The Historians Who've Had Enough of Woke History - Nigel Biggar and Robert Tombs

He wanted to look at some documents. He was told that they were no longer available because they concerned 19th century descriptions of indigenous cultures which were not to be seen by the prying eyes of 21st century Westerners. This might upset that the spirits of the ancestors. My worry is that the currently fashionable story about Britain's past as being a litany of racism and oppression and exploitation is being fed to kids. Why would you believe in the country would you fight for Britain? No, I wouldn't fight for it. The story we tell ourselves about our past has really important political implications. And that's why it's being done. Let's be honest. Many of you have commented that you are seeing too many ads in our videos. We've listened to your feedback and disabled YouTube ads in the middle of our interviews. Can we ask you a favor in return? According to our analytics, most of you who watch our show are not subscribed to the channel. Please help us to continue bringing you fantastic content by subscribing today, hitting that like button and leaving a comment with your thoughts on this video. The way it's being told is something you've covered in a recent book. Remind everybody the title? The colonialism and moral reckoning would be the earliest one and then the latest one on the culture wars is the new Dark Age. Yes. Why liberals must win the culture wars and then the next one with Robert is island story. A better story about Britain. That's right. And we will cover actually all of that. We had you on to talk about the first of those books many a couple of years back now. I kept getting which was my last book. That's right. That's why I was like, why is he looking so puzzled about the title of his book? But one of the things you talk about is the way that history is being taught and more importantly not taught. And we wanted to hear both of your thoughts about the way people now are taught to understand the history of not just our society, not just our country, but actually our species. So I think there are two problems and Robert can contradict me if he wants. One problem is when I went to school long time ago in the 60s and 70s, I somehow got a, I came up with a sense of the development of Britain from Roman times to the present. I had a sense of the whole and of how we got to where we are. And there was a, it was a figure story of development and increasing liberal politics. But it was a good story. My sense is now that kids in primary secondary school that they don't get the whole story, they get blobs. What was it like to be in the trenches in the First World War? What was it like to be a slave? A lot about the Nazis. But no coherent sense of the whole story of the country so that 10 years ago a young man who came from one of our best private schools and was thinking about wanting to read history in Oxford. We had a conversation until I heard the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. When I realized this intelligent, whether you get a young man did not know when the English Civil War happened because he had no sense of the whole. So that's one problem I think. And that's one problem I want our book to address or remedy. And the other is my worry. And I'm sure it varies from school to school. I'm sure it won't happen every school but I'm sure in some schools it will be the case. So it's not just a matter of giving them the whole story and of the development of the country but feeding them a particularly ideologically partisan story. That really worries me. And what's interesting is how accurate you are because as somebody who used to teach that's essentially all we did. We just jumped from period of time to period of time to period of time and they found out what happened but more importantly they didn't find out why it happened. Right. And to me that's the more important aspect of the whole subject. So I didn't know you taught in taught history. No, you're literally, oh, it's history. I was like, you're literally the only person in the world who doesn't know the Francis used to be a teacher. That is true. No, I taught history as part of primary. Okay. So I taught in year four, year five and year six. So I taught the history of England essentially to children but if you actually asked them why these things happen, I don't think they'd be able to explain it. But Francis, when you were in secondary school, did you grow up with a sense of the whole history of the country? No, the only reason why I understood what happened in our country was because my grandfather who was from South America was a historian. So he actually explained to me. You're right. Yeah, exactly. But if I had relied on what I've been taught in school, there's no way because what happens is, and it's rather like watching the news, well, they'll be like, there's a war in Darfur and you go, okay, and it's between the ex and why, but you just come away and you go, well, I don't know why those are war in Darfur. It just sort of happened. And that's kind of what we're left with really and what children are left with. So I think for me, the worst effect of that is that kids now, the grow up in this environment, which actually is highly privileged. I think people who live in this country are highly privileged, certainly relative to our past but also to lots of other people's presence. But they have no idea of what it took to build this. It is as if it's just there. And if they don't have a sense of the fragility and the cost of what it took to build, they won't care for it in the way they showed. That's my concern. And Robert, one of the things that I think comes out of what Nigel was saying, you know, I remember reading a people's history of Britain, a really good book. I really enjoyed, I think I've told the store in the show before. And I was blown away because it was really informative. And it gave me a sense of this country's history. Someone who comes from outside, it was very helpful to kind of ground myself and the country I was living in. And then I went and I thought there must be other books about other countries that I find fascinating. So I went and I got a people's history of America, of the United States, by Howard's Inn. And I opened it and within about three pages, I was just like, what is this horrific look? You give balance to history but to present something as so one-sided and so decontextualized. And just to say this society, all this society is just evil. Here's loads of examples of how evil it is. The impact I must have on people's view of themselves of the society and of history more broadly, it's got to be terrible. Yeah. Well, I think there have been a number of things. When you say teaching history, of course, it depends on the level we're talking about. So in school history, I think first of all, we teach very little history in British schools, compared with most other countries. Certainly compared with European countries. In France, as I know, there is a compulsory subject at school right through, right to the end. Here it's actually very little. So if the kids do half an hour a week, that's often as much as they will get. They will stop when they're in year 9, so when they're stopped before GCSE. In France, you would carry on until you put into a level. So that's one thing. We don't really care much about teaching history because I think we thought it was never really necessary because we knew who we were, we knew all these basics. I think that's one thing. Another thing is, some years ago, many teachers, many educationalists decided that the only way you could justify the teaching of history was because