This Spectred Isle
The discussion was in relation to BBC's This Sceptred Isle: Empire - A 90 Part History of the British Empire. A project with excellent profiles, maps, timelines etc. about the British Empire as well as an intriguing Send your Stories section where some amazing stories have already been collected. Such as Margaret Penfold:
My father was a British telecommunications engineer in the British Mandate of Palestine. My father was a true believer in the theory that God had raised the British to their eminent position in the world to serve His purpose. The myth of the White Man’s Burden was higher here in Palestine than in any colony and, as children, my siblings and I had this myth drubbed into us daily. Like many middle-class British children who returned to England from the colonies and did not go on to public school, I received a culture shock. Ordinary people in England did not regard themselves as at the top of the social pile. Their values were at odds to the ones I had regarded as given truths. Like many others I have never regarded myself as a true member of the society I live in, and have always felt myself an exile from the land of my childhood.
Back to the BBC show. The tone set by the host, Andrew Marr, was one of highlighting the 'good' aspects of the empire [starts off with the contrafactual of a world without the English!] and he certainly chose the right historian, Niall Ferguson, for that. However, he stumbled badly by inviting other historians who were in no mood to pat the Empire's back."Niall Ferguson gets it...exactly wrong" said Gopal [author of Literary Radicalism In India: Gender, Nation And The Transition To Independence] near the end of the show. Just about on everything, I might add. Ferguson starts off with arguing that World Cup Football would not be possible without the British Empire. Hobsbawn corrects him. And it goes, well, uphill from there. Ferguson's shining moment could be when he asserted that the indigenous nationalist struggles, though well-meaning, got nothing done - and that the British Empire chose to give up their empire only because it was drained after fighting the Nazis. Obviously, to those from the colonies - Gopal and Beckford - this was a highly insulting claim. Eric Hobsbawn did have the best lines near the end as he tried to sum-up.
Priyamvada Gopal was so incensed by the show that she wrote this open-letter to Andrew Marr: I regret coming on at the last minute. As an academic with serious interests in the matter, I thought I'd be participating in a real discussion, not a book plug, a sham and an apologia for the past. Ouch. To be fair, her open letter is a tad unfair as well - she calls Robert Beckford"the token black man" ["Empire landed on me" was the best line of the show, uttered by Beckford].
As for the overall show, it is worth a listen, if you like banging your head on the wall and that sorta thing. [semi-xposted on CM; thx to Rob and Kumuda for links.]