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Reviews: Empire
Imperial history
was long viewed as merely a variety of British history, thanks
to Sir John Seeley's 1883 Expansion of England, in which he
projected the evolution of its empire as 'the great fact of
modern English history', reflecting Britain's contemporary
imperial apogee. However, in the century that has elapsed since
that heyday, decolonisation and economic and political globalisation
have recast imperial history as the history of empire(s), while
histories of colonialism have sought to provide a counterpoint
to the 'top down' emphasis of old-style imperial narratives.
As Elizabeth Buettner writes of Britain in her review of Catherine
Hall's edited volume, Cultures
of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries: A Reader (MUP, 2000), 'It is now
increasingly common to assert that empire was crucial to the
identity of colonizers as well as colonized, that Britain's
domestic and overseas histories cannot be disentangled, and
that imperial dimensions continue to be relevant in Britain
as well as former colonies in the wake of widescale decolonization
after the Second World War.' Indeed, as Robert Harris observes,
in considering the late Philip Lawson's collected essays in
A Taste for Empire
and Glory: Studies in British Overseas Expansion, 1660-1800
(Ashgate, 1997), 'The new history of empire is a history
of representation as well as of administration, politics, trade
and war. It is also a history that forces the historian to
cross boundaries between countries within as well as beyond
the British Isles.'
Accidental empires?
Seeley was perhaps less celebratory of British
imperial achievement than his reputation allows; he did for
example acknowledge the haphazardness of imperial expansion,
in observing 'We seem . to have conquered and peopled half
the world in a fit of absence of mind'. Indeed, modern histories
of imperialism have explored the uncertainty and instability
behind overseas expansion with enthusiasm; for example, Bruce
Lenman's England's
Colonial Wars 1550-1688/ Britain's Colonial Wars 1688-1783
(Longman, 2001) stress, as Peter J. Marshall notes in his
review that 'the outcome of England's and Britain's colonial
wars was never predictable and their consequences were rarely
what contemporaries intended.' Lenman, in his response, goes
further still: the 'whole assumption that official British
culture in the period 1688-1783 was stamped by a particularly
imperialistic outlook is itself very dubious'.
This historiographic turn away from intentional
imperialism is very marked in the field of late nineteenth-century
European colonial endeavour, which is now more often studied
through the lens of domestic politics, than it is considered
as a globalising phenomenon. The thesis of Amanda Sackur's
and Tony Chafer's edited volume, Promoting
the Colonial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France
(Palgrave, 2001) is, William Gervase Clarence-Smith contends,
'that empire was more theatre than substance for the West.
Expansion overseas was principally a way to paper over internal
cracks in the political and social fabric of industrialised
nation states' . A similar view is presented in Matthew Seligmann's
Rivalry in
Southern Africa: The Transformation of German Colonial Policy
(1998), reviewed by Annika Mombauer, who rehearses the
observation of the German politician, Bernhard von Bülow:
'the question is not whether we want to colonize or not, but
that we must colonize whether we want to or not'
Governing empires
Whether or not colonial territories have been
intentionally or accidentally acquired, imperial government
has also been subject to reexamination by 'new' historians
of empire. The ambivalent status of commercial companies like
the East India Company and its Dutch counterpart, the VOC in
the territories where they operated, has been subject to extensive
study; one of the more unusual investigations has been that
of Richard Grove, in his
Green Imperialism : Colonial Expansion , Tropical Island Edens
and the Origins of Environmentalism , 1600-1860 (CUP, 1996),
which Bill Luckin feels ably shows how 'the politics of environmental
exchange [throw] revealing light on larger social and political
issues - not least the highly complex and ambiguous status,
in relation to formal state structures, of the Dutch and English
East India Companies.'
Government in British India increasingly depended
upon military enforcement, underlining what Ian Beckett, in
his review of David Killingray and David Omissi, eds., Guardians
of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers, c.1700-1964
(MUP, 1999) calls 'the necessity of military power as the
basis for empire'. Beckett also praises Killingray and his
contributors for pointing up two further military consequences
of empire - the 'degree of collaboration ... upon the part
of indigenous recruits' who were 'cheaper' to sustain and less
expensive than domestic troops to lose; and, perhaps dependent
upon this last factor, the 'increasing role of colonial manpower
in the world wars of the twentieth century'.
