When King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrived in Samoa to officiate at the Com- monwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) in late October, they probably little realised the strength of feeling that was percolating among a number of the participants. The underlying sentiment, notably among the Caribbean nations, was a determination to address the issue of slavery reparations. It was undoubt- edly appropriate that this issue should be discussed at the Commonwealth, a descendent of the British Empire in which the formerly colonised now far outnumber their former colonisers.
In recent years the legacy of slavery – and Empire at large – has returned with a vengeance. In the UK, the global Black Lives Matter movement found its great- est visual expression in the toppling of a six-metre bronze statue of former slaver Edward Colston, whose likeness was sub-sequently dragged and thrown into the harbour at Bristol, once one of the most prosperous ports of the Atlantic slave trade.
Colston, a director of the Royal African Company, was long feted as a philan- thropist, with schools, concert halls and streets all named after him in Bristol. The symbolic toppling showed that old certainties are being challenged.
So it comes as little surprise that Car- ibbean nations are also examining the impact of slavery on their societies and economies – and putting the issue of reparations front and centre.
A different form of slavery
In an incisive chapter of this wide-rang- ing book, “What about slavery?”, Bron- wen Everill, the director of the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge University, writes: “Atlantic slavery, in which the British Empire participated, was differ- ent from other forms of slavery in both its scale and its contribution to financial development.” But The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism – edited by Alan Lester, professor of historical geography at the University of Sussex – does not only tackle the legacy of slavery. The recent openness to discussing tough issues of the UK’s past extends to the Empire at large.
The interests of the book’s contributors extend to China, India, Australia and Can- ada. Seven chapters tackle “the realities of colonialism around the world,” while five chapters offer surveys on “historiography and race”.
As to be expected in a book which is advertised as a riposte to “history’s ap- propriation by apologists, racists and culture warrior,” the essays focus on the bloodier incidents and eras of colonialism.
The slaughter of the original inhabit- ants of Tasmania, described as a geno- cide, is sharply drawn by Lyndall Ryan. Other historians tackle the “civilising mission” in colonial India, Stamford Raf- fles in Southeast Asia, Imperial Britain’s relations with China, and the “misuse” of indigenous history in Canada.
No account of the more shameful as- pects of colonialism would be complete without a nod to the South African War – and Saul Dubow’s essay on Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner and the South African War offers damning insight into colonialism at its most mercenary.
Culture warriors?
While the book offers useful historical snapshots in its own right, as a whole it is largely set up as a challenge to recent texts that offer a more generous interpre- tation of colonial history, such as Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. In his foreword, Lester says the book “al- lows other specialist historians to engage specifically with Biggar’s popular moral defence of British colonialism and con- sider what has happened to their fields of research more broadly in recent culture war discourse”.
The argument that historians are des- perate to avoid getting their hands dirty in a culture war suffuses Lester’s earnest introduction, which argues that right- wing attacks threaten academic history.
“Lately our field has become a battle- field in a culture war, but we have not come together to fuel the divisions. We doubt that many committed participants in the culture war will change their minds about Britain’s colonial past because of the historical evidence we supply and our interpretation of it.
“The culture war is about politics rath- er than historical understanding. For its most avid participants, interpretations of the past are simply a weapon to be wield-ed in a struggle between progressive and reactionary philosophies and instincts.”
Staying with the evidence
Instead, Lester insists that academics in this book entered the fray out of a “gen- uine curiosity” about the colonial past rather than a bid to wade into political debate. “We are intent on telling the truth based on the evidence we have analysed and debated over many years. We leave it to readers to judge the strength of our analysis and decide how those truths should be deployed in the dilemmas fac- ing society today.”
By contrast, he argues: “For culture warriors, where one stands on Britain’s colonial history is determined by one’s political orientation, not by serious re- search or interest.”
It’s a combative intro, and one that serves as a platform for the book’s shock- ing and well-researched material on the Empire. But whether it represents a diver- sion from the culture wars, or an immer- sion in them, remains up for debate. n
Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. ( Syndigate.info ).
إرسال تعليق