History Becomes Hot.
Suddenly, and from several directions, history and particularly colonial history has become a hot issue. Several recent events have underscored the importance of history as a central issue in contemporary debates about race.
* The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to the Caribbean has highlighted grievances about both slavery and its ongoing legacies. Claims of continuing injustices in land use in Belize, the headship of a once slave-supporting monarchy over Jamaica and other nations, and the claims of reparations for slavery have all come to the fore; with William’s statement that slavery was ‘abhorrent’ and ‘should never have happened’ being thought to be insufficient.
* The Government’s response to the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities made proposals about the teaching of history, under the heading ‘5.1 Create a more inclusive history curriculum’. The proposed Action 58 says ‘The DfE will actively seek out . . high quality resources to support teaching . . on black history. . . This will help support schools to share the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups.’ Clearly here the focus is giving attention to the ‘multiple’ histories that have been experienced by the different ethnic groups in Britain. The big challenge is how they are to be ‘nuanced’, since, as we shall see, there are many very different ways in which nuances can shape how those stories are to be presented to people.
* The petition of Jesus College, Cambridge to remove a memorial of Tobias Rustat from its chapel because of his investment in the slave trade was dismissed on the grounds that the memorial did not actually celebrate his involvement. The Church of England supported the College’s request, and as part of the terms of reference for its Racial Justice Commission does ‘not want to unconditionally celebrate or commemorate people who contributed to or benefitted from the tragedy that was the slave trade’. Given how thoroughly and inextricably the slave trade and slavery were impressed into Britain’s economic and social fabric then seeking to isolate and remove traces of such commemoration is an extremely demanding task.
* The ‘damning’ YouGov survey commissioned by the Birmingham City footballer Troy Deeney that 64% of teachers felt they were not given enough support on teaching a culturally diverse curriculum. Deeney has spoken of his fascination with the Roman military history he was taught, but ‘Why wasn’t I taught about where I come from or what I represent?’, and has written to Nadhim Zahawi urging that the same mistake not be made with his own children’s education. I have not been able to find who worked with Deeney in overseeing and guiding the research, but his petition on Change repeats the uninformed accusation that the Sewell Report says the UK ‘does not have a systemic problem with racism at all’.
Where we are now.
One of the successes of the debate aroused by Black Lives Matter is the growing recognition that slavery is an integral part of British history. It ought to be taught to all schoolchildren. More widely, as a nation we ought to feel the emotional force of the cruelty and brutality, the exploitation and devaluation of human life that was integral to slavery. Part of the disconnect between white people, especially leaders, and black people is caused by having a rather abstract mental notion of slavery as a simple historical event (like, say, the Napoleonic Wars) rather than as a personal, visceral and deeply ashamed awareness of the evil our country has done. Israel Olofinjana (in ‘Discipleship, Suffering and Racial Justice’, p 106 – reviewed in blog # 60, 18/01/2022) puts the ‘need to learn the history of racism’ as one of his main recommendations to churches. ‘Lament to Action’, Recommendation 4 under Education, references diversifying the church history curriculum, which certainly must raise how it could be that ‘Christian Europe’ could ever have comfortably come to terms with slavery.
In an early blog (# 4, 19/11/20) I discussed the National Trust’s intention to give greater prominence to the place of slavery and its legacies underlying its properties. I suspect that the pushback from many members against bringing such ‘politics’ into the visitor experience will become increasingly muted as media and popular awareness of the evils that Empire brought increasingly swells. Similarly, whilst the original Sewell Report was weak in its evasive consideration of history (see my blog 25, 13/04/21). The recent Government response to the Report, whilst still unspecific about what a ‘balanced’ coverage might look like, is nonetheless clearer and stronger that Britain’s role in world history needs teaching, with ‘an honest examination where there are deficiencies’. If what that might look like in the classroom is still a blank needing to be filled, the consensus of historical understanding (superbly summarised in Sathnam Sanghera’s ‘Empireland’) is bound to confront future pupils with painful realities about Britain’s history that earlier generations were often able to avoid.
What might a ‘balanced’ view of our Imperial history look like?
Recognising Greed.
Sathnam Sanghera (p 35) quotes the judgement in Lizzie Collingham’s ‘The Hungry Empire’ that ‘the British Empire was born on Newfoundland’s stony beaches’ by west country fishermen in the early sixteenth century. (The belief that great processes are set in place by small events in obscure places unrecognised by contemporaries has a resonant Christian ring to it). Yet the innocent desire to find new sources of food with which to trade and profit had in a century become a profitable trade in human beings as slaves began to be traded from West Africa to the New World. The lure of profit was irresistible. There was always a strand of discomfort. In 1621 an English merchant had refused an offer of slaves on the fine grounds ‘that this sort of trade was not used by the English’, and the great Puritan Richard Baxter expressed his discomfort for the trade. But in 1672 the Royal Africa Company was formed to trade in slaves and in 1677 the Solicitor-General expressed the shameful English legal position that ‘negroes ought to be esteemed goods and commodities within the Acts of Trade and Navigation’.
As Britain became an increasingly powerful player amongst European nations then navigation and trade increasingly took centre stage in national life. Whilst subsequently the sight of a globe with vast portions covered with the red of the British Empire became a source of prestige and pride, the initial impetus was to trade not to rule. Ruling over India and Indians was secondary to the aim of preventing the French doing the same and thereby preventing profits from trade. Similarly in the late nineteenth century the Scramble for Africa happened despite the difficulties of direct colonial rule that had been seen in the Indian Uprising of 1857 and the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica in 1859, because the only alternative to not colonising large swathes of Africa was to let our European rivals do so instead. As the Indian proverb says ‘when elephants fight it is the ants that get stamped on’. The injustices and exploitation suffered by millions throughout the empire was occasioned not primarily by the desire to rule over others, but rather that trading for profitin a competitive world required us to rule over other people – people offered up to the great god Mammon.
