As you say, your previous book Empireland<\/em> \u2013 which focused on how imperial history has shaped Britain \u2013 received an intense reaction. How did it feel being in that spotlight, and did it shape this book?<\/h3>\nIt felt weird, but varied day to day. Sometimes I\u2019d receive abuse but find it funny; on other occasions, it really got to me. I\u2019d
\n- Read more | The British empire in 1923: the story of the imperial project\u2019s territorial height<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But the positives have been incredible. I\u2019ve met young people who are studying history because of Empireland<\/em>, which is really inspiring. But it can also be overwhelming, and it did create pressure when I was writing this sequel. In fact, I\u2019ve felt pressure on multiple fronts. You might have noticed that the book\u2019s footnotes are quite extensive \u2013 probably more than you\u2019d get in your average history title. That\u2019s because I\u2019m paranoid: I know there are people out there who want to undermine and ridicule me, so I wanted to make sure I showed up with the receipts.<\/p>\nDo you think there\u2019s a danger of accuracy being lost, on all sides of this debate?<\/h3>\n
Absolutely. Defending empire is not a new thing: it\u2019s as old as empire itself. But I think that it has gone further than ever in recent years, with nostalgic books about the British empire being published that ignore facts, use selective quotes, or ignore the consensus that has been built up by historians of the empire. I feel that\u2019s taken this nostalgia into a dark place \u2013 into what is essentially fake history. And that scares me.<\/p>\n
Is the conversation we have about empire in Britain different from those that are going on elsewhere in the world?<\/h3>\n
The legacies of empire are much more tangible outside Britain than in it. People live with them on a daily basis. For instance, I think the issue of reparations is often viewed in Britain as an academic, absurd argument, whereas in the Caribbean it\u2019s a very real political conversation.<\/p>\n
British people don\u2019t often know about the royal family\u2019s involvement in slavery, either: the fact that the Royal African Company sent more enslaved people across the Atlantic than any other institution in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, for instance. Yet it\u2019s quite well understood in the Caribbean, which led \u2013 for example \u2013 to the awkwardness surrounding the 2022 visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The fact that they stood touching black children through a wire fence, for instance, was instantly seen as wrong by many people in the Caribbean, but I think it took a while for the penny to drop in Britain.<\/p>\n
![\"Prince]( "\\"Prince")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Prince William and Katherine in Jamaica, 2022. The trip was criticised for its perceived PR missteps \u2013 such as this image of the couple meeting local children. (Photo by Chris Jackson-Pool\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nDebates about empire in Britain also tend to be about the idea of a balance sheet: the extent to which it was \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019. That\u2019s just not the way it\u2019s being talked about elsewhere in the world, and it\u2019s an absurd way of looking at history. It\u2019s like studying the climate over the past 350 years by only looking at the sunshine or only studying the rain. It\u2019d be better if you studied both, and all the stuff in between. But we don\u2019t do that in Britain: we look at the empire in a black-and-white way that just re-enacts imperial tensions between colonisers and the colonised. I think we need to break free of that really babyish way of looking at history. The extent of the royal family\u2019s links to empire is an example of how its legacy can provoke strong feelings and debate.<\/p>\n
Is it right to say a key argument of your book is that a story can have two sides?<\/h3>\n
My overall argument is that opposite things can be true at the same time. Whatever you think about the British empire\u2019s legacies, I think the opposite is also true to a certain degree. Yes, we were heavily involved in slavery, but that also led to the antislavery movement. British presence in its former imperial territories sometimes resulted in democracy, but also to a huge amount of geopolitical chaos. We spread the free press, but also censorship.<\/p>\n
These kind of contradictions are everywhere. I realised that the legacies of empire are almost entirely contradictory, and we don\u2019t need to balance them against each other \u2013 we can talk about both at the same time.<\/p>\n
You write that you had doubts about the legitimacy of some of the commonly identified legacies of slavery and empire. What were those doubts?<\/h3>\n
The legacies cited by the Caricom countries [a political and economic union of 15 nations in the Americas and Atlantic Ocean] in their demands for reparations \u2013 including, for instance, the high rates of diabetes \u2013 are all things that I agree with. Britain transformed that part of the world, turned it into a hub of industrial sugar production, and took loads of enslaved people there. Of course poor health in the region is a legacy of that slavery.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | Slavery\u2019s painful legacy: the British empire\u2019s role in the trade of enslaved people<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But you sometimes hear people saying their workaholism is due to the fact that they are a descendant of an enslaved person, or that PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is handed down multiple generations, which quickly leads to arguments about whether trauma can be inherited. There, I think, the links are much less clear. In your chapter on the role of the British empire in spreading racism around the world, you pre-empt the objections some readers might have to it.<\/p>\n
