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| Historians working towards a full imperial reckoning for Britain | Historians working towards a full imperial reckoning for Britain |
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| Afua Hirsch’s welcome call for a British museum of empire (Britain’s colonial crimes deserve a lasting memorial. Here’s why, 22 November) is helpfully, if unintentionally, supported by the prime minister’s description of Britain as “Zimbabwe’s oldest friend”: exactly the type of post-colonial amnesia that demonstrates a national failure to come to terms with our imperial past and the way it shapes the present. The brilliant African students I am privileged to teach are amazed at Britain’s ignorance and lack of recognition of the centrality of imperialism to their history and to ours, connected as it is by centuries of slavery, exploitation, occupation and migration. There is an urgent need to overcome the debacle of the Bristol empire museum, and for the state to support a new museum of British imperialism. | Afua Hirsch’s welcome call for a British museum of empire (Britain’s colonial crimes deserve a lasting memorial. Here’s why, 22 November) is helpfully, if unintentionally, supported by the prime minister’s description of Britain as “Zimbabwe’s oldest friend”: exactly the type of post-colonial amnesia that demonstrates a national failure to come to terms with our imperial past and the way it shapes the present. The brilliant African students I am privileged to teach are amazed at Britain’s ignorance and lack of recognition of the centrality of imperialism to their history and to ours, connected as it is by centuries of slavery, exploitation, occupation and migration. There is an urgent need to overcome the debacle of the Bristol empire museum, and for the state to support a new museum of British imperialism. |
| There are, however, reasons to be hopeful. Hirsch has many allies in Britain’s universities, which are in the forefront of uncovering Britain’s imperial past: UCL’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership database, featured in David Olusoga’s excellent television work, has systematically uncovered the centrality of slavery to Britain’s economy and society; David Anderson, now of Warwick University, revealed the cover-up of Britain’s torture of Mau Mau detainees; at Oxford, where the university has been helpfully prompted by Rhodes Must Fall to consider its own imperial past, we have an innovative new project which is providing resources for school teaching of imperial, African and BAME British history. | There are, however, reasons to be hopeful. Hirsch has many allies in Britain’s universities, which are in the forefront of uncovering Britain’s imperial past: UCL’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership database, featured in David Olusoga’s excellent television work, has systematically uncovered the centrality of slavery to Britain’s economy and society; David Anderson, now of Warwick University, revealed the cover-up of Britain’s torture of Mau Mau detainees; at Oxford, where the university has been helpfully prompted by Rhodes Must Fall to consider its own imperial past, we have an innovative new project which is providing resources for school teaching of imperial, African and BAME British history. |
| In schools too, where imperial history has for so long been marginalised, progress is being made. This year, some GCSE students will take a new option course called Migration, Empires and the People that explains Britain’s history since AD970 to the present day as one of constant changes in population and identity and of empire as central to those changes. We are not yet close to a full imperial reckoning, but the arc of history is being bent in the right direction.Miles LarmerProfessor of African history, University of Oxford | |
| • In her interesting piece about perceptions of British history, Afua Hirsch mentions a unique empire museum in Bristol, “which closed in 2008 to relocate to London, never to surface again”. The museum’s story is more hopeful than this might imply, and it’s one that with encouragement could yet end with a proper public representation of such a core part of our history and culture. | |
| The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum opened in 2002 at Bristol Temple Meads railway station, overseen by distinguished trustees. It closed in 2008, after it emerged that its director had been selling items from its collection. He said money thus raised went towards supporting an underfunded institution. It is thought that 100–150 pieces were sold, and Bristol Museums is looking out for any that come to light. | The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum opened in 2002 at Bristol Temple Meads railway station, overseen by distinguished trustees. It closed in 2008, after it emerged that its director had been selling items from its collection. He said money thus raised went towards supporting an underfunded institution. It is thought that 100–150 pieces were sold, and Bristol Museums is looking out for any that come to light. |
| However, the bulk of the large collection survives intact at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and at Bristol Archives. It is an extraordinary and precious record, including artefacts, documents, film and some half a million photos, from which a selection can now be seen in Empire Through the Lens at Bristol Museum. The exhibit follows a three-year cataloguing project, which deserves to be expanded with funding to research and conserve the entire collection, and ultimately give it the presence and status it deserves.Mike PittsEditor, British Archaeology | |
