this little piece if I may, from Jeremy Paxman. It’s right at the end of his book and he writes this, “The empire was Britain’s main international preoccupation for a very long time, but instead of trying to grapple with implications of the story of Empire, the British,” which is what I’m arguing for, that we should come to terms with, “the British, seemed to decide just to ignore it. It’s perhaps possible with this collective amnesia has nothing whatever to do with the country’s lamentable failure to find a comfortable role for itself in the world,” that Dean Acheson argument, “Britain has lost an empire, failed to find a role,” “But it seems unlikely,” says Paxman. “The most corrosive part of this amnesia is a sense that because the nation is not what it was, it can never be anything again. If only the British would bring a measure of clarity to what was done in their country’s name, they might find it easier to play a more useful and effective role in the world.” And that’s really one of the things that I want to say this evening. How is the empire affecting Britain and indeed the wider world today? One of the underlying problems is the idea in Britain of exceptionalism, which comes out of the Empire. Now I mention exceptionalism just now and Paxman describes it in this way. He writes, “By the turn of the century,” that is 1900, “it had become easy for the British to feel special. The 1851 Great Exhibition and not only celebrated homegrown enterprise, but it seemed to demonstrate the readiness of other nations to bring their tribute offerings.

When Queen Victoria was re-designated as Empress of India in 1876, her subject bask in a little of the reflected glory. But if they wanted to feel they really were masters of all creation, they just took themselves off for an afternoon to the London Zoo. Here, as the century war, the growing numbers of strange animals testified to Britain’s increasing domination of the world.” Now that’s an interesting way of putting it. In a more analytical way, Paxman writes this, “It was the British Empire which convinced the British that they were somehow special. Yet, the disappearances that empire has failed to persuade them that they’re not so very different from much of the rest of Europe.” But I would argue, one of the examples of exceptionalism in the modern world has been Brexit and talk about global Britain. I’ve never understood what that has meant, in all honesty. It doesn’t seem to mean very much. It doesn’t seem to amount, as we might say in Britain to a row of beans what an extraordinary thing is exceptionalism. Now, if you add exceptionalism to religion, then you come to a late Victorian view. And late Victorians were a, which I’ve said in a previous talk, where deeply religious and we must simply accept that in a more secular society in the 21st century. If God is a gentleman, through and through and in all probability an English one too.

There were even attempts to equate Britain with ancient Israel. We were God’s chosen people and God’s chosen people by definition, as every American knows from those who came across the Atlantic in the 16th century cannot fail. We began to see ourselves as exceptional and that has been a great curse to Britain in the late 20th and into the 21st centuries. We need to look back at the British Empire to see how it affects society today internally as the debate can too easily lead to unhelpful divisions in society between white Britains and Black Britains. In my home city of Bristol, there was huge rats when a statue of Edward Colston, a great benefactor to the city, but also a very large slave trader in the 18th century was pulled down, by the way the statue was put up in the 19th century in Victorian Britain. And I was brought up passing that statue so many times in my childhood from the top deck of a bus, never thought about it, but the crowd largely Black, but not wholly so, threw it into the docks from which it has been rescued and has now been put on show in the museum, which in my view perhaps would’ve happened a long time ago with an explanation why shouldn’t it happen? Because the Bristol of my youth was predominantly, overwhelmingly 90% plus white. And that certainly is not the case in Bristol today. Bristol is full of white Bristolians and Black Bristolian. I had a fantastic afternoon a few years ago in the Museum of Empire by the main railway station in Bristol and I was watching a programme on the screen about slavery in Bristol.

And most people just like they do, walk straight past it onto something more interesting. I sat down to watch and I was joined by two other Bristolians of a similar age, a husband and wife, and we sat and watched it together and we talked about it afterwards. And they’re Black Bristolians, I, a white Bristolian, and we could talk about it, that’s what is important. But there are those who wish to divide us in this woke society. And then there is not just the internal debate still in Britain today, but an external debate, mixed up with this idea of exceptionalism, mixed up with global Britain, just mixed up in general. And those of you who are American listening to me, if you follow the news outside of America, may have picked up the story in recent years of the visit of the now Prince and Princess of Wales to the Caribbean where the sight of them in the back of a Land Rover was not one that seemed ever so 21st century, I don’t think the royal family will make that mistake again. Now let me turn to a Black Britain. He’s a Sikh and he wrote a book called “Empireland.” He’s basically a journalist, Sathnam Sanghera. He writes in The Times, there was an article by him in today’s Times, this is called “Empireland” and apparently he’s about to produce a second volume about empire next year. Now, “Empireland” had huge reviews, huge number of reviews, all of them positive reviews, but he also has now produced in the last month or so, a children’s version of the book called “Stolen History.” There is, I doubt whether there’s a class in primary schools in Britain today which do not have Black children. And my grandchildren, don’t take any account of them being Black.