it taught certain skills. So it wasn't about learning about the history of Britain or indeed the history of I didn't. It was about learning how to criticize sources, deconstruct arguments and so on. In a very crude way that, in fact, historians would never actually do, you can't just do it without knowing what you're talking. You know, without knowing the basics, you can't do anything like this. But it was assumed that this was all about skills and therefore these would be the sort of skills you could then go and get a job with. I can write an essay, I can read a document and therefore I can get a job. And another damaging thing, the ideological use of history, I think we can probably take for granted that that was undesirable. Well, we might talk about that. Say a bit more, what do you mean by that ideological use of history? Okay, deciding that the reason for teaching history was to teach children certain messages about things that were good, things that were bad, maybe things that were bad in our own history, but also in some ways avoiding things that were bad if they were not part of the story that you preferred. So I think, for example, most children in Britain will learn something about the Nazis, but they won't learn anything about Stalin. So if you have no knowledge other than that, you will think, gosh, isn't fascism terrible? But you won't think this was part of a whole totalitarian phenomenon in which socialism, communism, Marxism killed millions of people. You'll never come across that. You'll only learn about Hitler. And so and so you've got disjointed chunks of things. - And just cause you there, sorry Robert. - Sorry. - And this is a question that I really want answered. Why don't we teach about communism? - I don't know. Well, if you allow me to say something about it later, - Yes, of course. - I'm actually working on a revised history curriculum for schools, in which there will be this, 'cause I think it's terribly important that children should know this. But so, you know, so if you're doing skills, but why you can do anything you like, you know, you can do the Wild West, you can do Henry VIII, you can do Hitler, there's no reason to connect these things up. You, any bit can be used to teach a skill. And also it was easier for the teachers, I think. And they thought it would be more attractive to the kids, you know, Henry VIII, Hitler, good stuff. Gladstone's Irish policy, the third reform act, perhaps not so immediately accessible. So I think that was another thing. And then of course, if you like sort of backing this up intellectually, was the postmodernist view that there is no, there's nothing that's really true. History's therefore just a lot of stories. And so we're not really interested in telling people how to understand the development of our country, because you might like that story, but I don't really like that story. And a lot of the kids won't like that story. Therefore we'll do some other stories. And if it means saying that, for example, a lot of the soldiers on Hadrian's War were African, I black, well, that's a nice story. It makes some of the kids feel happy. And it may help to promote a sense of belonging. Therefore, let's teach that. And if some boring pedant comes along and says, actually, soldiers on Hadrian's War were all Greco-Romans. Well, why do you want to upset people by saying that? You say it's true, and that's what the evidence says, but we all know that this is just a lot of stories anyway. So let's tell the stories we like. Well, just on that, let me pose as both you. Let me do my best impression of a deconstructionist and say, hold on a second, and in the relativeist as well. But isn't that true? I mean, look at our own time, right? The history books will have a view on Brexit, and they will have a view on Trump, and they will have a view on COVID. And we all who lived through that time know that there was no one view on COVID, no one viewed some people hate to Trump, and some people thought he was the best thing since lies bred, and some people thought that COVID came from lab in China, and other people said it didn't, and all these other things. But whoever ends up having the power to write the history books will impose their political and ideological world view on those events so that our descendants are given a world view that says X or says Y. - Yes. - What do you say to those today? - That's what all world wrote, isn't it? - Yes. - He who controls the past, controls the future. - Isn't it true? - Well, if you can get away with it, if you have an intellectual authority that can impose a certain view of the past, then, well, yes, you can do that. But many people would say the purpose of studying history is precisely to be able to say that this, what you're saying is not right. I mean, I think that's part of the answer. I mean, another thing I would say, and Nigel and I have talked about this, a lot of what is history, is perfectly well known. It's not just a matter of opinion. You can't deny that there was a second world war. You can't deny who fought it or who won it. You can't deny that there was a Holocaust, and this is true of so much of history. The idea that you can just pick the bits you like and ignore the bits you don't like is simply not true. And as I, I'm not sure if I say it in our book, but we know much more about William Gladstone than we know about Andy Burnham, for example, and much of this is completely incontrovertible. These are things that we know, and the things that we don't know are often fairly trivial, or at least a question that we would, you could tell legitimate questions of doubt. I mean, I sometimes feel this is a rather home spun example, history is a bit like writing about a football match. You might say, well, the important things are, where was it played, when was it played, who won, who scored the goals, then you might say, well, yes, but why did Arsenal beat Aston Villa? Then that's a matter of opinion. You might say, well, that can never be proved. But the fact is you can't just say, well, to say that Arsenal beat Aston Villa, that's just your story. I've got a different story, which is the other way around. That just cannot be intellectually honest. And yet, that's what sometimes you're getting quite serious historical debate. Yes, so the issue of imposing particular version of history on the rest of us is one, but the other issue about there being plural views, I mean, there are always different views of the past. Always been controversy about how to interpret the past. But I think whatever our view, if we're honest, our view needs to be accountable to reason and evidence. Right, so the data might allow a variety of interpretations, some of which fit better than others, but you've got to allow the data to control you. Otherwise, it's completely free for all. You believe whatever you want. And I think the problem with a lot of the ideological history is it's refusal to take into account certain data. So for example, I referred earlier to my book on colonialism, which an academic at Sussex University, Alan Lester, but it spent 15,000 words taking down, right? And in this 15,000 words, Alan Lester could find nothing, absolutely nothing, good to say about the British Empire. Now, whatever overall judgment we come to about whether the empire is good or bad, no one can deny. It seems to me that it was good that the British Empire abolished slavery and slave trade and suppressed it worldwide, nor that it was good that the British Empire decided to fight Hitler in 1939. So in other words, no one as it were accountable to all the data can deny that the British Empire did some things good, but there's Alan