Sathnam Sanghera's Empireworld: How British imperialism shaped the globe

Downing Street which has been called the smallest yet the greatest, street in the world. There was a time when London wasn't just the capital of Britain. It was the capital of the quarter of the world. Out of the twin centres of imperial administration. So, in the shadow of Westminster, some Jamesys Park stands, surrounded by the key buildings of the empire, and by memories of London's historic past. The British Empire was so vast, it shaped and influenced the rest of the world. And it still impacts our everyday lives, even now. And yet, we don't teach its history in schools. And when it is talked about, it's usually as part of a cultural war. It seems to me that the only snowflakes here are the people wishing to sanitise and rewrite our history. This kind of revisionism that comes from this concept of almost an anti-British kind of rhetoric that we're being asked to teach in schools, that we're being asked to push through our institutions. I don't think that's right. But to understand modern Britain, and our place in the world, we really need to step back and take a more nuanced look at the legacy of the British Empire, and how it's still playing out now across the globe. I don't think you can really understand the world without understanding the history of British Empire. Today, we hear from the Times writer and author, Satnam Sanghera, who's just written the book on Empire. You're listening to stories of our Times from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm Manvim Rana. Today, how the British Empire changed the world. I'm Satnam Sanghera. I'm a writer for the Times. And I'm also the author of a new book called Empire World. How British Imperialism has shaped the globe. And Satnam, this book really comes out of a holiday you took. Tell us a bit about that. Yeah, it was a holiday to Barbados about two years ago. It was my first holiday in years, also as escaping the intense positivity and negativity that came with my last book, Empire Land. And the idea was to escape British Empire, to not think about colonialism for a while, but it turns out my girlfriend had booked me for a holiday in Barbados, which is very much at the heart of the Imperial story, so there was literally no escape. I love that you were getting away from having written your last book and you end up finding inspiration for your next. So what exactly happened? You get to Barbados. How does that make you think I must sit down and write another book? I think it's only polite when you go somewhere to learn a bit about the place. I always do this really elderly thing where I've print out the Wikipedia page for the destination where I'm going. That really is old school. It turns out Barbados is where the British learned how to use enslaved Africans to make huge profits from the manufacture of sugar. And I somehow not really focused on that when I'd read about Empire in the past. When you get there, do you see the signs of the former British Empire? It's culturally apparent because the educational parallels the culture of the island, the houses, the English language. But when I did go and see some former plantation houses, slavery was barely mentioned. There were occasional apologies in the text about how slavery wasn't mentioned enough. There was no interest from the tourist groups that we were with. And the guides barely mentioned slavery. I thought that was remarkable because you get that kind of amnesia in the deep south and in national trust homes sometimes. But it was even more profound in the Caribbean, which is entirely created by this British imperial system. And for a lot of the people who live there, they are born out of this system. They will have had ancestors who suffered through it. Is it something you hear them talk about a lot? The British truest don't want to hear about it. And a guy told me that. He said they basically have been told not to talk about it because they just the tourists want to marvel at the achievements of their ancestors in building these houses and these sugar plantations. Whereas for the locals, it's a real thing that defines their lives. I mean, there's so much about Barbados that goes back to this history. I mean, the Caribbean has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Guess what? We made them produce sugar on a mass scale. That is a direct legacy. You've got the indigenous people who get forgotten about the enslaved replaced the caribs, the indigenous people. There were three million of them in the Caribbean before African slaves began arriving. And then soon then, I mean, the number went down to 30,000. The illiteracy on the island. I mean, in the 1960s, 70% of Caribbean people were functioning illiterate. And I think that again, is a direct legacy of a system where the enslaved were not allowed education. So this is a history that is very much alive to everyone in the Caribbean. And yet the people who go there, the British people, seem to be oblivious to it. And it became apparent when I, a few weeks after I left, Prince William and Kate turned up in the Caribbean and went on their disastrous tour of the Caribbean. William and Kate's Caribbean charm offensive appears to be hitting a snack and nearly every stop. A protest and believe, canceling their force engagement. Then in Jamaica, this photo showing the couple greeting children through a wire fence criticized by some. They seem to have no idea of how bad this would look. Also, how out of tune with what is going on in Barbados about the conversation about the history. And I think that's typical of Britain in that there's a gap between the way we think Empire went and the way in which the world knows how it went. You're right, that royal visit, it did sort of feel like something had just shifted. The same images we probably would have seen a few years ago and not thought about suddenly just looked very inappropriate. That's the impact that the