Imperial ghosts
We live in a time when the question of how we should look back at the British empire is, to say the very least, contested. Here was an empire that, in 1913, held sway over more than 410 million people, close to a quarter of the world’s population. And here is a history that, as writer Sathnam Sanghera explored in his book Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain, still helps to shape our culture and politics.
It’s an idea Sanghera picks up again for a two-part documentary that sees him travelling across Britain and meeting people from a variety of walks of life. How do they view Britain’s age of empire?
There’s a personal element, too. Sanghera’s family arrived in the UK in 1968, a time of overt racism. An MP for his home town was Enoch Powell, who that year gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech.
A key question underpins the series: might Britons be able to look back at the most troubling aspects of the country’s imperial past, see them clearly, and truly come to terms with this history?