Lester, in 15,000 words, cannot say single, can't recognize a single positive facet. And so that's the problem with ideological views of history, simply refuses to accept all the data or to be challenged by data that hadn't taken into account. - What I suppose as a total layman and outsider, I am seeing is I think inevitably with all of this stuff that we've seen, we all know it's representative of a much massive underlying iceberg. This is the tip, right? Underneath this sits an entire remaking of what we think about when we think about the social sciences and the way they're taught and the way they're practiced and the way the research has done. And what we are ultimately told about what the truth is, about economics, about psychology, about social psychology, about anthropology. We were talking over lunch about anthropologists who look at bones now not allowed to work on this because it's insensitive to the feelings of the indigenous population of this and all this stuff. And I imagine that the two of you being historians being affected by this, your fields being affected by this as well. And people now questioning, well, are we being taught the truth when we're told history. I can give you an example of this affecting history because a friend of mine did this Lawrence Goldman. He wanted to look at some documents held by the State Library of New South Wales, which written by a chap called Air in the 1830s who traveled a lot in Australia and observed and wrote about indigenous culture. Very sensitively, though he came to a sticky-end air later, but that's another matter. And he was told that they were no longer available online, at least, because they concerned 19th century descriptions of indigenous cultures, which were not to be seen by the prying eyes of 21st century Westerners. So here are historical documents, which cannot be consulted by historians because long dead people, there's no evidence that they disliked it. Because, after all, he traveled among them, and they allowed him to do so. But this might upset the spirits of the ancestors. Therefore, you cannot do historical research on this person. Now, this, I think, would have been utterly unimaginable. Unless, of course, you were talking about working on Stalinist Russia, and they wouldn't allow you into the archives because it contained undesirable truths. But that this should be true of a Western democracy, a liberal Western democracy, would until very recently have been quite unthinkable. Let's be honest about modern life. 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Oh, because we, white people, are their presses. They, indigenous peoples, are the victims. And whatever they want, we must refer to them. We owe them, that's how it's the narrative that's played. And their spirits, too? We owe their spirits, as well. Well, apparently we do. Apparently we believe in their spirits. But it's like when I quoted this in my last book, Story of Francis Wooderson, a political scientist in Canada, who got fired from her job. Partly, because she challenged an indigenous Native American who was talking about traditional Native American views of the stars. And she said, well, that's all very interesting. And it's interesting to know how they saw the world. But you're not really telling us, are you? This is equivalent to modern astronomical science, are you? Well, that's what he was saying. And as partly as sort of that, she lost her job. In other words, we're not allowed to say that indigenous ways of knowing were not as good as modern ways of knowing. And that's-- sorry, you were going to say what we're going to say. Well, I was only going to say it's interesting in a way, because of course, we're perfectly limited to question the ways our ancestors saw the world. If you were to say, well, 17th century Welshman thought that the sun went around the earth or something. But we're not allowed to say-- and we think, well, that was an interesting view of things. But we know this now, not true. But we can't say that of other cultures, because we are their oppressors. Or at least that's what has been-- this is a colonialist view of-- So white guilt means that people of ethnic minorities who wish to exploit white guilt, not all do, can do so with impunity. And that's a real issue, because if you essentially tell a whole country that their history is evil and they are uniquely evil people, then why would you feel any pride? Why would you feel that you want to belong to this society? So glad you've made that point. So I wanted to get back to that about why telling the whole truth about the story of Britain is important. And the whole truth-- yes, it involves moments and episodes of failure and of injustice. But it also involves stories of heroic humanitarian and liberal achievement. So we want the whole truth. It's really important, because, as you say, if British kids are taught that the history of Britain is nothing but a litany of racism, oppression, and exploitation in which all our institutions were involved, why would you believe in the country? Why wouldn't you vote when you're asked-- why wouldn't you tell a poster when he asks, would you fight for Britain? No, I wouldn't fight for it, as a very large number of youngsters have recently done. Why wouldn't you-- next time there's a referendum on Scottish independence, which would lead to the disintegration of the UK, why wouldn't you vote to disintegrate the UK much to the glee of Russia? Because it would call them to question on nuclear deterrent. It would make patrolling the North Atlantic, whether or not they be far harder. So in other words, the story we tell ourselves about our past has really important political implications. Let's be honest, right? Yeah, that's why it's being done. Let's be honest about that. Why it's being done by some people? Yes. There's an oddity, isn't a pretty obvious one, in the left, if we can call it that. Demands very high levels of solidarity. They want us to pay more and more taxes to help our fellow citizens who are unwilling or unable to work, for example. And yet, at the same time, they tell us that our country as a community is worth very little. Now, why should I not say in that case? Well, in that case, why should I pay any taxes? Why should I not cheat? Why should I not steal? Why should I do everything I can to exploit my opportunities? Because after all, I don't care about this country. And therefore, I don't care about the people who claim to have some that I owe them some moral obligation. I mean, I can't see, well, I can't see how the left, if you like, can square the circle. How they can insist on our obligations to our fellow citizens while trashing the whole history on which these obligations are based. What I was going to ask is the latest book is about this country's history. And I think it's really important we tell the full story. But, naturally, you've obviously worked on Empire a lot. And somebody you talked about. So before we talk collectively about the British Empire, can you just, when we had Dominic Sandbrook on a recent, I think you talked about empires being the natural unit of history. Or maybe that was you, I can't remember. I could have said it, I'm not sure I did, but I could have. Presumably, you agree with it, then. What is an empire? OK. I think an empire is a people that expanded. Lots of nations were empires. So think of England in the Anglo-Saxon period. You've got Little Wessex down there. You've got the Danes. You've got different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Gradually Wessex expands. And eventually by the 10th century, the 11th century, you have something like the state of England now. But in a sense, the