The tension between imperial endeavour and
government, and nationalist aspirations is highlighted by Geoffrey
Hosking, in his Russia:
People and Empire 1552-1917 (Harper Collins, 1997); as
Peter Gatrell acknowledges in his review, 'In the process of
creating an empire, the existing institutions of community
that might otherwise have provided the basis for a "civic
sense of nationhood" were weakened and crushed.'. By contrast,
British urbanisation in the eighteenth century appears to have
been positively framed by imperial pursuits and administrative
and commercial agendas: Sarah Richardson, in her review of
Kathleen Wilson, The
Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England
1715-1785 (CUP, 1995), a study of urban politics and opposition
in Newcastle and Norwich, summarises 'Trade, empire and war
supported the political and cultural infrastructure of the
urban renaissance.'
Two works also attest to the problems engendered
by colonial governance - both military and civilian - back
in the 'homeland'. In discussing Sebastian Balfour's Deadly
Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War (OUP,
2002), which considers the role of Spanish troops in the
government of its hardwon Moroccan territories, Francisco J.
Romero Salvadó praises Balfour for providing 'a valid
model with which to understand the mentality and ideology of
the colonial corps and its potentially destabilising role when
confronted by metropolitan administrations.' Similarly disruptive
consequences, which Robert Harris sums up as 'the corrupting
effects of empire' are explored in Philip Lawson's explorations
of what Harris terms the 'rapacity and greed of servants of
the East India Company' and the impact upon the eighteenth
century British polity.
Economics of empire
The economic history of empires may be less
fashionable than more culturally-framed approaches, but that
has not stopped Niall Ferguson erecting a new history of how
'Britain made the modern world' on a superstructure of what
he terms economic 'anglobalisation', rather than upon issues
of exploitation, acculturation and oppression. Andrew Porter,
in his review of Ferguson's book and television series, Empire
(Penguin/ Channel 4, 2002/2003) with its emphasis upon
Britain's unprecedented role in the 'optimal allocation of
labour, capital and goods in the world' - is highly critical
of what he sees as a retrograde development, back towards a
Whiggish history of empire.
One of the areas which Porter sees Ferguson as neglecting is
the complexity of imperial infrastructures like slavery. As
David Richardson remarks in his review of Kenneth Morgan's
Slavery,
Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660-1800 (CUP, 2000),
'The relationship between slavery, colonialism, capital accumulation
and economic development has long been an issue that has exercised
political economists and economic historians' . These are far
from static debates, as continued attention to the issue of
Britain's unique industrialisation in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries and the role of slavery in that industrialisation,
witnesses. Richardson is indeed critical of Morgan's failure
to explore this in more critical detail, especially since he
does acknowledge other European countries' involvement in slavery
and the lack of industrialisation that states like France achieved.
Comparative analysis of Dutch and British experiences of imperial
development via commercial expansion is the subject of David
Ormrod's The Rise
of Commercial Empires (CUP, 2003); in his review, Pieter
Emmer broadly agrees with Ormrod's thesis that 'Britain seized
the imperial initiative by centralizing its economic and governmental
institutions at home and by decentralizing its commerce abroad',
while suggesting further examples of how the Dutch commerce
in the West Indies failed to be as dynamic as British ventures.
Experiencing empire
Just as economic histories of empire are increasingly
looking more comparatively and critically at the ways in which
colonisation and imperial governments were funded and managed,
so social and cultural historians have developed new routes
into exploring experiences of empire, of colonisers and colonised
- through studying contemporary media, cultural imports and
exports, gender, education and more. Disease and medicine is
one such route. Michael Worboys is intrigued by Sheldon Watts'
approach in his Epidemics
and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism (Yale UP, 1997),
which investigates the
'role of imperialism in creating the conditions in which major
epidemics developed, and the weak responses that colonial governments
made to these problems', across continents and chronology,
while Watts feels that Worboys' comments show an insufficient
appreciation of 'the extent of the cultural impact (to say
nothing of the disease impact on non-immunes) which even a
few well-armed colonialists could make on an indigenous culture.'
