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Sharp, authoritative essays on the dark realities of Empire and the true historian’s importance for democracy, amid history’s appropriation by apologists, racists and culture warriors.
The Truth About Empire comes from expert historians who believe that the truth, as far as we can pinpoint it, matters; that our decades of painstaking research make us worth listening to; and that our authority as leading professionals should count for something in today’s polarised debates over Britain’s imperial past.
In the culture wars, the public’s understanding of colonial history is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. With their fight to highlight Empire’s horrors, communities whose voices once went unheard have alienated many who would prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has produced a concerted denial of British imperial racism and violence—a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.
From Australia and China to India and South Africa, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a shield against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire’s culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain’s colonial past.
PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE
Foreword — Sathnam Sanghera
Introduction: The Truth About Colonial History — Alan Lester
PART TWO: THE REALITIES OF COLONIALISM AROUND THE WORLD
1. What About Slavery? — Bronwen Everill
2. Tasmania and the Question of Genocide in the Black War, the History Wars and the Culture War — Lyndall Ryan
3. The Misuse of Indigenous and Canadian History in Colonialism — Adele Perry, Sean Carleton, and Omeasoo Wahpasiw
4. ‘When Men Burn Women Alive, We Hang Them’: Sati and ‘Civilising Mission’ in Colonial India — Andrea Major
5. ‘Unencumbered by the Scruples of Justice and Good Faith’: The Colonial Achievements of Raffles in Southeast Asia — Gareth Knapman
6. My Empire, Right or Wrong: Rhodes, Milner and the South African War — Saul Dubow
7. Written on the City: Imperial Britain and China — Robert Bickers
PART THREE: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND RACE
8. Morality and the History of Abolition and Empire — Richard Huzzey
9. A Short History of a Controversial Comparison: Empire and Fascism in Black Political Thought During the 1930s — Liam Liburd
10. Escape from Empire: Decolonisation as Disentanglement, Erasure, and Evasion — Erik Linstrum
11. No End of a Reckoning — Stuart Ward
12. Colonialism: A Methodological Reckoning — Margot Finn
Description
Sharp, authoritative essays on the dark realities of Empire and the true historian’s importance for democracy, amid history’s appropriation by apologists, racists and culture warriors.
The Truth About Empire comes from expert historians who believe that the truth, as far as we can pinpoint it, matters; that our decades of painstaking research make us worth listening to; and that our authority as leading professionals should count for something in today’s polarised debates over Britain’s imperial past.
In the culture wars, the public’s understanding of colonial history is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. With their fight to highlight Empire’s horrors, communities whose voices once went unheard have alienated many who would prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has produced a concerted denial of British imperial racism and violence—a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.
From Australia and China to India and South Africa, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a shield against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire’s culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain’s colonial past.