formation of England as a state was through imperial expansion of a particular part. And lots of nations have begun that way. So really empire is an expanding people. And lots of people in the world have done that. Not just Europeans. The Zulu did it in 1820s. The Iroquy did it in the 1640s in North America. Empire is a very common political form. Someone said to them who said it, in most of history, people lived under empires. And would one defining difference between, say, nation stays, we think about today and an empire, be that an empire necessarily is a state that controls territory that's inhabited by different groups of people. Is that an important addition? Yes, so presumably, what became England started off with Wessex and dominating merchants, whatever. So the moment of dominance, but then eventually, the people's merged. And so you will find empires where you have dominant people. And they impose their ways in other people, but over a long period of time, they merge so that we no longer distinguish among ourselves between those who are normal and those are Anglo-Saxom. We're mixture now. And I suppose there's a paradox here, too, in that an empire might begin, as, let's say, the Roman Empire did, by one city in conquering and imposing its power. But what an empire does is, or rather, the interests of the empire then become more important, often than the interests of its core component. So if you're Roman, you are actually thinking an awful lot about what is happening on the frontiers in Gaul or on the frontiers of the Persian Empire in North Africa. As is the case, the British Empire did England benefit very much from having the British empire. It costs an awful lot of money. It required a huge amount of effort to maintain it. And what you end up having to do if you're a politician in Westminster is thinking, we've really got to do something about what's happening in North India. Or we've got to do something about what's happening in South Africa. And it may not actually benefit the core country. But the fact is that the empire imposes its own priorities. And you get absorbed into your empire. I think that probably happens in all empires, doesn't it? I think that's right. But it cost me to just make clear empires don't exist. laws expand through conquest? No, that's true. Sometimes people's join an empire, perhaps because it offers them protection. Can you give some examples? Fiji, New Zealand, water. Tell me about Fiji, what was Fiji's? Oh, well, they were being, and this was quite common in the south. Actually, how I wanted to join the matured part wasn't able to. There were quite a few countries that wanted to join and couldn't. But Fiji was being, was the victim of predatory slave trading and by people selling guns, selling alcohol and so on. And they wanted to be protected against these unscrupulous people who were coming in from the outside. And they wanted the protection of a more powerful state, which in this case was Britain. And certainly not the New Zealand was very similar. New Zealand was becoming the victim of unscrupulous business interests. You can easily imagine how this happens. So again, they're selling guns. Lots of marries getting killed in intertribal wars with guns sold to them by Western gun runners at the the ravages of alcohol and so on. They want somebody who can control this. They can't do it themselves. And so they, they want the British government to do it, which with more or less success it does. And I think if I were to, though you may have quite a different, if I were to say what was the British Empire in the 19th century, I would say something like it was an effort to manage the unprecedented contacts that were being made between developed Western states and undeveloped what we would later call Third World, but African, Asian and Pacific states in order to try to prevent a chaotic and violent free-for-all. And in many cases, as you all know, there was very little desire in London to take over more territory. There was pressure from missionaries, there was pressure from public opinion, from the non-conformist conscience. So you have to do something about slave trade in East Africa or in Zanzibar and, you know, politicians in Westminster say, well, we really have enough to do. And that's all, this is your moral duty. You have to do something because you after all a powerful state, you have a big navy, you've got to do something to help these people. Yes, I think your count was a little of the truth. Of course, there were occasions when the British had strategic reasons for acquiring bits of territory. So, in the end of the Napoleonic Wars, we acquired Simon's town in what became Cape Colony and South Africa for reasons of a naval base there. Similarly, I think, on the east coast of Africa. So there were strategic reasons. On the other hand, you're quite right. A lot of the time, Empire began with traders. East India Company going to India, getting involved in local politics, acquiring territory, initially, it failed to govern very well. Government has to intervene. Similarly, in South Africa, the British South Africa Company roaches company, expands into Redisha, and government, reluctantly, has to intervene. So a lot of the time, a lot of the government, then as now, the treasury didn't want to spend money on having to control overseas territories. The case of North America, Canada, and Australia, was a bit different. But the idea that Empire is all about one people deciding they want to go and conquer another is far too simplistic. I can't think of many instances in the British case when that was so. A while back, I pushed myself in training because I'm a legend, but ended up with a strain that took far longer to recover from than it ever used to. Nothing dramatic, just one of those moments where you realise your body isn't snapping back the way it once did. And as you get older, those moments start adding up. Turns out there's a reason for that, and it's not just getting older. It's something specific happening at the cellular level. That's your idea behind acquiring a cynolytic, a science-backed formula built around a fairly new area of research called 'synolytics'. Your body accumulates what researchers call 'sinescent selves'. Sometimes nicknamed 'sombie selves'. Cells that have done their job and are just sitting there using up resources instead of clearing out. 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And one of the things you actually talk about in the book, which I found very interesting, is that a lot of people, a lot of the subjects of the British Empire, were actually quite happy being part of the British Empire. And when they were asked, and there was a stat that you quoted in the book about India, when they asked if they wanted to govern themselves, quite a lot of people went, "No, we prefer the British." Yeah, one story I tell was published in the tablet magazine, and I don't know, 20 plus years ago, a letter from an American, an Irish American from Boston, right? So Irish Americans are not famous for being angler files. So this guy had gone to Pakistan shortly after independence in the 1950s, as I think with the Peace Corps. And he was working in rural Pakistan. And he asked the local people, "You must be glad to see the back of the English." They said, "No, no, we're not." And he says the moment he was proudest of in the time he spent in in rural Pakistan, was when the locals referred to him as an "engrazy sob" in English. You're an English sob. So, no, it's quite clear that many occasions, you know, most people in the empire, like most people now, they're interested in politics. They're interested in getting on with their