The British Empire. A Source of National Pride or National Shame? - Barnaby Keen (GL)

The British Empire

A Source of National Pride or National Shame? By Barnaby Keen (GL)

In his book, "How Britain Made the Modern World", Niall Ferguson takes a traditional, positive view of the Empire. Ferguson lists some of the benefits of the Empire. Many of these are changes to systems of government that helped bring order to the colonised societies. In Ferguson’s view, the biggest political idea that the British introduced was democracy. Democracy is based on the idea that all the people in the state are allowed to vote for the government of their choice, and help their chosen government make political decisions. This is just and fair, because it gives the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. Furthermore, this system helps rule out the possibility of dictatorship. Ferguson writes about the ‘flows of culture’ in society and how this has helped Britain to become a highly multicultural country with diversity of food, religions and customs that have enriched society. It has also helped other countries do the same. Along with this, Britain exported goods made in their country which were made from the raw materials imported from elsewhere in the Empire. This allowed Britain to trade products with colonised countries and stimulate the flow of trade and capital. Ferguson lists ‘team sports’ as one of the benefits of the British Empire. In the modern day, most people support a sport and the fact that two of the most popular sports in the world, football and cricket, were originally British, is definitely something that the British should be proud of. Also, the Commonwealth Games is a major competition in which a lot of former British colonies take part. Without the Empire this would never have happened. It could be argued that, in places like Australia, convicts and those at the lower end of the social ladder had a chance to make a fresh start in Australia. Many of these people built businesses, and now today many of these countries are thriving. Ferguson writes of ‘representative assemblies’ as one of the benefits of the Empire. Today this happens in the Commonwealth where the global leaders of former British colonies meet to talk about the economy, trade and politics and there is plenty of evidence to support that the British successfully exported ‘the idea of liberty’. Finally, the British helped develop infrastructure in the colonies. For example, they built schools, railways and colleges throughout Africa and India (amongst other places), even attempting to build a railway from Cairo to Cape Town. Considering all of this, there could be a case to support Ferguson’s view that ‘no organization has done more to impose Western norms of law, order and governance around the world’.

Richard Gott, in his book Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt, has the opposite view of the Empire and conveys its brutal side. During the years of Empire, the British were responsible for many acts of violence. If the people of the colonised countries did not obey British orders they would be brutally punished. In the Indian Mutiny in 1857 Indian soldiers of the Bengal Army were fired out of canons as punishment for the uprising. They had rebelled when they it became known that the guns they had to use were greased with pig fat, of-

fending both Hindu and Muslim sepoys and adding weight to existing concerns about forced conversion to Christianity. This demonstrates a lack of comprehension of and respect for local customs as well as brutal methods to keep control. This was also seen in the Amritsar Massacre in 1919 where thousands of people had gathered to protest against British rule of India and the British troops opened fire on unarmed people, killing 379 people in the space of 15 minutes. These are just two examples of the repressive nature of British rule, showing the incompatibility of these actions with the notion that the British governors themselves had at the time as benevolent rulers. There was some integration, as the British did give non-British people jobs in the Empire, but they were often badly paid and were made to work in horrible conditions. The higher ranked jobs went to the British who thought the natives of the colonised countries were incapable of doing the job well, reflecting the idea of the superiority of British values which is one of the defining characteristics of the British Empire. Gott also writes that the British Empire sacked communities in a process of ‘cultural extermination’. Many pieces of art as well as sculptures and jewels were stolen from colonies and taken to Britain, leading to calls to this day for their repatriation. An example of this is the Koh-I-Noor, an enormous diamond that sits in the British royal crown. In writing that there is a tendency to look at the Empire through ‘rose-tinted spectacles’ Gott is trying to say that we are only looking at the positive side to the Empire. He is challenging the view of the ‘benevolent empire’, which suggests that the British ruled in the interests of those they colonised and for their benefit.

In the countries that gained independence there are political and religious problems that persist up to today. When the Empire left a country it often left a divided community. For example, when the British left India in 1947, it led to a civil war between Muslims and Hindus which resulted in approximately 1 million deaths. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said that the British have ‘kept us poor’ and that Indians had to work in cotton mills on slave wages. Gott writes that the Empire ‘for those that actually experienced it’ was horrific. The triangular slave trade was the most inhumane of all. About 11 million Africans were sold as slaves to British merchants and then sold on to plantation owners in the Americas in a system that was carried on for at least a century and a half and made immense profits for the many individuals and businesses involved in it. When being shipped the slaves were kept in unsanitary conditions and enclosed spaces and 20% of Africans never made it to the destination. To justify doing this, the British developed racial supremacy theories and the trade held back the social and economic development of African kingdoms, causing major problem that persist until today. Not only this but for a long time the credit for ending slavery was given to white British campaigners such as William Wilberforce, ignoring the fact that it only ended when it started to become less profitable and that British plantation owners and politicians such as George Hibbert and William Beckford continued to make the case for the continuation of the slave trade, as well as the enormous compensation payments made to plantation owners when the trade was finally abolished in 1833. Another aspect of the slave trade that is often neglected is the role of the slaves and ex-slaves themselves in ending the practice. For example, Toussaint-Louverture’s revolt in Haiti in 1791-1804 succeeded in overthrowing French control and inspired revolts in the British colonies of Grenada, Barbados and Jamaica, and Olaudah Equiano was an influential campaigner against slavery in Britain. Ferguson certainly doesn’t defend any of the brutal, repressive actions by the British, but in arguing for the British Empire as shaping the economies and governing systems of the modern world he casts the Empire as a bringer of progress and modernisation, failing to consider that many of these changes may have been naturally occurring, or that countries would have followed their own routes towards modernisation without the guiding hand of the British. His is an out-dated view that has been widely challenged. Many modern historians argue that it is unacceptable to say that colonialized peoples did not have or would not have developed their own entirely valid forms of government, laws, and infrastructures without the influence of the British Empire.

Many historians argue that you cannot examine the British Empire without examining the more shameful aspects of Britain's past such as its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

It also stripped many colonies and indigenous peoples of their land and vibrant cultures, for example, the Aboriginals in Australia and the indigenous peoples of the United States. Both colonisation and decolonisation brought periods of violent upheaval in India and Kenya, and many other places. Practices such as the slave trade and Britain’s theft of the colonised countries’ history and culture are still controversial today, from the artefacts housed in the British Museum to the debates over fate of the statues of Cecil Rhodes and Edward Colston and the BLM protests. It seems the problems the Empire caused outweigh any benefits it brought and therefore, I do not think we should take pride in the British Empire.

Image opposite page: Wall painting from the head offices of the British East India Company, 1778, revealing the attitudes of the colonisers towards the colonized. Image above: The toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020.