They simply know them by a name, “That’s my friend.” The fact that he’s Black doesn’t register with them. That shows how far we have come. Except when my eldest grandson was playing cricket. When I said, “How did you do? Did you score a lot of run?” “No,” he said. I said, “Did you take any wickets?” “No,” he said, “But we did very well, thanks to the two Indian, to my two Indian friends.” And I thought, “That’s lovely.” That’s cricket for you. But the serious point is that this book for children is excellent. I’m a great fan of children’s books which are properly written and please don’t take this the wrong way, but it is worth every penny or cent that you spend by buying “Stolen History” by Sathnam Sanghera, buy the “Empireland” as well. And if you wish to be, somehow terribly snobby about children’s books, buy the “Empireland” alone, but I still recommend this. It’s a very good introduction. He is a Sikh living in Britain, but he writes in very interesting ways. This is one of the things he writes at the beginning. “Given that the British Empire involved the enslavement of millions and the deaths of millions of others through famine, war, and disease, it’s no surprise that tempers can rise when the topic is discussed. Lots of conversations about the British Empire involved at least one person getting very upset or shouting and another person getting very defensive,” but he goes on to talk and uses the same word as Jeremy Paxman did. The word amnesia, “Amnesia means memory loss. So selective amnesia means either deliberately or unconsciously choosing to forget some things that might be unpleasant and remembering only the good.”

Then he gives a very interesting example. “One key example is the railways of India. Lots of British people feel proud that thousands of miles of railways were built in India during the empire and these railways still function today,” Here I’m writing saying that India still has the largest railway system in the world. “This pride is reflected in the many British TV programmes on the subject.” If you’re not British, there is a subculture in Britain where we are enormously enthusiastic about trains. I am of course, because my grandparent, my grandfather was involved with the building of trains. My family had been involved with the building of trains. So Sanghera goes on to say, “this pride is reflected in the many British TV programmes on the subject, but the truth that is often deliberately forgotten is that the railways were built for the British people, not the Indian population being colonised. These were railways allowed the British to transport things more easily out of the country for sale and meant that they could move armies quickly if Indians rebelled against the empire.” It also meant that they could escape to the hill stations in the hot weather in India, places like Shimla. I will read on, “It’s also worth noting that hard work of building them was done by Indians. An estimated 25,000 Indians lost their lives while constructing railway sections over two particularly steep mountain passes in an eight-year period. And Indigenous Indians weren’t even allowed to do the most important jobs on the trains. At one stage of the empire, Sikhs like my family, were not seen as trustworthy or capable enough to drive trains even though they were trusted enough to fight for the British Empire in large numbers in both world wars.

All this discrimination, danger and death involved in the Indian railways, is difficult, painful, and very upsetting for people,” and he means people like himself, “to reflect upon.” However, I would add one caveat and say that the construction of trains in India has enabled India to hold together as a nation. I’m not now talking about Pakistan, east or west, Pakistan or Bangladesh, I’m talking about India. Has enabled India to stay together post independence in the most unlikely of circumstances, given the differences in various parts of India, different religions, different languages, but India stayed together. And what has held it together is the railways, is the English language, the common language, and is still an infrastructure, a civil service and a parliamentary infrastructure, which is still, despite all the problems in India, recognisably British. In fact, the prime minister of India has recently visited Biden in Washington and he spoke about shared democracies. Well, we may have doubts about Indian democracy, but judging from some of the emails I get, some of you have doubts in America about American democracy and certainly people in Britain have doubts, but that’s just a total aside. He was able to talk about democracy to an American president because both democracies arose out of the earlier English democracy of the 17th century. And that isn’t something to be sneered at. In terms of Britain’s external relations. Sanghera writes this, “People cannot deny that the empire shaped Britain in all sorts of ways. Not only in the little things like tea drinking, for example, that fill our everyday lives, but in the way British people see themselves and how they see the rest of the world.” And he’s there writing of children, but what he’s talking about is that exceptionalism, that exceptionalism. The Georgian Empire of the late 18th century early 19th century was very different from the Victorian Empire.

And it is the Victorian empire which dominates debates, novels, and films today. The Georgian Empire in the 18th century save what is the become the United States and save the penal colony established in Australia was based on trade and profit. America was colonised by people escaping the dominant religion and politics of England, Australia with the early convict settlements. Other than that, British Empire was based in the 18th century on trade and profit. The supreme example being the in English East India Company, which ruled India, which ruled India with its own army and with its own navy until 1858 when in the wake of the Indian mutiny, which many Indians there, they called the First War of Independence in 1858, a year after that great mutilate or Indian War of independence of 1857. Responsibility for the government of India passed to the crown, that is to say to the British Government and before someone is seeing then that I’ve got it all wrong, there are reports, a different arrangement in India than anywhere else in the empire that the British Government directly rule in large parts of India, but also large parts of India remained under the control of the Indian princes. Now the Indian princes had advisors attached to them, which basically meant if they stepped out of line, the British would step in, but there was a different view take. The British Raj, that is to say the British Government, which replaced the East India Company as the governing body in India from 1858, is looked back upon today by many white British with a kind of nostalgia for the old days. Old days recorded in TV programmes, in novels and so on, and also used by the Indian tourist industry to encourage British tourism to places like Shimla.