lives. And if the bloke, if the reigning political system gives them stability and peace to get on with their lives, un-interfered with, they're happy with it. So in another case I mentioned is, in the 1950s, unknown millions of Chinese left, war-torn communist China and entered the non-democratic colony of, a British colony of Hong Kong. Why? Because Hong Kong offered them stability. It offered them a stable environment in which they could build their lives and get on with them. And so relative to what was an offer outside the British Empire, the Empire offered them something was really attractive and they volunteered to enter it. So how do we balance the positives of the Empire, which they were numerous? And we need to be honest about that. And I think we can all agree that we're not being honest that the Empire hadn't many positives, with the things that went wrong, the undoubted negatives. How do we have that conversation and actually come to an answer that is balanced and fair? I just think, people seem shocked about British slavery, for example, or shocked about the bad stuff that happened in the past. I'm kind of bewildered as the way people were shocked. I mean, don't they understand that the world has run the past by human beings. Some are bad, some are good, some try their best and fail. Failure and bad stuff and good stuff. That's what history is about. Are we really any different from that? I think we think we are. I think we think we do. I think that's why a lot of, we think we would never put down a rebellion brutally or we'd never do this and we'd never do that. And maybe it's because, I mean, we don't. Don't we do it all the time? Don't we? We do it as in Iraq. We're quite happy for the Americans and sometimes ourselves to go and bomb people. And yet we get terribly upset, which may be justified in certain cases. Yet we get terribly upset when we talk about when General Kitchener defeats that the maddest at on demand. We think God was terrible slaughter. And yet we're happy to go and bomb with bombed ISIS. Is that any different? I don't think it's any different at all. So we excuse ourselves, but we like to pile guilt onto. We do live by a slightly different moral standard today, don't we? Yeah, but it's a better one. We do, but I think it's partly because we've forgotten history. I mean, if we remember. Remember, and even today's school kids should remember the Second World War, most people I think, even youngsters would think that being in the Nazis was a good thing, wouldn't they? Do they not know where it cost? Up to 80 million people killed, most of them civilians, and the Allies in the course of winning that war, killing 70,000 French civilians, hundreds of thousands of Italian civilians, 500,000 Germans civilians, and do people not know a lot of that was unavoidable. So, I think it's partly because we've forgotten history. We don't understand how privileged, and I come back to the worst privilege again, right now, whatever our woe is in Britain and whatever the threats. We now are the healthiest, wealthiest on average, most secure, we've ever been in our history. We don't know how privileged we are. I mean, my father lived through two world wars. Thank God I've never been asked to fight in one, but it's fragile and it's contingent. I think we've lost that sense of contingency, so we just take it for granted, that we, you know, people in the past did bad things because they were bad, not because they would be existentially threatened because they had no choice. And I also think when we talk about empires, we just see the British Empire, and that's pretty much it. We don't actually look at the Ottomans, for example. We don't look at the Saharan's life to it. They're very progressive. Yeah, they were. I mean, but they were also grounds for their repressed, so we have to find the rest of the empire. The rest of the empire. Yeah, they're your boys. It was wonderful. Everybody very happy. You've not had to do it. But even, you know, we're talking about the Russians, but even the Spanish. The Spanish occupation of South America was objectively horrific. Yeah. Well, and let's not forget the Aztecs with the human sacrifices and the Incas and the Uruguay, who, when they expanded North, North of Great Lakes in the 1640s, they absorbed and ate the Huron by adopting the, or rather kidnapping, their women and children, and the men, they ate. So, and when the Maori invaded the Chateau Islands in 835, what did they do? They slaughtered 10% of the population and then slayed the rest, so it's not just white people who do empire. Well, my favourite meme on eggs that pops up right now and again, it's basically a bunch of Aztecs cutting the heart out of a small child, and then they look over at their rivals from Europe and they go, "Look at this evil oppressor." You know, who've arrived now. Yes. I see that's great. That's fantastic. Well, but I was going to say, I mean, we, we, I think, is super important to address the one side of teaching of this, but nonetheless, you know, the reading of, if you read a book about any empire, it's inevitably punctuated by, and then we had to suppress the XY rebellion over there, and then there was an uprising in blah, blah, blah, and then we had to, you know, bomb the shed out of these people over here because they were, the fact is that maintaining these large stable entities requires force. Now I, you could say, well, any state requires force, which it does, factually, factually correct, like it or not. But in the maintenance of a large empire, even the Ottomans who, you know, we've been, we've just mentioned briefly, some of what they did was, because they could, and because they could be cruel, and because whatever, but a lot of it, they did because it was necessity to maintaining the state, and I suppose every empire has to have a measure of force and sometimes cruelty in it. Yeah, and I think, I think, two things about some of the European empires, probably all those two, is colonial governments had very few resources, they were quite weak states. And secondly, you know, if you have a rebellion, a violent rebellion, then what are you supposed to do? Let it run, and, you know, violent rebellions are not always nice to people, and, yeah, I'm thinking of sort of tribes in north-west India, who, from time to time, would come writing down from their valleys, and sack villages, and women, whatever, you know, policing is a serious business, and how do you stop them doing that? Because they're not going to be persuaded not to do it. You could pay them a lot of money, sometimes they did. But it says, we live in a world where the use of force is very rare, because we have a strong state, because we're healthy and wealthy and secure. I guess the counter-argument might be, Robert, well, if Scott, we talked about Scottish independence, and, you know, whether it happens or not, whatever, but we kind of all accept that ultimately, if the Scottish people wanted to leave, they could vote for independence through the democratic process, and we wouldn't treat that as the Scottish uprising and go and crush it, as we might have done 200 years ago. And I think that's what I meant earlier when I said, we do hold ourselves to somewhat high moral standard, and you said, do we? Don't we? Don't we? Well, if we do, when does this begin? I mean, I've been reading, perhaps we all have watching the film at least, The Odyssey, in which there is absolute glorification of violence, and, you know, Odysseus is called Raider of Cities, raiding cities in slaving people and killing their men, was not regarded as in any way wrong in that culture. In fact, it was a sign that you were a great warrior. I