Was that one of the topics you were most apprehensive about tackling?<\/h3>\n
I think you are always going to be influenced by your personal experience. I occasionally get accused of being biased, but every historian is biased. Politics is just the way you see the world, and it affects my viewpoint just as it does anyone\u2019s.<\/p>\n
I would say, though, that my politics are actually quite centrist. I\u2019m a classic Centrist Dad: I\u2019ve voted for all three of Britain\u2019s major political parties. For some people, on the left and on the right, that might make me extreme. But I\u2019d argue my views are mainstream, and what I write about race in the book pretty much reflects the view of most imperial historians.<\/p>\n
![\"Dancers]( "\\"Dancers")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Dancers at a London jazz club, 1949. We need to understand the history of empire to make sense of British multiculturalism, says Sathnam Sanghera. (Photo by Charles Hewitt\/Picture Post\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOne of the key points is that we forget that, when \u2018race science\u2019 emerged in the 19th century, it had a distinctly British flavour. It became something different and dark in Germany, and something else again in the United States, but our empire was often the testbed for all of those weird theories. I\u2019m Sikh, and my community was subject to the idea that it was in some way a \u2018martial race\u2019. That\u2019s obviously absurd \u2013 as you can see, there\u2019s nothing martial about me \u2013 but you can see the idea of characterising races elsewhere, too. Some Brits decided that black people would only work if compelled, or that it didn\u2019t matter if Tasmanian people were wiped out because they were regarded as the lowest of the low.<\/p>\n
But at the same time this racism was going on \u2013 most clearly manifested, I think, in Rudyard Kipling<\/a>\u2019s 1899 poem The White Man\u2019s Burden<\/em> \u2013 the British empire officially regarded itself as non-racist. This is another way in which opposites are true: sometimes when colonists and settlers behaved in a particularly racist way, people in London became concerned and tried to intervene. So you had racism and anti-racism playing out at the same time. The empire was different things at different times and in different parts of the world. That\u2019s how deeply complex a subject it is.<\/p>\nWhy do you think we struggle to have a conversation about empire in Britain?<\/h3>\n
It\u2019s partly because empire happened abroad. We\u2019ve never had a dark night of the soul, or even a light night of the soul, in which we have had to think about its legacies, because it all happened elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | The Victorians and the British Empire: a brief guide and timeline<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I also think it\u2019s because a lot of people in Britain have direct family links to empire, whether to the colonisers or the colonised. So a conversation about the empire can start to feel deeply personal very quickly. People sometimes think you\u2019re accusing them or their ancestors personally of being racist and horrible. That\u2019s not what\u2019s being said, but it\u2019s often the way it\u2019s taken.<\/p>\n
Do you think there are things we can do to change the political conversation?<\/h3>\n
I think we can end the \u2018culture war\u2019 that\u2019s been going on. This absurd idea that you need to be proud of British history to be proud of being British has become quite popular among rightwing pressure groups and some sections of the political classes. To draw pride from your history is not the same thing as understanding it, so we need to uncouple pride from our history \u2013 and shame, too, because there are lots of people who say we should be ashamed of British history because of what we did. I don\u2019t think our feelings of pride or shame have anything to do with it. We need to get rid of our feelings and reach a deeper understanding of what happened.<\/p>\n
What would you say to people who don\u2019t see this as a culture war, but instead that negative changes are being made to the way that Britain sees itself?<\/h3>\n
I would encourage them to look at the example of Ireland. Ireland was an imperial territory and the Good Friday Agreement<\/a> was an exercise in postcolonial reconciliation, which involved the issuing of apologies and even reparations of a sort. I\u2019d say Ireland is now a much healthier nation because of that process, and I think that the same could happen to our relationships with other countries around the world if we underwent a similar process with them, too. There are practical things that we can do to understand the world better, and to have better relations with the rest of the planet.<\/p>\nHave you encountered instances in which you\u2019ve been able to persuade people to change their mind? How possible is it to change people\u2019s views on this subject?<\/h3>\n
I work on The Times<\/em>, which is a centre-right newspaper, and people often ask me: \u2018Why don\u2019t you just go and work at The Guardian<\/em>?\u2019 But I like working on The Times<\/em> partly because I can feel the resistance to what I\u2019m saying. Sometimes that resistance results in racial abuse and horrible letters, and sometimes I feel scared for my safety, but at the same time, I can definitely feel people\u2019s minds changing. I get letters from people in their 70s and 80s who say I\u2019ve helped them understand that something they were taught in school wasn\u2019t true, or that the reality was much more complex. I really value that, even if it sometimes comes at a personal cost.<\/p>\nHow would you like people to think and feel about the history of the British empire as a result of reading your book?<\/h3>\n