More positively, Mark Harrison's review of Jane Buckingham's
study, Leprosy
in Colonial South India: Medicine and Confinement (Palgrave,
2002) , concludes that such a topic can provide 'many useful
insights into the broader social and political dynamics of
imperialism', by demonstrating 'the growing sense that disease
was an imperial problem, rather than merely a local one'.
Another growth area for imperial history is gender. As Clare
Midgeley notes in her review of Julia Bush's
Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (Leicester UP, 2000),
gendered responses to empire were crucial to harness, at a
time when 'leading imperialists of the period were increasingly
turning their attention away from military conquest - the province
of men - towards building a settled, civilising Empire - a
project to which women were seen as vital'. And such approaches
are also important for the wider field of gender history: as
Julia Bush stresses in her response,
the predominant support for empire amongst upper-class women
and 'their refusal to fit comfortably within the established
paradigms of modern feminist history is a challenge to those
paradigms themselves'.
Yet there is some concern among historians that the perspectives
from which imperial experiences are drawn are becoming too
clearly set as opposites: the oppressors and the oppressed,
or the supporters and opponents. As Peter Marshall writes in
his review of David Cannadine's Ornamentalism:
How the British Saw their Empire (Allen Lane, 2001), 'Historians
have written a great deal about imperial enthusiasts ... and
a fair amount about the opponents of empire. They rarely write
about the great mass who were neither enthusiasts nor critics,
but 'went along'.
Colonial decline and decolonisation
With the dismantling of empires - whether Roman,
Mughal or Soviet - comes the need to study how and why such
break-ups occur, as well as critical attention to what happens
after imperial administrations have ceased to function. The
consequences of British imperial decline and decolonisation
in the middle of the last century are debated in Frank Heinlein's
book, British Government
Policy and Decolonisation 1945-1963 (Frank Cass, 2002),
in particular the management of what is termed 'informal empire'.
Its reviewer, John Kent, commends Heinlein for his 'perceptive
analysis of why the formal empire was abandoned' in favour
of a more informal network of influence: 'the appearance of
this influence was perceived as desirable by British policy
makers in ways which reflected something more than power measured
in military or economic strength.' Heinlein, in his response
to Kent, critiques the latter's use of terms like 'loss' and
'abandonment' in discussing British decolonisation, arguing
that the central tenet of his book is to show how this informal
empire survived upto and beyond the end of the period under
study, 'albeit in a strongly reduced form'.
A resurgence in nationalism is perceived as a natural corollary
to 'the movement away from dreams of imperial self-sufficiency'
(William Gervase Clarence Smith); at the same time as there
has been, in Europe at least, a movement towards greater federation
of, and cooperation between states. As Geoffrey Hosking notes
in his response
to Peter Gatrell's review of Russia: People and Empire 1552-1917
(Harper Collins, 1997), it is geography that has in part wrought
this change: for post-Soviet Russia 'There is no major geo-strategic
threat ..., such as requires it to remain an empire, still
less to try to recreate a former empire.' Perhaps it is geography
- human, political and economic - as much as trade, culture
and religion, which will shape historical approaches to empire
in the early twenty-first century, a factor which will surely
mean that the traditional identification of imperial history
with British history alone, will be left far behind.
|
| Foreword:
British Imperial History 'New' And
'Old'
In the
1970s it was commonplace to assume that the study of
British imperial history, like the British empire itself,
was on its last legs. Students, it was supposed, no longer
wished to study an irrelevant past; they were concerned
now not with vanished empires but with the history of
the peoples who had attained independence and for whom
the imperial experience had been a transitory interlude.
The situation at the end of the twentieth century is
very different. British imperial history is in apparently
robust health, widely studied in one form or another
in schools and in higher education.
In 1999 the North American Conference on British Studies
issued a report on ‘The State and Future of British
Studies’ in the United States and Canada. In general,
this report sounded an anxious note about the decline
in the study of British history. The history of the British
empire was, however, seen as an exception, where interest
was still running at a high level. In an uncertain world
for would-be academics on both sides of the Atlantic,
there seem to be clear indications that university departments
feel a need to employ historians of the British empire.