But that all passed away with Indian independence and Pakistani independence in 1947. But it isn’t that long ago. In 1947, it was two years after I was born and in 1945, ‘46, my father was serving as an army officer in the Raj of India, in an imperial regimen, the Singapore and Hong Kong artillery which was made up largely of Sikhs. But to return to the major focus of the Georgian Empire trade. Paxman suggests that may be the origin is at the very true the beginnings of a British Empire and can be found if you like, in something that was said and written by Sir Francis Drake in the reign of Elizabeth I. Francis Drake said, “I know many means to do her majesty good service and to make us rich, for we must have gold before we see England.” The Queen wanted money, Drake wanted money, it’s trade. Or in great case, it’s actually piracy on the high seas by taking Spanish gold on route back to England. Trade, profit, corruption like Drake or corruption like a great Victorian hero, Clive of India, who defeated the French in 1757 at the Battle of Plassey. And I was still being taught in the 1950s how great a hero Clive was, but they never told us that when he returned to England in 1772, Parliament held an inquiry in to his helping himself to many jewellery and cash from India to the tune its thought in modern money of something in the region of 3 million pounds he helped himself to. And what he said is an enormous insight into 18th century thinking.

He said, “I stand astonished at my own moderation,” I stand astonished at my own moderation? 3 million quid brought back. Oh incidentally, if you’re saying how did he bring it back? Oh, yeah, he rooted it by the Dutch East India Company. Today, he would’ve been brought to trial, then, nothing ever saw it. He’s covered in honours. But in 1774, at the age of 49, he committed suicide by cutting his throat with his pen knife. Dr. Johnson wrote, “Clive had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.” Well, that may be true, but it’s also true that he was an opium addict. It’s also true that at the time of his death, he was taking more opium because he had a problem with gallstones. And gallstones at that time meant an operation to remove them. And you just had to pray hard that your surgeon was quick with the knife because there was no way of putting you under. And if you want to read about having those gallstones removed without anaesthetic, read Samuel Pepys diary. But Pepys was lucky, he had someone who was very quick. The very thought of it horrifies me as it obviously horrified Clive 'cause he never had the operation. Now a little footnote to Clive for my American friends, shortly before he died, he turned down an offer from the British government to command all British forces in North America. That’s interesting. What a battle it would’ve been between Washington and Clive. There’s an alternative history novel there for somebody to write. Now the last word I want to read about Drake is a quotation from one of my favourite historians, the Roman historian Tacitus, who in 98 CE AD, in 98 said this, “To plunder, to slaughter, to steal these things they misnamed empire.”

So if this was a university course and I wanted people to write about the British Empire, I would say Tacitus said all those years ago, “To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire,” discuss in the context of the 18th century British Empire. But the raison d'etat for empire underwent fundamental change during Victoria’s reign. If you like, take the date of 1876 when Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli flattered the queen by giving her the title Empress of India. That marks perhaps one of the high points or the beginning of the high point of the British Empire, the zenith of British power as the British saw it. 1876, Empress of India. Now, it doesn’t mean to say that in the latter years of Victoria’s reign, trade was not important. It was, but it now had a gloss to it. Britain saw itself and it wasn’t alone in European powers in doing so because other countries, for example, France had a similar view. They saw themselves as appointed, the British would’ve said divinely appointed to bring civilization to, to quote Kipling, “The lesser breeds without the law.” And we have some very worrying quotations from the period from another so-called Victorian hero, Cecil Rhodes. Cecil Rhodes said on one occasion this, “We are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.” Now, I don’t know if anybody listening from America, for example, has been a Rhodes scholar because Rhodes extended this view to the British, bringing civilization to the whole world by including the other two major nations, Germany in Europe and the United States across the Atlantic.

And so he set up Rhodes scholarships, for the next best thing to be English was to be educated. Rhodes believed at Oxford so that bright American young men and it was all men at the time, and bright German young men would be turned out as bright Anglophile German young men and bright Anglophile American young men. And one day, dream of Rhodes, the president of the United States, the prime minister of Britain, and the chancellor of Germany would all be Oxford educated and therefore would resolve all the problems that the world could throw at because they have been Oxford. I mean, it’s in a sense laughable today. I hope Kenji isn’t listening to this broadcast if you are, I apologise. Well, not really. Then another thing that Rhodes said, “To be born English is to win the first prize in the lottery of life.” “To be born English is to win the first prize in the lottery of life.” Exceptionalism taken to an enormous extent. This view of bringing civilization had two aspects to it. The first was Christianity. The late Victorians believed that you could not be civilised unless you were Christian. Oh-oh, and when it came to it, unless you were Anglican Church of England Christian. And secondly, they believed that you couldn’t be civilised unless you championed parliamentary democracy. Jeremy Paxman writes cynically about religion by writing this. He says, “The British were apostles for a new gospel in which Christianity and commerce were said to be natural bedfellows.” In 1902, in 1902, I read this. In 1902, the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Henry Hutchinson Montgomery declared quote, “The clergy are officers in the imperial army, serving both England and Christ.” You can see this exceptionalism including religion.