I hope people realise that the legacies of empire are profoundly contradictory \u2013 but also that this isn\u2019t a history that divides us, but one that ultimately unites us. So many people in Britain today have deep links to this history, whether \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019. It explains our multiculturalism \u2013 and our racism, too. It explains our daily habits, whether it\u2019s drinking tea (which I\u2019m drinking now) or rum (which, to be clear, I\u2019m not). It\u2019s a history that unites us, explains us and that, actually, can liberate us.<\/p>\n
You can listen to Sathnam Sanghera speak to Matt Elton in this HistoryExtra podcast episode<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n
But the positives have been incredible. I\u2019ve met young people who are studying history because of Empireland<\/em>, which is really inspiring. But it can also be overwhelming, and it did create pressure when I was writing this sequel. In fact, I\u2019ve felt pressure on multiple fronts. You might have noticed that the book\u2019s footnotes are quite extensive \u2013 probably more than you\u2019d get in your average history title. That\u2019s because I\u2019m paranoid: I know there are people out there who want to undermine and ridicule me, so I wanted to make sure I showed up with the receipts.<\/p>\n Absolutely. Defending empire is not a new thing: it\u2019s as old as empire itself. But I think that it has gone further than ever in recent years, with nostalgic books about the British empire being published that ignore facts, use selective quotes, or ignore the consensus that has been built up by historians of the empire. I feel that\u2019s taken this nostalgia into a dark place \u2013 into what is essentially fake history. And that scares me.<\/p>\n The legacies of empire are much more tangible outside Britain than in it. People live with them on a daily basis. For instance, I think the issue of reparations is often viewed in Britain as an academic, absurd argument, whereas in the Caribbean it\u2019s a very real political conversation.<\/p>\n British people don\u2019t often know about the royal family\u2019s involvement in slavery, either: the fact that the Royal African Company sent more enslaved people across the Atlantic than any other institution in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, for instance. Yet it\u2019s quite well understood in the Caribbean, which led \u2013 for example \u2013 to the awkwardness surrounding the 2022 visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The fact that they stood touching black children through a wire fence, for instance, was instantly seen as wrong by many people in the Caribbean, but I think it took a while for the penny to drop in Britain.<\/p>\n Debates about empire in Britain also tend to be about the idea of a balance sheet: the extent to which it was \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019. That\u2019s just not the way it\u2019s being talked about elsewhere in the world, and it\u2019s an absurd way of looking at history. It\u2019s like studying the climate over the past 350 years by only looking at the sunshine or only studying the rain. It\u2019d be better if you studied both, and all the stuff in between. But we don\u2019t do that in Britain: we look at the empire in a black-and-white way that just re-enacts imperial tensions between colonisers and the colonised. I think we need to break free of that really babyish way of looking at history. The extent of the royal family\u2019s links to empire is an example of how its legacy can provoke strong feelings and debate.<\/p>\n My overall argument is that opposite things can be true at the same time. Whatever you think about the British empire\u2019s legacies, I think the opposite is also true to a certain degree. Yes, we were heavily involved in slavery, but that also led to the antislavery movement. British presence in its former imperial territories sometimes resulted in democracy, but also to a huge amount of geopolitical chaos. We spread the free press, but also censorship.<\/p>\n These kind of contradictions are everywhere. I realised that the legacies of empire are almost entirely contradictory, and we don\u2019t need to balance them against each other \u2013 we can talk about both at the same time.<\/p>\n The legacies cited by the Caricom countries [a political and economic union of 15 nations in the Americas and Atlantic Ocean] in their demands for reparations \u2013 including, for instance, the high rates of diabetes \u2013 are all things that I agree with. Britain transformed that part of the world, turned it into a hub of industrial sugar production, and took loads of enslaved people there. Of course poor health in the region is a legacy of that slavery.<\/p>\n But you sometimes hear people saying their workaholism is due to the fact that they are a descendant of an enslaved person, or that PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is handed down multiple generations, which quickly leads to arguments about whether trauma can be inherited. There, I think, the links are much less clear. In your chapter on the role of the British empire in spreading racism around the world, you pre-empt the objections some readers might have to it.<\/p>\n I think you are always going to be influenced by your personal experience. I occasionally get accused of being biased, but every historian is biased. Politics is just the way you see the world, and it affects my viewpoint just as it does anyone\u2019s.<\/p>\n I would say, though, that my politics are actually quite centrist. I\u2019m a classic Centrist Dad: I\u2019ve voted for all three of Britain\u2019s major political parties. For some people, on the left and on the right, that might make me extreme. But I\u2019d argue my views are mainstream, and what I write about race in the book pretty much reflects the view of most imperial historians.