don't think the Romans had a great sense of conscience about this either. When is it that people stop thinking that conquering other people and exploiting them is somehow bad, or at least something that you should think of in moral terms? I doubt if it's before the 18th century, but I think the British Empire in the 19th century, and not only the British, some others too, did begin to think that they had obligations, that you could not just say we're going to conquer this people and slave them, steal all their money, and so what, because we can. So we will. They didn't. They stopped doing that. I think that's true. Why did people stop doing that? Well, in a way, because now this is going to sound terribly colonialist way of thinking, I think. But the enlightenment, evangelical Christianity, did change the way people thought about relations between human beings. Christianity certainly did. And also the idea that human beings were all basically equal, that you could not regard them as other people's inferior species. It's often said that slavery in slavery people regarded as, in some cases, they were. You could enslave other people because they were an inferior species. That was not, from the 18th century certainly, and indeed if you were a Christian, you could not really think that a few Christians did, but I think fewer and fewer did. And therefore you had to accept that whatever you were doing in the world, you were doing it to people who essentially were of the same nature as yourself. And as I think was said by the, was it by Sir Joseph Banks to Captain Cook, he said, you're going to be meeting people whose right to their territory is as good as ours, and who may be regarded by the Almighty as being morally superior to us, not quite in those words, but in the 18th century language. And I think that probably could not have been thought a couple of hundred years earlier. Is that right? Yes, that's right. I think you're right. The 18th century seems to have been a pivot point. And I do associate it to a large extent with the growth of the movement for the abolition of slavery, which was at the popular level, and it was highly popular at this movement in Britain, entirely evangelical Christianity, whether Quaker or Methodist or evangelical Anglican. At the elite level, there was Montesquian and Adam Smith, the philosophers. But the idea that all people are basically equal and that race is literally skin deep, you know, is no deeper than skin. It was the premise of stopping the enslavement of Africans. And then when that was done, that movement achieved its success in 1833 with the abolition of slavery, shortly afterwards, there was the foundation of the society for the protection of Aboriginal peoples, because humanitarian concern had moved on to what was happening to Aboriginal and Australia under the impact of European settlement, and the sense that we need somehow to control this or to ameliorate it, or at least to try and make up for it's in the fact that they recognized and were horrified actually about the way in which Native peoples were suffering. I'm going to be honest with you. I used to think grilling was simple. Meat goes on. Meat comes off. You look vaguely competent in front of your mates. Jobs are good. Then I would try to grow anything that wasn't a burger or a steak. My frustration before Hexclad was that while the actual meat takes 20 minutes scraping the grill afterwards takes 45. at some point I stopped in volume. fighting people over for barbecues because I couldn't face the clean up. Turns out the problem isn't you, it's the grill. Standard grates were never designed for anything smaller than a steak. Which is why your prawns end up in the coals and your salmon end up in three pieces. Hexclad solved this with their barbecue collection. The grill pan combines a searing power of stainless steel, the durability of cast iron and nonstick underneath, so nothing wields itself to the surface. It's perforated, so heat and smoke still get to the food and you still get that proper grilled flavour. But your veggies, your seafood, your fish, none of it is falling through the grates anymore. If you want more control over delicate stuff, there's a grill topper, which gives you a full flat surface for things like fish or thin cuts that fall apart the second you try and flip them. And if you want the whole set up at once, there's the barbecue bundle, the grill pan plus a hybrid cutting board and carving set. So you're not running back into the kitchen every five minutes, over a million customers, more than 50,000 five-star reviews, Gordon Ramsay uses this at home and in his own restaurants. And that man is not easily impressed. Every piece comes with a lifetime warranty, so you're not replacing this next summer. Don't spend another season fighting your grill. For a limited time, our audience gets 10% off with our exclusive link, head to Hexclad.com/trig. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D dot com forward slash trig. Tell them trigonometry sent you. Would there also be some far more pragmatic reasons as well? I think often people think about culture being the sort of the driver of things, but I often think that technology creates culture which then creates politics. It's that kind of trajectory. And I imagine, once territories to be colonized of run-out, number one, and you have the industrial revolution, and now if you want to create wealth, you don't need to, you know, the easiest way to create wealth is no longer to go and conquer other people who have wealth and take their wealth, but it's now to build a factory and produce wealth. And if you look at the curve of wealth creation, it's sort of flat for about ex-thousand years and then it explodes in the 18th century, even you don't even need to conquer anywhere. And you no longer can conquer anywhere because there's nowhere else to conquer. At that point, these ideas, which were always there about people being equal and equal human dignity and so on, then they can flourish because it's no longer economically necessary for you to have a more warrior-conquering mindset. Am I just imagining it? Yes, I think you've just been cynical. I may be both. I just thought it's worth exploring. Yes, it is. Do you understand? Well, do you want to say that? Debunk me. Please do. Initially, I mean, first of all, I think most things happen from a multiplicity of motives. Of course. Of course. And if there was a kind of economic interest element, I wouldn't discount it, but it doesn't mean there wasn't also a humanitarian. No, I'm not disputing that part of it. I'm just saying it's easier for ideas that are already there to become dominant when the practical rationale for the ideas that are being replaced is no longer there. That's what I'm saying. Except, well, in case of the abolition of slavery, what you've just said now could be an expression of the argument that the British only abolished slavery because it was becoming uneconomic. I'm not saying that. No, you're not. But I'm saying it. People make that argument. To take that as an instance of what you're saying, the data says not. In fact, there were genuine humanitarian reasons, and in fact, the abolition cost Britain, or at least cost some-- some burdens. And slavery was still very profitable until the 1880s, after all, in Brazil and Cuba. And indeed, one historian, distinguished historian of slavery, says the British misted out on the great coffee boo, they could have been selling slaves for the coffee plantations of Brazil but they didn't. But I think the thing is, if you build a factory, you want raw materials and you want markets. So in fact, this could have been, and indeed