The Victorian hymn, “I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,” which is said to be a favourite of king. Religion and Christianity went and commerce and empire and nationalism, imperialism went hand in hand. What about parliamentary democracy the second thing that we were keen on? Well, let me guess read this from the, short bit, “The moral conundrum of empire. How could we deny others the freedom that we talked about?” “We talk about freedom, but where’s freedom for me?” said Indians. Indians educated like Nehru at Harrow School and Oxford. Where’s freedom for us? Or people like Nelson Mandela brought up in a South Africa, in a Christian, British Christian environment. Mandela wrote in his autobiography, a “Long Walk to Freedom.” “The education I received was a British education in which British ideas, British culture, and British institutions were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.” And he said in the same autobiography that when he first came to Britain, he realised that Britain wasn’t the Britain that he was taught about in South Africa. And he wants freedom. He wants freedom like the British. And you can argue that the huge toleration shown by Mandela after he came to power was an exhibition of his British education in tolerance. That his belief in multi-party democracy emerged from his belief in the British constitution. And in an article for the BBC written the year Mandela died, the writer wrote this, “Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair met Nelson Mandela several times and described how he might easily have been of disapproving of Britain because of the history of colonialism.

But in fact, Mandela was quite the opposite. He thought the world of Britain, the first thing he’d ask is, 'How’s the queen? Give her our best wishes.’ He adored British traditions, its culture and its history,” said Tony Blair, Good or bad, you can’t answer things about the empire in such crude terms. It doesn’t work like that. The British Empire was, in all its good ways, in all its bad ways, it was, but now, in a multicultural Britain, we have to somehow come to terms with the story of the empire and the old story of Victorian heroes like Gordon of Khartoum whose private, personal sexual life was dubious or Baden Powell who founded the scouts and equally dodgy, we have to, or the person who really sticks in my gullet, had it thrown at me in church and Bible study, David Livingstone. Ugh, why did Stanley ever bother rescuing the man? But anyhow, if we forget the concept of Victorian heroes and we try and move forward to a better understanding in which Black Britains and white Britains can come to a version of empire where we feel happy, happy with that version, then we might have answered the question of Dean Acheson. We’d lost an empire but now we found a new role. I would argue we are still searching for that new role. The high watermark, keep an eye on the clock. The high watermark of the Victorian empire, indeed of the British empire as a whole, was the Queen’s jubilee in 1897.

I said it began, the rise and rise of the British Empire to 1876 with Victoria being made Empress of India, that the high watermark was in 1897 and the Daily Mail newspaper wrote this in 1897 describing it was a six mile procession through the streets of London to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Even though the queen who was now the shape of a square blob could not go up the steps and sat in her landau under her umbrella in black because she was still in mourning for Prince Albert who had died over 30 years before, the queen was never into this empire. But her son was Edward and his wife Alexandra appeared at this event, the Diamond Jubilee procession dripping in jewellery and medals and all the rest of it. The queen did not, a Black dress, the only concession, a white parasol. The Daily Mail reported, “Up they came, more and more, new types, new realms every couple of yards, an anthropological museum, a living gazetteer of the British Empire, with them came their English officers whom may obey and follow like children,” “With them came their English officers whom may obey and follow like children.” Well, let me tell you a story when I was at Oxford, I was in the Office of Training Corps, I had to go one summer holiday up to Scotland in order to sit an examination and all, most there were a group from Oxford, everybody else was from Scotland Glasgow University OTC, and we were chatting with a sergeant major one evening. Well, in truth we were getting in slightly slosh, so that he would let out, help us through the exam the following day, which to his credit or discredit, he did. Anyhow, he said to us, he said, “Gentlemen, if you have the honour of being an officer and commanding Scottish troops in action,” no belief that the Scots themselves would command Scottish troops in action, it would be an English one.