British Empire had on Barbados. I mean, are there similar signs across the globe? Oh gosh, I mean, there's so many like that. Maybe let's talk about some of the stuff that's not controversial before we get onto the stuff people argue about. I mean, the English language, the Indian diaspora, the reason you and I, in Manbeen, are talking today, came about because of the British Empire, the shape of tax havens. Whole nations were arguably created by the British like Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, the entire city is like Nairobi, Melbourne, all those cities called Victoria, Georgetown, Kingstown, Jamestown, all those corporations, BP, HSBC, Shell, BA, P&O, they all come from Empire. I could go on for hours. I mean, I don't think you can really understand the world without understanding the history of British Empire. And it's something that sort of lives on. I mean, if you look at the news today, if you were to open the paper, you still see the legacy of the British Empire in some ways playing out across the world. Yeah, this is why ultimately I felt I had to write the book because every day there's a big issue that was created by the British Empire. For example, Palestine, obviously not entirely the fault of British Empire, but when we were in charge of the mandate there, we basically promised Palestine to both the Jews and the Arabs. And it's no surprise that he ended in total warfare and chaos. You recently had a referendum in Australia about indigenous rights in Guyana. You've got a massive geopolitical crisis at the moment with Venezuela disputing the borders that were set down during the age of Empire. So tell me about the new book. How do you go about approaching that incredibly complicated legacy in Empire world? How is it different to your last book? I guess in the last book I was focusing on the effects of British Empire on Britain in terms of the politics, the multiculturalism, the racism, but the legacies of British Empire on a quarter of the planet and actually on the world world beyond that are really profound. You cannot understand, for example, international law, the development of international labor law without understanding slavery and indenture. So it was a massive subject and also I ended up having to travel a lot, which is difficult for someone who doesn't really like to believe over Hamson. I'm just thinking of all the Wikipedia pages you had to print out to read on the plate. Gosh, so much printing out. And just give us a sense for people who've forgotten it isn't something we teach very much, but just the extent of the British Empire at its height. How big was it and when would you say it began and ended? This is the thing. Historians argue about everything you just said there. They argue about when the British Empire started, when it ended, if it ever ended, some people say it never started. They definitely argue about how big it got and also about when it got at its biggest. I think personally, it got a bigest in the 1920s. Covered a surface area equivalent to a quarter of the planet, which just happens to be the same surface area as that of the moon. - This is the period when the sun never set on the empire. - Yeah, and actually, I think what I didn't realize until I started reading about it is how much it affected the world outside that quarter, because it was the biggest entity in the world, so everyone wanted to trade with us, and our influence mattered so much. And so, for example, football, we ended up spreading football to 60% of the planet. - And that's the interesting thing. I mean, you've, so far, you've already pointed out a number of, you know, really great things that the empire ended up spreading like football, and the complexity of it, you know, you sort of said, it caused geopolitical problems that are still going on now, but at the same time, it also brought democracy to many countries. We could spend several podcasts going into all of those areas, but we're going to pick one in particular. And this is just like the unusual one that I think most people probably haven't thought about. Tell us what made you look at the environment. - Yeah, plants. I wasn't a sho-shaped plant, because I associate them with indoor decal and gardens, or, you know, in my case, plants dying, but actually, we shaped the world in a huge ways through plants, all sorts of our common plants that we see as being intrinsically British, actually came from either from the former empire or from imperial traits of magnolias, roderedendrons, asalias, and ferns. They were so-called fern mania at the height of F- - Fern mania. - Where the Victorians went crazy for getting exotic ferns and filling their drawing rooms, the middle classes with these ferns, and caused massive destruction from the places where they were taken. - What sort of destruction were they leaving in their wake? - Well, the plants had to be found, and so the forests were being trampled over in the rush to uproot these new fern varieties, but it wasn't just ferns everywhere, where we spread plants, we caused destruction. In Barbados, the soil was so sap of energy in life that they tried to import it from another country, Suriname. The mahogany that we grew over in national trans-proctories and in royal palaces, a lot of that came from the Caribbean, and we wiped out a lot of those mahogany, a St Helena, which is in the news at the moment, because it was featured in the Napoleon film. We destroyed that island through alien plant introduction. So, Empire, I mean, European Empire in general, and British Empire in particular, 'cause it was so big, caused huge environmental destruction across the planet. - It's fascinating. So you start to see how the fashions in Britain at the time start to have an impact around the world in terms of deforestation and the state they're leaving at the land and tell us a bit about that. - The thing that really surprised me was that one of the consequences of this was environmentalism. The