to some extent, was, and particularly for some countries, a motive for imperialism. And then this is, in a way, the classic Marxist explanation. Your imperialism is about securing raw materials. Could be gold, it could be iron, it could be whatever. And also protected markets, and keeping others out. And there was a thing called-- which used to be called the imperialism of free trade, which is a sort of paradox. But you need to occupy territories. Because otherwise, other countries will take them and exclude your products. So the sort of universality, almost of empires in the late 19th century, seems to be directly connected with the growth of industrial societies. But just in terms of reasons of occupying territory, I'm thinking in the late 19th century, 1870s, that's when the so-called Scramble for Africa happened. And lots of territories, particularly in Africa, were carved up between France and Britain and Italy and Belgium. And the motive for that-- I've just finished reading a biography of Lord Sorsbury, who dominated a British government toward the end of the 1800s. The motive for that wasn't economic. The main concern, thought was main concern, was to prevent a clash between Britain, France, and Germany in the colonies that would result in continental war in Europe, which of course happened in 1914. But the motive wasn't economic at all. It was actually just creating boundaries so that the European powers are not going to clash. So one of the topics that you address really eloquently in the book is this idea that the British Empire was essentially this kind of parasitic institution that drained resources and money from its colonies, particularly India. And what do you say to that? So that's the extractive theory of colonialism, and the word "extraction" is used a lot by people who don't really explain what they mean by it. In the case of India, I mean, the argument is, I think, partly, that British industry, particularly text on the industry, was able to export cheap cloth to India and put all sorts of out-of-the-zans out of business. So Brits were extracting profits from India and putting poor Indians onto the unemployment market. And then also partly that the Indian taxpayers paid for the Indian army, which the British employed all around the world, and again, this extracted wealth from India. And so India was impoverished. I mean, the popular claim made is that India in 1700 produced 25% of world GDP by 1900. It was about 4% there for the British-trained India. So what's wrong with that story? Well, take the last point first. According to Tizanga Rai and I quote him because he's an economic historian, which I'm not. He's also Bengali born. He's not a Brit. At least we may be now, but he was born in Bengal. No, what happened was, between 1700 and 1900, that's Britain and Germany and other European countries, the industrial economy is expanded hugely, and therefore they acquired a larger proportion of world GDP, India's declined relatively. And the same happened to China, which wasn't colonized. So this wasn't a measure of the Brits draining wealth from India, it was just a measure of the growth, the relative growth of the industrial economy. So that was that. In terms of, I mean, yes, Indian taxpayers may have paid something toward the cost of the Indian army. On the other hand, the Royal Navy, which was paid for by the British, controlled the seas, kept the seas free of pirates, which enabled Indian merchants to trade from Hong Kong to East Africa and make profits. What's more, by providing stable government in India, India was able to attract British investment. Yes, it may profits from British investors, investors make profits. And why would they invest otherwise? But the investment also built railways and canals, both of which helped to develop local agricultural economies, both of which helped relieve Hammond. So they benefited Indians too. So the idea that the colonial relationship with India was a process of one way extractured a profit. It's a theory that whose assumptions are widely accepted, but it doesn't really add up when faced with the data. I would add a couple of things to that too. First of all, India did have to be defended. It had been repeatedly invaded from Afghanistan in the 18th century. Indeed, one Mughal emperor was blinded and his court massacred by Afghan invaders in the 18th century. So India had to be defended anyway, and it was defended by the British Indian Army as it. And the other thing is that I read this quite recently. It's been calculated how much the Indian government, the British Raj, but the British government of India was paying for its loans. It was paying a much lower rate of interest on its loans than the general world level of interest because it was regarded by investors as safer. Hence, the relative gain of paying much less for the money that you invest was equal to a very major amount of money. If I'd known we were going to talk about this, I'd have checked, but it meant that they were paying 3 or 4% lower interest on their loans than were independent countries or other European countries. That was directly a consequence of being part of the British Empire and hence being regarded as international investors as a safe place to put your money. Let me ask one thing, I think it's worth when we talk about India. Actually, you used the word colonization to describe what happened there. I think the ordinary person is very well acquainted with the story about the colonization of North America, maybe less so of South America, but what happened in India was so different to what happened there. And yet the same word is used and I think the average person has absolutely no idea what happened to India. Be worth setting that out before we go. It goes back constant into the issue of what an empire is. You do have parts of the British Empire, North America and Australia, where there is large scale European settlement and where European colonists did in both places displaced natives. That didn't happen in, didn't happen in a large scale in Africa, partly because Europeans tend to die there, which is a bit discouraging. But it didn't happen really at all in India. I mean, in 1900 after what, 150 years of British occupation of India, there were about 300 million Indians. How many Brits? 164,000. The population of Oxford now, total. So no, there wasn't widespread settlement. Partly, I think because the India Brits came across when they first landed there in the late 1611, 1700s. It was much more advanced civilization. There were states and there were cities. Whereas in Australia and North America, there were vast tracts of what appeared to be unoccupied territory. That was the main reason. Also, I think the British were aware that if you tried to introduce British settlement into India, into a highly densely populated, already somewhat urbanized India, you're going to get trouble. So there was some legal obstacle, wasn't there, for outsiders to buy land. I think outsiders were forbidden to buy land. So the British presence there was political, it was commercial and it was military, but it wasn't actually a large scale settlement. And how did Britain come to control India from the first boat arriving to Britain running India? So I mean, a story told it was by conquest. That's more untrue than true. So what happens is early 1600s, East India company pitches up. What does it want to do? It wants to set up trading posts on the Northwest coast of India. It gets permission to do so it does so it trades. What this covers is that in land away from the coast, there's a collapse of imperial authority, lots of civil war war is bad for trade. The company builds up its own