In Britain at least, it is posts in the pre-colonial
history of territories once incorporated into the empire
that now sadly go unfilled. British people of a certain
age and intellectual disposition tend to bewail the ignorance
of British school children of the British imperial past
about which they are said never to be taught. Such lamentations
are not well founded. The National Curriculum allows
provision for the study of imperial history at a number
of levels and the subject appears to be widely taught.
Far from being seen as dated and irrelevant, the history
of empire now seems to be intensely relevant not only
for understanding the historical evolution and present
state of countries once subjected to British imperial
rule but to the understanding of Britain itself. There
are many reasons why this might be so. The increasing
ethnic diversity of British society, the interest of
so many British people in family history that often involves
an imperial connection, the apparent similarities between
a contemporary global economic order underpinned by American
power and the role once played by Britain or the disillusionment
with the nation states that emerged from colonial rule
now felt by many Asian and African intellectuals –
all encourage the study of Britain’s imperial past.
A self-consciously ‘new’ imperial historiography
has contributed much to the present vitality of the subject,
proving extremely attractive to students in higher education.
Boundaries between ‘old’ and ‘new’
interpretations of a subject are usually somewhat nebulous,
existing largely in the eyes of their practitioners.
So it is with imperial history. Nevertheless, in crude
terms, the concerns of imperial history can be said to
have traditionally focused on political or economic domination:
that is, on the one hand, on military force, civil administration
and systems of rule and the eventual transfer of power,
and, on the other, on economic development or ‘exploitation’,
the special concern of a powerful Marxist tradition of
writing about imperialism. Cultural issues, such as education,
religious change or language policies, have also long
been the staples of imperial history. Indeed, Professor
John MacKenzie, who, through his own writing and the
Manchester University Press series 'Studies in Imperialism'
of which he is editor, has done so much to stimulate
the cultural history of modern British imperialism, has
distanced himself from the canonical works of the ‘new’
imperial history. Cultural history is, however, the defining
concern of the new historians. For them, political and
economic domination are assumed, but what interests them
is cultural domination, which they see as having had
a decisive effect both on the ruled and their rulers.
They start with the unexceptionable proposition that
domination involves more than physical or economic coercion;
it exists in the minds of the dominated and those who
dominate them. Obvious systems of domination are the
ordering of the world into hierarchies based on assumptions
about ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ races,
separated by immutable physiological differences, or
about stages of human progress, some peoples having attained
‘civilisation’ while others remain sunk in
‘barbarism’ or ‘savagery’, from
which they will only escape by outside intervention.
Such assumptions confirmed the rulers in their sense
of superiority and in their mission to bring about change,
while convincing, it was hoped, the ruled of their place
in the scheme of things.
The new imperial history, however, goes far beyond these
overt systems of mental domination. An imperial presence
is revealed in central works of the English literary
canon, such as Mansfield Park or Jane Eyre. Virtually
all claims to knowledge about the non-western world and
all attempts to ‘represent’ its peoples in
descriptive writing or in any form of art are exercises
of power and are assumed to be tainted by imperial assumptions.
Underlying such arguments is a rejection of claims to
knowledge that purport to reveal an objective reality.
Such claims constitute no more than the prevailing ‘discourses’
about a subject, which ultimately reflect the dominant
power in society. The mapping of colonial territories,
the writing of the history of their peoples or the collection
information about them through ethnographical or anthropological
researches – all were (and for many critics still
are) exercises of power.
Imperial ways of envisaging the world are thought to
have had a profound effect both on its colonies and on
Britain itself. Colonial elites of course rejected those
aspects of British thought that overtly consigned them
to inferiority. But they willingly imbibed its underlying
assumptions. British political and cultural norms became
their political and cultural norms. They suppressed their
own traditions or, more commonly, adopted distorted versions
of them, derived from British teaching. Their nationalism,
with its objective of a nation state, demonstrated the
intellectual thrall in which they were still held. Identities
are a prime concern of the new imperial history, which
sees nations not as primordial entities existing from
remote ages, but as imagined constructions, constantly
being reimagined with shifts of power. The colonial past
enabled the elites of new nations to define themselves,
but the imperial experience also defined Britain. The
British sense of themselves as a people came to depend
on the exercise of imperial power over others, whose
deficiencies highlighted Britain’s national virtues.