“So gentlemen, if you command Scottish troops in action, there is only one piece of advice I can give you. And that is there is only one order you can give your men.” And we said, “What on earth is that, Sarge Major?” He said, “The order is charged.” He said, “After you’ve said charge, you’ve lost total control, they’ll go berserk.” It’s not so different here, is it? “With them came their English officers whom may abide by and follow like children,” Racism? Absolutely. “And you begin to understand as never before, what the empire amounts to. Not only that we possess all these remote outlandish places,” outlandish, I hope no one’s listening in Australia. “But also that these people are working not simply under us, but with us,” really? “That we send out a boy here and a boy there and a boy takes hold of the savages of a party comes to and teaches them to march and shoot as he tells them to, to obey him and believe in him and to die for him and the queen.” Wow, that’s high, the rhetoric of high empire and it reads like nonsense today. But those of us at my age in Britain, particularly, those of us educated in the private sector, still had elements of this driven into us. It’s why I can never jump a queue when I’m teaching to be the first in line to get food. Why? Because it was drilled into us that the more senior you are, the more responsibility you have and you let younger people or other people eat first. And I still can’t break myself of that habit. Time and again, people will say, “Oh no, you’re working. You must come and get yours first,” I can’t do it. I simply can’t do it. Not through anything other than the thing was ingrained in me not to do it. If you think the empire reached its zenith in terms of numbers, numbers of countries, numbers of people, by 1897, you couldn’t be more wrong. The zenith in terms of countries and people wasn’t reaching until after the First World War.

Why not? Because after the First World War, Britain acquired German territories like Uganda, like British Southwest Africa, formerly German Southwest Africa, today, Namibia, and in mandated territories like Palestine. So the British Empire reached its zenith at a time when it was already in decline, after all Kipling wrote a poem showing how in 1897 at the time of the Diamond Jubilee, Britain was in decline. A poem that I read not so long ago. Now, I’m coming towards the end. So I’ll tread a little more carefully. I’ve not gone down various imperial paths in this talk because this talk could have carried on for week after week after week. And if there’s something I haven’t mentioned on either side of the woke argument, I apologise, but I will also take responsibility for not doing it. I’ve not talked for example of slavery and the slave trip as this was predominantly an 18th century novel. And I talked about Edward Colston. This isn’t an issue in Victorian Britain in that sense. I’ve not talked of the vengeance exacted by the British in the aftermath of the equally vicious Indian mutiny on both sides there were atrocities committed, nor have I talked about genocide of Aboriginal Peoples in Tasmania, which is a horror beyond belief. I’ve not talked about the abuse of Indigenous women, particularly of Indian women by British men, even by British missionaries, who may indeed, according to some have given us the phrase, “the Missionary Position” that never thought of that.

My son has today been subject to one of those ghastly days of training run by his HR department now called the people’s department in his firm. And he let me listen in and it was a part, it was dreadful, it was truly dreadful. And I said, “Well, you should come to my talk instead because I’m going to be talking about the missionary position.” “Would you want that?” He said. “Look, I’m doing the talk about missionary position.” I’m sure that’s much more interesting that yours. He said, “Absolutely.” The abuse of women in India finished partly because the East India Company’s control finished. And largely though, because in the arrival of young women, the Memsahib of India, who you would not wish to cross. These young women came out on the new ships of P&O. They were known as the fishing fleet. ‘Cause they came out to fish for a husband and they put an end to the, as one very senior British woman said, “The flaunting by the men of their private parts.” Well, the men were required now to dress for dinner, Black tie, evening dress, and the women dressed. That wasn’t what the British did in the 18th century. They were required to go to church on a Sunday. That wasn’t what the British did in the 18th century. This is the 19th century. The empire, like many institutions is not the same over a course of time. The 18th century wouldn’t have recognised the 19th century empire. We have the ability to look at both. I’ve not talked about British class.

That’s a very interesting topic in regards to empire. For those who did well at Oxford or Cambridge, could take exams in order to proceed to the empire. If you had a good degree, then you would undoubtedly pass the examinations well, and the top job was with the Indian Civil Service who Kipling called the Heaven-born. The Heaven-born, what a phrase. P.S., by the end of British rule in 1947, there were enormous number of Indians in the Indian Civil Service, not like the 19th century. And because of that enabled the Indian Civil Service to continue post 1947 in much the way that it had been pre 1947. It’s not good or bad, it’s always, if I might quote the phrase, “Shades of Grey.” If however, you did badly in those examinations, but you were still okay, like being Old Etonian like George Orwell who did not go to university but had gone to Eton, then you were sent to Burma, very much a second choice after India. One of Orwell’s best books in my opinion, by the way, is “Burmese Days.” If you’ve not read “Burmese Days” by George Orwell and you’re interested, it’s a very interesting account of the British Empire, if you like in fiction form, and you he said, we’ll that’s an Well, in the early 1970s, I was the adult educator, head of department in a college in Lancashire College of Further Education. I was the head of department for adult education in that part of Lancashire known as a file in the area south of Blackburn. Now, one of the interesting things there was, there was a rather difficult senior administrative officer who did all the finance. He was grey in every respect, grey trousers, grey jacket, grey tie, grey in appearance. Everything about the man was grey and he was difficult. Oh, he was so difficult.