military force for defensive purposes. Then along comes an Indian ruler and says, would you help us beat that lot? And so the company for whatever reason says yes, and it succeeds. And as a result, it is given territory sometimes even ports. So the acquisition of territory was in the 1700s, not by conquest, except in alliance with Indian rulers and the territory was ceded as part of the reward. Later on in the 19th century, there were periods when the British conquered territories for various reasons. But the conquest wasn't the primary means by which the British came to occupy parts of India. I think we can blame it on the French too. Excellent. Because the French were also a major presence in India. And they were the ones who first started raising troops and getting involved in Indian politics with the intention of kicking out the Brits. So the British responded by raising their own forces. And in the end, defeated the French simply because of its superior British naval power, which meant that the French had far fewer resources. And in the seven years of war, the French were finally excluded from India as a major power and only allowed to keep a few enclave such as famously Pondicharius trading posts. I didn't know the French started it. That's great. Yeah, they started it. How can we need it? But both countries, or at least their businessmen and their governments, were very much against this. It was the men on the spot, wasn't it? It was so keen. We want trade. We want profit. We don't want to spend all this money on wars. And in the end, the East India Company itself pretty well went bankrupt and needed bailing out by the. But then the British government, in that case, were taking over. We are going to appoint the governors. And in effect, the East India Company became an arm of the British government and lost its trading privileges. It's monopoly privileges. As for the French, their company did go bankrupt. And simply withdrew. It's a recurring theme with the French rubber. I've noticed. But the police in Pondicharius still wear keppies, which they don't even know. Paris now. One more thing on India and Territory. The East India Company did acquire Territory in the later 1700s. But in the 1820s, all three of the major trading ports of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay were governed by Scotsman. Ah, yes. And every one of them, in the 1820s, can be found to have written. We Brits, we cannot expect to rule in India forever. All we can hope to do is establish sufficient stability and sufficiently decent government and then leave with grace. Now, that was 1820s, wasn't until 130 years later that then actually happened. But there wasn't sense even in the early period that the British rule over Territory in that far flung part of the world was not forever. And it's important that we raise this before we end the episode because you talk about it in your book, which is, you know, some of the more unfortunate incidents, shall we say, in India, particularly, you know, the partition. And we're talking about leaving with grace. I think we can say that was not well executed when you look at the amount of people who died. I think it was 1.5 million off the top of my head. I could grill me. Yeah, yeah, that was tragic. But I'm pretty defensive of the British, because I make a couple of points, really. Can we please remember? The number of people killed was dreadful. The people doing the killing were Indians, not Brits. Secondly, there was the reason that the killing took place was because law nor the collapsed. And that was partly because Indian leaders couldn't agree on how to divide India. And yes, part of the problem was the British have brought forward the date for leaving partly in order to concentrate minds. But I mean, the responsibility for the kill, the massacre needs to be spread about there, not just British failure. In fact, the Indians did the killing and the difficulty Indian leaders had on coming to an agreement as to how to cover up the country. The only way you can sort of blame it on Britain is to say, well, India should never have been united at all. It was because the British unite created an India. And it then split. That was the cause of the killing. But then the alternative would have been to have an India of many conflicting states as it was in the 18th century. It was being a more peaceful, a basis for more peaceful existence than, than even the partition. So I think the partition was. As you say, a tragedy, but one which the British didn't try to avoid. It didn't help. There was a kind of transitional government responsible for managing partition. One of the Congress members, one of the two Congress members on that government was closely connected with Hindu militia. In other words, closely connected with the people, some of the people who did the killing. So, I think some Indians, there are high responsibility for what happened. Gentlemen, all right. So, to follow the French, the Scottish, and the Indians. Yeah, exactly. We got a clean bill of health here last year, time to end the episode. Yeah. They're going to love this. I mean, our audience will, yeah. Some other people might joke in the side. No one ever believes in our good intentions. No. It's absolutely wonderful to have you both on. It's a real treat for us to speak with you and people like you on our show. So, thank you so much for making time. Not at all. And Nigel, in your case, returning and Robert, we've recorded a separate episode with you about the England and French rivalry and lots of other things. Well, if you're ever interested, yes. But as I may have mentioned earlier, I'm working on revising the school curriculum in history. If you ever want to talk about that, it would be very helpful. Fantastic. Yeah. When the time comes. Thank you both. I hope everybody gets you in your book. Remind everybody again what it's called when it's about you. It's called Our Island Story with the Poster V After the Us. There was a book in the 1950s with that same title with the Poster V before the Us, but we wanted to make clear this is about not just about England, it's Scotland, Ireland and Wales as well. And the subtitle is a better story about Britain. And it comes out in October and Swift Press are publishing it. Fantastic. And actually, very quickly, as you know, our last question is always the same. Feel free to, one of you can answer both of you can answer whatever. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Robert and Nigel answer the final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our sub-stack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Is peace among nations and neighbours historically normal or is it exceptional? Is the historian's job to provide a better national story or to make national stories impossible? What is the strongest argument you've heard that does not invoke religion in favour of human life having inherent value? Patriotism. We're not talking about why it is gripping if I'm wrong, Robert, when people like me now say I'm a British Patriot, all of my right thinking university educated friends suck their teeth as if I've just had them fascist. Why is that? In this country, if you're a Scottish nationalist, Welsh nationalist or Irish nationalist, it's kind of cool. If you're a British Patriot, it's suspect. Why is that? OK, well, in that case I would say we don't talk about gratitude, the benefits that we have very rarely due to our own efforts. They're due to the efforts of many generations before us, and we should be aware of this. Absolutely. Thank you both very much. Head on over to TriggerPod.co.uk where both Robert and Nigel are going to answer your questions.