Empire, for instance, helped to shape British ideals
of masculine and feminine roles. With some justice, historians
of Britain are often accused of insularity in either
ignoring Britain’s imperial involvement or keeping
it segregated as a separate topic. For the new imperial
historians, British history without the empire makes
no sense at all.
New imperial historians are concerned not only with exposing
the all-pervasive influence of empire throughout the
world, but also put forward a programme for countering
that influence. The historian should not be content with
seeing the past through the eyes of the dominant elites,
but must try to recover the points of view of those suppressed
by imperial systems and their heirs, that is of ‘subaltern’
groups of the poor and dispossessed and of women. The
ultimate implication is that those who understand the
dead hand of the imperial legacy that has outlived the
empire in their own countries will be able to free themselves
from it, just as the British can free themselves of the
racism and chauvinistic nationalism they adopted with
empire.
It is not difficult to see why an intellectually ambitious
approach to the past, with obvious relevance to present
discontents, has proved so attractive. Yet those who
cannot accept its suppositions and who perforce are left
as practitioners of an ‘old’ imperial history
need not feel antagonistic to it. Still less need they
fear that it will make them redundant, unless it can
be countered. They should rather welcome the stimulus
that the new imperial history has given to the study
of the British empire, while also recognising that huge
areas of their subject remain largely outside its concerns;
and that within its chosen ground of cultural history
there is room for constructive disagreement and debate.
The military, political and above all the economic history
of the British empire cannot of course be taken as simply
the given background to cultural history. They are of
perennial interest in themselves and require constant
reassessment. Although the new imperial history, with
its scepticism about what can be known of the ‘real’
world, seems to have difficulty in engaging with economic
history, a discipline pre-eminently concerned with concrete
knowledge, imperial history without an economic dimension
is a very poor thing. Studies that draw on the new imperial
history have, for instance, convincingly demonstrated
connections between British medical doctrine about ‘tropical’
diseases and other assertions of imperial authority.
Nevertheless, the medical history of the British empire
is much more than the analysis of discourse. It has to
explain the inescapable reality of mass mortality in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
On the cultural history of empire, historians who are
outside the pale of the ‘new’ have much to
learn from those within it, especially a proficiency
in the close reading and interpretation of texts. They
can also welcome recent developments that have moved
on beyond the analysis of colonial knowledge, as in Edward
Said’s seminal Orientalism (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1978), as purely a construct of western dominance,
towards a view that accepts that the ruled as well as
the rulers took parts in producing a ‘hybrid’
knowledge of western and indigenous constructions. The
British in India did not, for instance, invent caste,
but put their own interpretations on existing doctrines
and practices.
There is, however, still room for disagreements. These
are mostly likely to arise from ‘old’ historians’
concern for context. However ingenious or convincing
the interpretation offered in ‘new’ studies
of particular texts or case studies, they seem on occasions
to be used to support generalisations that cannot easily
be sustained. The debate about empire and changing national
identity in Britain is, for example, still open for that
reason. Studies of individuals or even of localities
have revealed a high degree of awareness and commitment,
but they have to be set against other evidence of mass
ignorance or indifference. The subject as a whole can,
however, only gain from such debates. There seems to
be abundant room for both new and old within the spacious
mansion of a vibrant imperial history.
Professor Peter J. Marshall,
CBE, FBA, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History Emeritus,
King's College London. |
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|
British Empire & Commonwealth
Museum
Imperialism
and empire are words suddenly in vogue again. There
is a burgeoning of courses on empire and colonial studies
in the UK as well as in the US. In 1990 there was an
annual number of 47 historical publications relating
to empire. This had increased to 164 by 2000, and to
over 1000 by 2003 reflecting the changing political
climate as well as the general increase in history-related
publishing.
