Book Review: Empireland - How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera

After reading Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire I was keen to read more about my country's history. It's weird that studying history in the UK consists of the Tudors, Shakespeare, the Industrial Revolution, and the World Wars. Nothing about how modern Britain came to exist, our empire, its global and local consequences, or the path it put us on.

I guess we have to learn that from random statues before they experience marisepultura…

Sanghera is very clear this isn't a purely academic history book. Although it has plenty of citations and references, it doesn't tie itself in knots attempting to pin down what we mean by empire - or whether it was "good or bad".

If we immerse ourselves in definitions, however, we will end up with yet another forbiddingly long academic book on empire, when my ambition is to create something resembling the opposite.

This is an accessible and entertaining look at how the empire developed and - more importantly - the impact it had on the UK. And it really is about impact. There is very little ethical equivocation here. As he says:

History and the people who made it were complicated. You can’t apply modern ethics to the past. To read history as a series of events that instil pride and shame, or a balance of rights and wrongs, is as inane as listing the events in your own life as good and bad.

There are undoubtedly some aspects of the empire which were shameful - even contemporary accounts of some the events reveal the British public's deep unease at what was occurring.

And yet, a lot of what we hear about empire today is a sort of boys-own story of daring-do. We need to understand the contemporary morality to understand how our ancestors' reactions made it possible to change the future.

It's also a good way to look at some of the issues we face now. While Rishi Sunak is the first Prime Minister of Indian descent, the first MP of Indian descent to be fairly elected was Dadabhai Naoroji in… 1892! The UK has been intertwined with other countries for so long that none of the arguments about people "coming over here" are particularly new.

As I mentioned, this isn't a book which is solely about bashing or discrediting the empire. The author presents some compelling counter narratives - both in terms of its popularity, positive impact, and consequences. The book avoids "both sides"ing the issues and is relatively good at letting the reader decide for themselves.

It is a decidedly contemporary book - going right up to the Edward Colston statue incident. But, as part of its contemporariness, I think it relies a little to much on witticisms from random Twitter users. Similarly, the use of neologisms I found a bit silly.

Ultimately, if we want to understand our country's trajectory we need to understand its past. The argument over whether slavery was ended due to morality or "econocide" allows us to assess whether we're making similar decisions today.

It's an excellent and informative book.