| • Afua Hirsch’s article was a prime example of how not to write about history. Again and again, she opposes the myth of the “noble empire” with other myths, instead of genuine “inconvenient facts”. The great irony is that a source of many of those myths is the British habit of public complaint. For example, Robert Clive’s “pillage” was the subject of vociferous campaigns when he returned from India, but the truth was far more complicated, as Warren Hastings and others found when they attempted to get a grip on the situation in Bengal. Concentration camps were not a British innovation: even the term was just an English translation of the Spanish reconcentración (and the contemporary complaints, fully justified though they were, effectively paved the way for the later deliberate blurring of the distinction between “concentration” and “extermination”). | • Afua Hirsch’s article was a prime example of how not to write about history. Again and again, she opposes the myth of the “noble empire” with other myths, instead of genuine “inconvenient facts”. The great irony is that a source of many of those myths is the British habit of public complaint. For example, Robert Clive’s “pillage” was the subject of vociferous campaigns when he returned from India, but the truth was far more complicated, as Warren Hastings and others found when they attempted to get a grip on the situation in Bengal. Concentration camps were not a British innovation: even the term was just an English translation of the Spanish reconcentración (and the contemporary complaints, fully justified though they were, effectively paved the way for the later deliberate blurring of the distinction between “concentration” and “extermination”). |
| Leaving aside the notion that the British slave trade merely tapped into an existing system (and that, globally, the British preferred not to use slaves if they could avoid it), the argument that “having a couple of slavery-focused museums … sets the issue apart from the mainstream of British history” misses the obvious point that the resources for the study of British slavery are far more widespread than that. Visit a historic mansion these days and you’re likely to find some sort of display or guidebook article showing how it was financed. Visit a museum about the rum trade and you’ll find no attempt to hide the misery of the sugar plantations. Watch Who Do You Think You Are and the slave trade will be featured whenever it’s relevant. | Leaving aside the notion that the British slave trade merely tapped into an existing system (and that, globally, the British preferred not to use slaves if they could avoid it), the argument that “having a couple of slavery-focused museums … sets the issue apart from the mainstream of British history” misses the obvious point that the resources for the study of British slavery are far more widespread than that. Visit a historic mansion these days and you’re likely to find some sort of display or guidebook article showing how it was financed. Visit a museum about the rum trade and you’ll find no attempt to hide the misery of the sugar plantations. Watch Who Do You Think You Are and the slave trade will be featured whenever it’s relevant. |
| The truth about Britain’s empire(s) is, in an astonishing number of ways, inconvenient for everybody, and for the myths they make about their history.David BradburyWhitehaven, Cumbria | The truth about Britain’s empire(s) is, in an astonishing number of ways, inconvenient for everybody, and for the myths they make about their history.David BradburyWhitehaven, Cumbria |
| • We already have a museum of empire: the British Museum in London, a collection celebrating the British empire and its predecessors with symbols of power collected (in various degrees of legality) from around the world. It simply needs relabelling. Maybe they can start with a radio series called The True History of Imperialism in 100 Objects, focusing on the people who suffered in the creation and display of them.Michael PeelAxbridge, Somerset | |
| • Penrhyn Castle (Spanish masterpiece found in National Trust Welsh castle, 20 November) was built on the backs of slavery. A series of anti-slavery meetings was held in 1823 at Swansea town hall; Swansea was the largest, most committed of anti-slavery societies in Wales. The local press reported that topics under discussion were, apart from various petitions, the West Indies question, the sugar plantations and the involvement of the Welsh slave-owning Caernarfon family, the Pennants of Penrhyn Castle. Meetings like these were political hot potatoes locally. Thomas Clarkson, the anti-slavery campaigner and prominent abolitionist, kept a diary of his tour of Wales to gauge the level of anti-slavery sentiment. It states that he had encountered problems in Caernarfon as there were only six (anti-slavery supporters) present at the meeting. This may have been because the Pennants of Penrhyn Castle were employers of large numbers of local people who may have been warned off by their employer from getting involved in politics. Clarkson states that “Wm Pennant, the heir of Lord Penrhyn, a man of £50,000 per annum, is quite against us in consequence of being a very large West Indian proprietor”. | |
| When I made an early research visit to Penrhyn Castle, I found a party of Americans being shown around by a tour guide. I attached myself to the group and asked why he had not mentioned from where the wealth of the castle had originated. “Madam,” he said, “we do not mention such things, and I am sure you like sugar in your tea.” The group turned its attention to me and I politely started to mention the word slavery when the tour guide said it was time for me to leave. I believe the National Trust has caught up now with the castle’s past history.Jen WilsonUniversity of Wales Trinity St David | |
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| • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters | • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters |
| • The final letter above was amended on 29 November 2017. An earlier version spelled Caernarfon as Caernarvon. |