And we often wondered why he was appointed. And I found out why he was appointed because he had an honour. He had an MBE for services to the Burmese police. And once we knew he came from Burma, we knew precisely why he was second rank. I apologise to anybody listening who served the British in Burma. Oh dear, I’m going to be in trouble at the end of this. Couple years I’ve got America in my thoughts as I talked about British Empire, I forgotten there are British listening too. So let’s talk about Britain. I’ve not talked about the moral dilemma of returning objects looted from empire back to where they came from, like the Benin Bronzes on the grounds at their safer in a museum in Britain than they might be in a museum in Africa or that they’re safer in the British Museum than they might be even in a European country like Greece. Well, that’s a debate, that’s a live debate in Britain today. And many universities in particular are sending objects back. If you’re listening in Australia, you know one of the huge issues is the return of Aboriginal remains from British museums like Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. And some of those have been repatriated to Australia, but there’s all sorts of things. The fact that some of the diamonds looted from India were not used in the king’s coronation, in the queen’s crown because it would thought to be an incendiary thing to do. So we are aware in a way that we weren’t aware when I was a child that these are real issues in terms of how Britain is viewed in the world. The cause for the royal family to denounce slavery, to pay compensation for slavery. But I will daunt to talk about something very English rather than British and something we gifted to the English speaking world with the exception of the United States. And that is the sport of cricket.

And I dedicate this to my friend Donald, who may be listening, but his wife Linda is certainly listening. And Donald, I’m going to read a poem which comes from your old school, from Clifton College, from a man called Henry Newbolt who wrote it in the 19th century, equating skill at plain cricket at school to commanding troops in an imperial war. And the poem goes like this, it’s terribly Victorian. “There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night,” the Close was the playing field at Clifton College. “There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night. Ten to make and the match to win A bumping pitch and a blinding light, an hour to play and the last man in. And its not for the sake of a ribboned coat, or the selfish hope of the season’s fame, But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote, 'Play up, play up, and play the game.’ The sand of the desert is sodden red, red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling is jammed and the Colonel dead, and the regiment blind with dust and smoke. The river of death has brimmed his banks, And England’s far, and Honour a name, but the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks: ‘Play up, play up, and play the game’” I’m going to finish with another, this little bit, with another public school analogy from sport. This was written contemporary in the Victorian age, “The beliefs inculcated at school could be reduced to 10 commandments running from number one commandment, there is only one God and the captain of the first 15 in rugby is his prophet and ending in number 10, I must show no emotion and not kiss my mother in public.”

It all sounds old fashioned today, but I didn’t kiss my mother in public for fear of the retribution. Well, I think it would’ve shocked mother if I had done. The end of empire began 110 years after Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1947 with the independence of India and Pakistan. In effect, the end of empire concluded with the return of Hong Kong and the new territories to China in 1997. But the ghost of empire lingers still, we still haven’t come to terms with what Dean Acheson said, but I’m going to finish with a quotation outside of the Victorian period and not a modern quotation. The quotation from 1776, the end of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. And Adam Smith wrote in 1776 the following, “It is surely now time that our ruler should either realise the golden green in which they had been indulging themselves perhaps, as well as the people, or that they should awake from it themselves, an endeavour to awaken the people. If the project cannot be completed, it ought to be given up. If any of the provinces of the British Empire cannot be made to contribute towards a support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, an endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.” “Endeavour to accommodate her future views and desires to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.” I would suggest that no British government has yet done that. That was 1776 and what, 80 years on nearly from 1947 and nearly 30 years on from the loss of Hong Kong and we still do not know how to answer Dean Acheson’s question. “We lost an empire and we still haven’t found a role.” Thanks very much for listening. I’m sure there’s lots of people with lots of things to say today. Yeah, I thought there might be.

Q&A and Comments:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Myrna.

Faye says, “People are trying to change history. History cannot be changed.” Our interpretations of history change is what I would say with greater knowledge.

Reed Agatha Christi says, “Shelly in the 20s, 30s, 40s, for the racist terms of her British characters used for other Europeans, they don’t like speak, they go frog hunt, et cetera. Parochialism that had nothing to do with colour.” Right, but absolutely everything to do with British exceptionalism.

Sandy says, “At a youth conference in the early ‘50s I asked of Indian delegate if there had been any small way in which Imperial Government had benefited India. The brief answer was 'No.’” I wonder how that delegate would answer the question today. Well, it was a youth conference. I would expect the answer to be no. Had you spoken to an older Indian, I think in the ‘50s, the answer would not have been no.

Andrea, “The U.S.A, France, and perhaps other countries claim exceptionalism. It’s just a ruse to proclaim that your country is superior.” That’s a good thought. But I think they, I would say they differ from that of British exceptionalism, partly because Britain’s exceptionalism turned upon a religious base as well as a democratic base. France is a pendulum between democracy and language. And the U.S.A, in terms of, I would have said democracy.

Q: Do you think Darwin and evolutionary theory played the part on development of exceptionalism?

A: Partly that’s true, Simon. Partly that is true and do not all empires believe they’re exceptional. I would say, as I said in the earlier question, not in the way I would make, if I was arguing the case, I would say that the British view was somewhat different from say the Inca view.