This growing interest has been
fuelled by media exposure, notably Niall Ferguson's
Empire TV series and book. Following the Prince of
Wales 2003 summer school, calling to reinstate Britain's
imperial past at the core secondary school curriculum,
an article cited a teacher's opinion that 'tales from
the imperial past would mean nothing to the many Balkan
refugee children she teaches' (Nicholas Pyke,
The Guardian, 5 July 2003).
I would endorse the call for
the return of empire as part of the history curriculum,
but more importantly, would urge all educators to consider
contextualising their teaching and seek relevant links
between the past and the present. The past did not
happen as a series of disconnected events that have
somehow stopped to make way for the present, even though
the way the National Curriculum is taught may make
it seem that way. It is dispiriting that teachers (hopefully
a minority) do not see the general relevance and issues
raised in a 500-year period that was so globally significant,
affecting a quarter of the world's surface and people.
Perhaps it is not a lack of vision, but a continuing
unease with the issues raised by the imperial legacy?
Embarrassment aside, it is a surprising lack of insight
not to recognize some of the patterns of the past resonating
in today's Pax Americana and in global issues of the
displacement of people and asylum seekers. There is
also a startling failure (fuelled, I believe, by ignorance)
to understand the legacy of the British empire reflected
in the multi-cultural Britain in which we live today
and to which refugees continue to come to be assimilated
. or not. Both historians and our museum visitors seem
to be further ahead in their thinking. Linda Colley
was quoted in the Times (17 August 2003), in the context
of Iraq as saying:
History has a way
of reminding you and it would have been useful if people
had thought more about the British empire in the Middle
East in the early twentieth century and how difficult
that had been before embarking on this. I think George
Bush, and indeed Tony Blair, should sit down with a
history book.
And a comment on
the visitor’s board at the museum refreshingly
states: ‘At last a museum which examines the
empire in context! This has a place in our history.
Let’s use this and learn from it.’
The history of empires (including
but not exclusively concerning the British), the control,
the conflicts and the stories of migration involved
in those histories are being mirrored throughout the
world today and I believe are particularly relevant
to refugees and asylum seekers. One of the most rewarding
things as Head of Education at the newly-opened British
Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol is to see people
- from all sorts of diverse backgrounds - finding something
in the story that speaks to them. For many young people,
particularly black and other minority groups, the school
syllabus does not help them understand their own sense
of self and their heritage: 'Thanks for showing me
a part of history my school has completely ignored',
Nick L., aged 12. The museum engenders in its visitors
both an emotional response and a degree of empathy
no matter what your personal perspective:
It is the first
time I've been in a museum dealing with the subject
of equity/inequity/ethnicity and seen black people
presented with dignity (their own true voice) - particularly
older black men and women. That more than any other
aspect of the museum was very emotional for me.
(Maria, Museum visitor)
The narrative of empire provides
a framework for understanding many of the issues of
the past, as well as those that continue to confront
society today. In our active schools' programme we
do not teach empire for empire's sake. Students can
embark on one of our 'learning journeys' exploring
historical topics such as Tudor navigation, Victorian
trade, or war and the Commonwealth. They can take part
in art and textile workshops, inspired by artefacts
from India or Africa, or look at global education issues
such as poverty and fair trade. The history of empire
contextualizes so much else, and looking back to see
what happened in the past can help us make sense of
the present and look forward to the future: 'A wonderful
museum. Our future is moulded by our past and it is
so important for us all to understand where we came
from. It is up to us all to move on and create a better
world.' (Kim, Midlands)
The ongoing legacy
of empire is, of course, the multi-cultural society
in which we live, as well as our language, sport, food,
dress and of course, our politics. Unlike many museums
with a particular local or a national focus, the British
Empire & Commonwealth Museum has a genuine international
angle. It can therefore inform our understanding of
how people perceive Britain today on the world stage.