destruction immediately caused anxiety in Britain itself. So in 1858, you have people writing papers observing what is essentially the greenhouse effect. I mentioned the destruction in St Helena. This led to huge initiatives to preserve the soil there and to preserve the forests. The British set up national parks to preserve plants and the nature there. This is a profound contradiction. The British spread plants around the world, created jobs, created farms, but also caused huge environmental destruction. But then another condition, together with other Europeans, created environmentalism. I said, "Well, isn't it to think about the legacies of Empire, which are usually in Britain seen as either good or bad?" Actually, it was both in the case of plants. - Yeah, it's a much more complex picture. It's so interesting to think that today's environmentalists and the movement really have their roots in the British Empire. How much is the impact of colonialism on the destruction of environment? How much has that actually acknowledged? - At the height of Empire, I think, imperists were probably aware of it, aware of the good that come out of the destruction in terms of preservation, but we've forgotten what they did. And only now are NGOs and the UN and so on, waking up to the role that colonialism played in environmental destruction. And now you've got people saying, actually, when we ask India to be kinder to its environment, to not pollute so much, we need to remember what we did to the environment, the pollution that we caused before we start lecturing people. And this is, I guess, the message of the book, more generally, that I think when Britain goes around setting policy, when lecturing people in terms of human rights and the environment and so on, we need to remember what we did during the British Empire, because those places very much do remember. (gentle music) - Coming up, why talking about Empire has led to some historians needing to hire bodyguards. That's in just a moment. (gentle music) Before that, a quick reminder that this weekend, time subscribers can catch the latest episode of Inside the Newsroom. That's our new Behind the Scene series on Apple podcasts, just for time subscribers. And if you're not sure how, then visit the Times.co.uk/bonuspodcasts to find out more. And if you're not a time subscriber, surely it's time you were. (gentle music) It's so interesting, 'cause in the book, you point out the huge contradictions. You know, it isn't just good or bad. Anywhere where you have British Empire, there are so many sort of complexities, not just around the environment, but around. So many other issues like democracy and the rule of law. Was that sort of the purpose of this book to look at not just labeling it as a good or a bad thing, but actually understanding what Empire did? - Yeah, to be honest, I didn't have a purpose in the book in that I didn't know what I was gonna conclude. And I think that's the problem with books on this theme and the past people going to it wanted to argue a point that Empire was good or bad. I just wanted to be led by the research and what historians actually say. So yeah, the geopolitical legacy is really fascinating because David Cameron is an technologist and so is Jack Stroul, that a lot of the geopolitical instability in the world does go back to the British Empire. Not just Palestine, we're talking about Kashmir where in the 19th century we sold a majority Muslim state to this tyrannical Hindu monarch in Iraq, where we exploited all resources and installed this disastrous monarchy creating the conditions for a revolution. In Myanmar, where we annexed it, got rid of the monarchy and introduced this power vacuum which led to a military junta and in Sudan, Ethiopia, and huge geopolitical legacies. But at the same time, you cannot ignore the fact that Britain was involved in introducing the democratic constitutions of places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Malaya, Ghana, and a lot of the studies show that British colonialism, more than any other type of colonialism, often resulted in democracy. And all the books I've ever read, either point out the negatives or the positives, but actually, I think both things can be true at once. Opposite things can be true at once. I mean, this is a complexity that I think would rescue a lot of our debates in the world, but I think social media, politics, can't handle this. The idea that opposite things can be true at once, but it's definitely true when it comes to the legacies of the British Empire. Well, it's really interesting that you named Jack Straw and David Cameron there, sort of a former foreign secretary and the current foreign secretary as people who do understand the complexity of the debate because I guess they must come across it all the time in the way that Britain is trying to deal with other countries. So they understand the importance of trying to understand how we've viewed. Just give us a sense because after your first book, you had quite a mixed response online. Just give us a sense of just how vitriolic the debate can be. It was confusing because it was extremely positive and extremely negative. So it was weird to get endorsed by really cool historians like Simon Schaumann, Peter Frankapan and William Dyer-Empel and to have hundreds of history teachers using it as a teaching resource. And almost every day I get a student saying, they're going to study a history at university because of Empire Land. But at the same time, I got serious amounts of racist abuse and anger and actually I stopped doing events for adults because I had so many people coming to just shout at me and sometimes it was upsetting. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes I had to call the police. The thing is though, I'm not alone in this. I'm not the only imperial historian who gets this grief. So David Orly Soga has a bodyguard at some events. That's a matter of record. [MUSIC] Could you tell us about why you needed a bodyguard that day? Yeah, it's a depressing thing to say. But the urge to shut down the conversation is accompanied occasionally by an urge to shut down the person who's trying to start the conversation. And I think, well, I know that I'm not alone. and writers who talk about empire and talk about slavery in getting threats. Professor Kareem Fowler, who authored the entirely measured and sane report for the National Trust on colonialism. The point that I'm trying to make is that what the National Trust report is about, is about telling history which is sometimes seems quite unfamiliar. But it's not about throwing away paintings or anything like that on the contrary. It's about the explaining and retaining. She had to call the police. She couldn't walk alone at certain stages. And there's nothing new about defending empire and our focus on was doing it. 20 years ago Jan Morris before that. But what's happening now is that you've got government ministers and MPs joining in. A minority of warrior teachers think is acceptable to push extremist nonsense onto pupils such as white privilege and try to cancel important historical figures such as so Winston Churchill. So it's time to be proud of who we are and what we stand for. It's time to dump the baggage holding us back. Our history, what's and all, makes us what we are today. I will be incredibly robust in standing up against that lefty, woke culture that is trying to cancel our history, our values and indeed our women. And then you have non-specialists like piling in to imperial history, acting like they've got authority. And actually they're not experts. And quoting selectively, cherry picking the evidence, denying genocide. And this is all new. I mean this wasn't happening 20 years ago. I've got no problem with our focus. I disagree with him entirely. But he was a factual historian, you know, dealing in a fair way and making his arguments. But now you've got basically fake history. It's really interesting that you say this is a new phenomenon. This is happening now 20 years ago. It was a totally different proposition. Given that MPa isn't something that most people study, it doesn't crop up on the national curriculum. Why do you think the debate has suddenly become so vitriolic? Why is British MPa now such an emotive issue? I think it's because until now there's basically been one narrative. And it's been the British establishment view. And now there's multiple inarrative. This happens with all history. Like even we're learning more about the Bronze Age and the Romans. History is not a static thing. Though there's a lot of people out there who believe it to be a static thing. And when it comes to MPa, there's a lot of people who want it to be a static thing. But now you're hearing the views of the colonized. And I think you're parly hearing them because the British repressed the history. One of the things I was most shocked by reading the history is the extent to which British imperialists deleted the evidence. I mean, there was said to be a pool of smoke of a New Delhi when the British left because they're burning so many documents. In Nigeria, two of the men, two of the main men involved in setting up that country, destroyed evidence as they went along. So it's taken decades for people to catch up with this. And so some of this history is new. And I think lots of people don't want it to emerge because it affects their privilege, affects their sense of self. Some people had family involved in the empire. They don't want to believe the worst about them. And so some people take it very personally. And also when you're talking about empire, you're talking about race very quickly. And it very quickly becomes a kind of debate about race and racial abuse gets thrown about quite easily. And just finally, I mean, satnam earlier, you pointed out that we are both really the product of British empire. Our lives have been profoundly shaped by it, even if we don't think about it as much as we probably should do. Did the process of writing this book, did it change your opinion on the history? Did you, were there moments of real revelation? Yeah, I did change way I feel about a lot of things about the world. It made me realize how ridiculous a lot of our politics is. I mean, we really need to pay attention to what the world is telling us about what happened. Because it's getting embarrassing. We can't get involved in issues like Palestine and Myanmar and Iraq without acknowledging what we did before. We need to acknowledge what the Caribbean have been trying to tell us about the legacies of slavery in reparations. We just don't respond. We can't lecture people about the environment and animals and hunting and so on. Without acknowledging the damage that we caused during the days of empire. We cannot lecture people about democracy and human rights when there were many times during the empire where we spread violence and anti-democratic tendencies across the empire. Basically, we need to grow up and I feel like it's happening generally in the British population, but it's not happening in our politics. You've been listening to stories of our times. A podcast brought to you thanks to the subscribers of the Times and the Sunday Times. With me, Manvin Rona and my guest, author and writer for the Times, Satnam Sangara. You can read more of Satnam's work at the Times.co.uk with a subscription, including an extract from his new book, Empower World, How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe, which is published on the 25th of January. We'll put a link to the Times bookshop in the episode notes and if you're a subscriber, you do get a discount. The producer today was Sam Chantrasak. The executive producer was Kate Ford and Sound Design was by David Crackles. If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch with our Stropers Align at Stories of Our Times at the Times.co.uk. Thanks for listening. See you again soon. [Music]