Joe says about Britain, “Also, we feel that we punch above our weight.” Yes, that’s dreadful phrase is still being used by politicians. “We punch above our weight.” I wouldn’t want to say that I wouldn’t want to say that in the state office in Washington.

“At junior school in '36, '37, we used to celebrate Empire Day.” Yep, you’re, Sheila, sorry, I was going to say something rather rude, but your, let me put it gently. You’re maturer even than I am, and I don’t remember Empire Day, but I do remember going to a Commonwealth Day Conference in Bath in the '60s. And the Commonwealth never appealed. They never sold it to children. In fact, in Britain, they never sold it to anybody. Yes, you’re absolutely right, Judith. The people that turned over the Colston statue in Bristol, a number of them were white. But that’s like when I was principal in London in the 1980s and we had a form that every member of staff had to fill in part-time and full-time, which said, which gave your ethnicity. And I had a whole group of women who put Black British, and they were not Black British, they were white. And I asked the person who had obviously, been behind this, “But why have you written Black when your,” because I had to come to sign, “when you are self evidently white.” And they said, “Because we feel Black.” Well, yeah, okay. But then I had a group of students with learning difficulties who all decided they will be Chinese. And I couldn’t, I wasn’t allowed to change it. I wasn’t allowed to change anything, I just had to sign it. It was ridiculous. And the story of how many Chinese students we had with special needs, which we didn’t, was actually cited by a minister in the House of Commons as an example of how well London was doing with its immigrant communities and, nonsense powered upon nonsense.

Oh, Marjorie did you? Marjorie writes, “We read 'Empireland’ a couple of months ago in our book group and it stimulated interesting discussion. We normally go for fiction, but this was a good change and really worth the read.” Well, Marjorie can I again recommend that you might have a look at “Stolen History,” the child’s version. I think you’ll find it particularly interesting. Harry says, “Whilst I imply many faults, nevertheless Commonwealth been its direct result, I do not think the other empirical nation created any similar groups of nations.” That’s not exactly true. The French do with a Francophone nation. That is why French troops were deployed in Mali, for example, against Islamic terrorism. It is also true that other countries have come into the Commonwealth like Rwanda and Mozambique, but Mozambique has a lot of Wagner troops in it now from Russia. I’m not entirely sure the Commonwealth means very much in handouts from what we can describe as Britain and the white dominions. I’m not, and I don’t think anybody in Britain has much of a view in favour of the Commonwealth or a view at all. I think it was a mistake when the Queen died to have Charles as head of the Commonwealth. I think it would’ve been much better to have an elected head. Just think what would’ve happened if the Queen had stood down in favour of Nelson Mandela then the Commonwealth would’ve been a power to recognise.

Oh, sorry, Marjorie said, “Oh, sorry. I mean Sanghera’s version, not Paxman.” No, Paxman’s book is called Empire. Marjorie, you were quite right in what you said. The “Raj Quartet” by Paul Scott’s a very good fictional account at the end of British Royal in India. It was televised about 30 years ago and was very popular. The series was called “The Jewel in the Crown.” And a lot of that was built upon nostalgia for a past that had gone.

Q: Marilyn, “My late father thought the Churchill, we should keep India after World War II may have been responsible for loss of the post-war elections. Why would the man who won the war lose the election?”

A: Well, no, you are absolutely right about Churchill wanting to keep India, but he was well aware that India would have to be given its independence. How he lost the election because people remembered what a farce it had been at the end of the First World War when Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George had promised the nation that it would, there would be homes, the heroes and there never was. But Churchill misplayed his hand, Attlee adopted the report, the Beveridge Report, which Churchill has committed, had commissioned during the war. Beveridge was a Liberal with a big L. Beveridge’s report was the basis of the state, the welfare state that Attlee created. And Churchill said, Churchill wasn’t against it. Churchill was always a liberal in terms of home affairs. And Churchill’s view was the country couldn’t afford it Attlee’s view was the country had to afford it. And so it was Attlee who offered hope. Whereas Churchill offered much the same as before. And they remembered dreadful conservative governments in the 1930s.

Michael, “Indians have been evils colonial ones. One must also consider African India may have been without it.” Well, it takes South Africa, for example. It might well have turned into a Zulu nation because prior to the British, the Zulus had been incorporating vast numbers of other tribes in Southern Africa. If you think about other parts, if you think about Northern Nigeria, Islamic Northern Nigeria, there were plenty of countries. Ethiopia, of course, was already a country. Egypt was already a country. Morocco was already, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility in, even in Africa, that on their own, they would’ve developed indigenous nations. In India for, don’t forget, in India already had that under the Mogul Empire. It was the British arrival that upset the Mogul Empire. But there is no reason to suppose it, if Britain hadn’t got involved, the Mogul Empire wouldn’t have gone on and the Mogul Empire wouldn’t have become as stable as the Ottoman Empire and may have been able to deal with the issues that Lytton Empire at the end of World War I could not deal with. So I’m not entirely with you, Michael on that, but nevertheless, your point is well made.