<\/p>\n One of the key points is that we forget that, when \u2018race science\u2019 emerged in the 19th century, it had a distinctly British flavour. It became something different and dark in Germany, and something else again in the United States, but our empire was often the testbed for all of those weird theories. I\u2019m Sikh, and my community was subject to the idea that it was in some way a \u2018martial race\u2019. That\u2019s obviously absurd \u2013 as you can see, there\u2019s nothing martial about me \u2013 but you can see the idea of characterising races elsewhere, too. Some Brits decided that black people would only work if compelled, or that it didn\u2019t matter if Tasmanian people were wiped out because they were regarded as the lowest of the low.<\/p>\n But at the same time this racism was going on \u2013 most clearly manifested, I think, in Rudyard Kipling<\/a>\u2019s 1899 poem The White Man\u2019s Burden<\/em> \u2013 the British empire officially regarded itself as non-racist. This is another way in which opposites are true: sometimes when colonists and settlers behaved in a particularly racist way, people in London became concerned and tried to intervene. So you had racism and anti-racism playing out at the same time. The empire was different things at different times and in different parts of the world. That\u2019s how deeply complex a subject it is.<\/p>\n It\u2019s partly because empire happened abroad. We\u2019ve never had a dark night of the soul, or even a light night of the soul, in which we have had to think about its legacies, because it all happened elsewhere.<\/p>\n I also think it\u2019s because a lot of people in Britain have direct family links to empire, whether to the colonisers or the colonised. So a conversation about the empire can start to feel deeply personal very quickly. People sometimes think you\u2019re accusing them or their ancestors personally of being racist and horrible. That\u2019s not what\u2019s being said, but it\u2019s often the way it\u2019s taken.<\/p>\n I think we can end the \u2018culture war\u2019 that\u2019s been going on. This absurd idea that you need to be proud of British history to be proud of being British has become quite popular among rightwing pressure groups and some sections of the political classes. To draw pride from your history is not the same thing as understanding it, so we need to uncouple pride from our history \u2013 and shame, too, because there are lots of people who say we should be ashamed of British history because of what we did. I don\u2019t think our feelings of pride or shame have anything to do with it. We need to get rid of our feelings and reach a deeper understanding of what happened.<\/p>\n I would encourage them to look at the example of Ireland. Ireland was an imperial territory and the Good Friday Agreement<\/a> was an exercise in postcolonial reconciliation, which involved the issuing of apologies and even reparations of a sort. I\u2019d say Ireland is now a much healthier nation because of that process, and I think that the same could happen to our relationships with other countries around the world if we underwent a similar process with them, too. There are practical things that we can do to understand the world better, and to have better relations with the rest of the planet.<\/p>\n I work on The Times<\/em>, which is a centre-right newspaper, and people often ask me: \u2018Why don\u2019t you just go and work at The Guardian<\/em>?\u2019 But I like working on The Times<\/em> partly because I can feel the resistance to what I\u2019m saying. Sometimes that resistance results in racial abuse and horrible letters, and sometimes I feel scared for my safety, but at the same time, I can definitely feel people\u2019s minds changing. I get letters from people in their 70s and 80s who say I\u2019ve helped them understand that something they were taught in school wasn\u2019t true, or that the reality was much more complex. I really value that, even if it sometimes comes at a personal cost.<\/p>\n I hope people realise that the legacies of empire are profoundly contradictory \u2013 but also that this isn\u2019t a history that divides us, but one that ultimately unites us. So many people in Britain today have deep links to this history, whether \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019. It explains our multiculturalism \u2013 and our racism, too. It explains our daily habits, whether it\u2019s drinking tea (which I\u2019m drinking now) or rum (which, to be clear, I\u2019m not). It\u2019s a history that unites us, explains us and that, actually, can liberate us.<\/p>\n You can listen to Sathnam Sanghera speak to Matt Elton in this HistoryExtra podcast episode<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nDo you think there\u2019s a danger of accuracy being lost, on all sides of this debate?<\/h3>\n
Is the conversation we have about empire in Britain different from those that are going on elsewhere in the world?<\/h3>\n
![\"Prince](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-1387171236-CMYK-b62279a-e1713187472638.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Prince")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Is it right to say a key argument of your book is that a story can have two sides?<\/h3>\n
You write that you had doubts about the legitimacy of some of the commonly identified legacies of slavery and empire. What were those doubts?<\/h3>\n
\n
Was that one of the topics you were most apprehensive about tackling?<\/h3>\n
![\"Dancers](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/04\/GettyImages-1465821327-CMYK-6c919c7-e1713187399537.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"Dancers")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Why do you think we struggle to have a conversation about empire in Britain?<\/h3>\n
\n
Do you think there are things we can do to change the political conversation?<\/h3>\n
What would you say to people who don\u2019t see this as a culture war, but instead that negative changes are being made to the way that Britain sees itself?<\/h3>\n
Have you encountered instances in which you\u2019ve been able to persuade people to change their mind? How possible is it to change people\u2019s views on this subject?<\/h3>\n
How would you like people to think and feel about the history of the British empire as a result of reading your book?<\/h3>\n