Tellingly, 58% of our visitors rank language and artistic
culture as the most significant area of difference
to preserve between cultures, compared with only 31%
believing it is religion and moral values. One example
of how shortsighted our view of our 'place in the world'
is shown by the limited awareness there is among the
general public regarding the historical basis of the
Commonwealth. It exists as a significant non-political
system for sharing education and technology, promoting
international understanding and world peace across
54 independent states. It consists of 1.7 billion people
- that is 30% of the world's population - and over
a quarter of its land surface. Another example is the
limited knowledge of the consequences of our colonial
involvement in various territories. Very few Britons,
for example, realize that Palestine is a former British
colony gained after the First World War. Britain saw
no solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict (which still
continues today) and withdrew its forces in 1948. An
oral history project on the Palestine police (drawn
from Arab, Jewish and British backgrounds) carried
out with Oxford University will help improve public
awareness of some of this history and the ongoing issues
that derive from this British involvement.
Given that the
aim of the museum is to present neither a celebratory
nor a condemnatory picture of the empire, the overwhelmingly
positive press reviews since it opened suggest some
measure of success. It has been described as 'a valuable
and accessible narrative, imaginatively and carefully
told' (Gary Younge, 'Distant voices, still lives',
The
Guardian, 2 November 2002), and 'a brilliant new
museum' (Radio 4). Linda Colley suggested in the Sunday
Telegraph (27 October 2002) that there are valuable
lessons to be learnt from exploring such a history:
We may be in a
post-colonial world but we are not yet in a post-imperial
world. This museum could illuminate how empires work:
how a small polity like Britain was able through its
economy, navy and advanced communications to sprawl
over vast stretches of the globe. America is doing
the same thing today.
With such a vast
story to tell, there is little space for celebrating
the richness of multi-racial Britain today: over 300
languages and at least 14 faiths that exist among the
population of 60 million. The Museum covers stories
of mass movements of people, from slavery, to indentured
labour, partition and the two World Wars. The current
displacement of people throughout all parts of the
world and the issues they face share much in common
with this past. The issues are controversial - racism,
economic exploitation, and cultural imperialism. But
denial does not make them go away. Britons of all races
need to know this history, to make sense of modern
society and to move confidently into the future.
Katherine Hann
Head of Education and Interpretation,
British Empire & Commonwealth Museum
Station Approach,
Temple Meads,
Bristol, BS1 6QH
Tel: 0117 925 4980
Email: admin@empiremuseum.co.uk
Website: www.empiremuseum.co.uk
[The views expressed in this article are personal to
Katherine Hann and not necessarily those of her institution.]
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Empire on the Web
The
study of imperial and colonial history has a wide scope, covering
many centuries, continents, and cultures, and representation
on the Internet reflects this. The British Empire alone is
a subject with myriad routes of study and research, with the
possibility of concentrating on one facet, such as the military,
political, economic, or cultural history of the Empire. Assessment
of Britain's colonial history is also incomplete without the
consideration of the process of decolonisation, and its effects
across world history. The documentation of this very global
subject on the Internet is often disparate, although there
are several sites that view the Empire as a whole. The BBCi
web site The
British Empire is one of these, and whilst not absolutely
comprehensive it offers articles by leading historians on many
aspects of imperial history, and engaging interactive material.
The academic portal site British
Empire Studies also covers all the Empire, providing a
directory of resources and a general forum for researchers.
In addition, sites such as the British Library's Asia, Pacific
& Africa Collections
provide an excellent guide to their holdings of imperial and
colonial material, including the records of the East India
Company and the India Office.
Many sites have a far more singular focus,
concerning themselves with events in particular countries.
The Signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi site
is of this kind, documenting initial relations between the
British and the New Zealand Maori's.
In recent years there has been a movement
towards the research of the social and cultural history of
the British Empire, and the important contribution of colonial
subjects to British history. We Were There
explores the role of colonial subjects in the British Armed
Forces, and reminds that imperial history is not exclusively
about its white participants, whilst the Political Discourse: Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism site
is a useful reference guide to postcolonial theories, and
the cultural reaction of former colonies.
Of course, Great Britain was not the only
nation to have an empire, and despite a number of irritating
pop-ups, BoondocksNet.com is
a valuable site that reminds of the United States' own imperial
designs, and the corresponding anti-imperial movement.
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