Carol, “Drake didn’t stay. It was stolen from the South, a match, Drake didn’t, you know, Spanish gold as it was stolen from South American Indians and the Spanish murdered these Indians for the gold.” Absolutely right, Carol, you followed the argument logically.

“Kipling three Cs.” Yes, said who’s that? William.

Q: Eileen says, I hope I pronounce your name right. Eileen says, “Brilliant or Oman,” sorry, I don’t say things like that. “I came to a similar conclusion after each of my visit to a country that was formerly a British colony.” Shooketh, “It is not the management legacy the British Empire favourable compared to the French, German, Belgium or Italian?”

A: I don’t know that. “Also, the social economic states, most of the area is colonised, surely self coagulation should be revised. It wasn’t all bad.” I don’t think I said it was all bad, but I don’t think it’s any good comparing ourselves to appalling German, Belgium and Italian experience. The French, that’s different. The French, think about French in North Africa, no, there are differences with the French. Now, think about the Spanish in South America. Big differences there. Donald says, “I’m not an American Rhodes scholar, but I’ve considered the prime of factual evidence of English section have been the elimination of the practise of city in India.” Yes, that’s one thing that did, yeah, there were, I’m absolutely with you. There are some good things, but we must move beyond that. And if we’re British, we have to move beyond that if we’re going to find a way that our multicultural society is going go forward.

Anna Lee said, “Between ‘68 and '70, I worked at Harvard as the secretary to John Horace Parry, who was a Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs. During those two years he was writing 'Trade and Dominion.’ I typed it for him on an IBM Selectric Typewriter.” God, poor you, but “Trade and Dominion.” Absolutely, right.

Peter, hello, Peter. “You are right about English at section and I was at school here in the 1940s and I remember it well,” and for those who don’t know, Peter, Peter was not born English. Peter got out of Nazi Europe and came to England as a young in the early ‘40s.

Q: Carol says, “Didn’t British English start much earlier? Shakespeare, this gem set in a silver sea and Henry V and isn’t British exceptionalism in the 20th century, also based on exceptional resistance and Nazism?”

A: Yes to both of those. I’m not sure about Shakespeare, but certainly, we haven’t got over the Second World War. And that’s another problem for us. You still can hear people making derogatory comments about Germany and Italy. You can still find jokes about Germany and Italy.

Peter, “May I suggest that the French and Germans, I guess many others consider themselves exceptional.” Yes, that’s, I think we’ve, I’ve taken that on board.

Michael says, “One feels that Brexit was largely driven by the fear that anyone who get hold of an EC passport wanted to end up in the UK.” And that is part of it. And of course, that was as wrong as all the other reasons for wrong, but I’m not getting involved in Brexit. You know, I’m totally against Brexit and now I’m in the majority rather than minority in Britain, but what’s done is done at least for now.

“Say what you will,” says Harriet about empire. “My grandparents escaped the perpetual disharmony of Russia to Canada in 1904. Canada has a beneficiary of British Government values. So far been a more powerful place to live than many other parts of the world, including colonies or other European countries with their systems of government values.” Yes. Now, Harriet, Canada is a very interesting case. There is a lot to say for comparison of the white dominions of Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia and United States. Canada is, Canada has a different background to New Zealand, different background to South Africa and a different background to Australia and the United States. Canada is sui generis. Canada is a one-off to itself and you can say you can be, and certainly if you compare it to Russia in 1904, Russia in 2023, Canada is certainly a beneficiary of British Government values, but despite the fact that Indigenous Canadians were treated better than Indigenous Americans, that does not necessarily take into account what Indigenous Canadians feel. There’s a big issue and one would need to talk about Canada’s imperial legacy in terms of good and bad. And don’t forget that it has a French imperial legacy as well. Yes, I’ve used it. See Paxton’s book because it’s a handy book with handy quotes in it.

Barry, “Cecil wrote in his will, left instruction after his death any money left over in his will must be used to recolonize America under the British flag. Before I left South Africa, Canna in '79, I went to Kimberley to read his will.

By the way, the school I went to in Rhodesia was called Churchill, and we had a pipe band,” Sheila says, “In 1972 in Rondebosch,” I hope that’s right. “Boys’ High School in Cape Town, one of only four schools were being gifted, its only Rhodes scholarship by Rhodes. The head of history decided the 15 to 16 year olds should be examined on the independence movements in Africa to an oral exam. Students discussing questions in a small group. In one group, one student had not said anything. The teacher asked him directly, ‘What do you think the high contributor in South Africa?’ His answer they gave us, ‘Guy Fawkes’ celebrated with bonfires and fireworks on the 5th of November. Thought you might like this story.” I do, I’ve never heard that before, Sheila. That’s a wonderful story.

I have to say farewell to everyone. Thanks for listening.