Recognising Comparisons.
The intense focus recently on how Britain ruled its Empire can distract attention from the wider context, both with our contemporary European competitors and with the many empires of the past over the globe. If a ‘balanced’ view of empire requires recognising the evil that was done, it also requires some consideration of the greater evil that might have been done. In ‘Empire: How Britain made the Modern World’ (2003) Niall Ferguson refers to ways in which Britain could be more humane than its competitors, notably the Belgians in Congo. Equally pertinent is placing recent European empires in the context of the great empires of the past. Empire is not a European aberration. From a world historical perspective it is very common for some people to exercise power other peoples in order to gain advantage, and for that power to be exercised with extreme, often gratuitous brutality. To use ‘imperial’ and associated words with an automatically pejorative tone, as is often common, is to be blind to how large a proportion of the world’s population have lived and even thrived under such regimes; including, not least, the Jews of Jesus’ day where Roman Empire was a brutal and unwelcome presence but not (despite other views) an all-encompassing totality.
A related comparison is with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of imperial rule. The inhabitants of empires are not generally engaged in theoretical considerations of its morality but rather make everyday comparisons with what went before. To see the widespread acquiescence in imperial rule, not least in the British empire, as mere ‘false consciousness’ which has imbibed the master’s mindset, is to ignore the fact that in different places and at different times living under imperial rule brought greater stability and prosperity than did the previous rule, which in itself had been no more ‘representative’ of the people.
Recognising Ideals.
‘Our system has incurred a vast load of crime. . . The British Empire has been signally blessed by Providence in her eminence, her strength, her wealth, her prosperity. . . They were given for some higher purpose than commercial prosperity or military renown. . . He who has made Great Britain what she is will require at our hands how we have employed the influence He has lent to us in our dealings with the untutored and defenceless savages.’ The Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines’ of 1837 was unselfconsciously patronising but had a clear sense of moral idealism and accountability, coming at the peak of evangelical influence on public life, seen most strongly in the abolition of slavery. The danger of expressing aspirations as an alternative for practicing them was ever present, and as the century wore on ‘commercial prosperity’ and ‘military renown’ clearly had the upper hand.
But ideals to use influence for good were never absent from imperial rule. ‘I marvel that an English graduate can endure to live alone in such a place for £400 a year’ was an African’s comment on a British district officer.
A ‘balanced’ view of the British Empire can not make up a simple profit and loss account, nonetheless against the brutality, exploitation and arrogance needs to be set both genuine desires to increase both human well-being and the blessing of faith in Christ, alongside outcomes that for many people have been beneficial. Over 500 British soldiers died in Malaya in the late 1940s and 1950s in putting down a communist insurgency. They were defending British imperial interests, and in one case that led to the massacre of 23 unarmed villagers. Nonetheless the outcome is that you would be hard-pressed today in a relatively prosperous and peaceful Malaysia to fnd anyone who wishes the insurgents had been as successful as, say, the communists in nearby Vietnam. As the comedian Phil Wang has said ‘Malaysians are relaxed about colonialism’. Nearby Singapore is even more relaxed. It may not be insignificant that by far the most economically successful of Britain’s ex-colonies has also been the most relaxed about not changing street-names. Whilst elsewhere the names of colonial governors have long since been replaced by indigenous heroes, in Singapore the names of Orchard, Raffles and others still hang on. Being relaxed about the past is a sign of confidence for the future.
Recognising Debate.
‘Don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin/ and there’s no telling who that it’s naming/ and the loser now will be later to win/ for the times they are a changing’.
Bob Dylan speaks of the mutability, the endless revisionism, of history. The cliché that history is written by the winners is undermined by the fact that which writers are the ‘winners’ is constantly being revised. This leads to a number of points about how we might get closer to a ‘balanced’ view of history.
* Don’t exclude views. If criticism of empire was once ruled out as unpatriotic, the danger now is dogmatic rejection of any apologia for it. Professor Nigel Biggar’s ‘Ethics of Empire’ project was dismissed as ‘shit’ by a fellow academic. Nottingham University has shamefully withdrawn the offer of an honorary degree to Dr Tony Sewell, a craven submission to a feared mob response which echoes the University of Sussex’s abandonment of Professor Kathleen Stock, and is indicative of how the commodification is corrupting higher education.
* Don’t look for the results you want. Troy Deeney is right to want his children taught the history of ethnic minorities, and his childhood enthusiasm for the derring-do of Roman soldiers can find a counterpart in the heroism of the independent Maroon communities of escaped slaves in Jamaica. But I often find Black History Month sad when it feels it has to find examples to mimic European achievements in science or historical impact. All histories are not commensurate. Western Europe is unique in the size of its impact for both good and ill.
* Seek to enter the minds and outlook of participants rather than rush to moral judgements. Professor Alec Ryrie’s superb but very sombre Gresham College lecture on ‘How Protestant Missionaries Encountered Slavery’ was both sympathetic to the high ideals and aims of the missionaries, yet damning of their vain hopes to bring Christian amelioration to it. Like them our understanding of the past and present is but partial, our knowledge of the consequences of our actions in a different future even more limited.
Conclusion.
Largely because of white/western dominance the last 500 years have seen the emergence of a connected world society. It has witnessed considerable injustice and brutality, and yet it is a world which – with tragic exceptions – is for most people more prosperous and healthier than all the centuries that went before. How as global citizens do we evaluate the history that has brought us to this point? Very recently it has been dominated by two largely unanticipated events – the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A pandemic which several centuries earlier would have seen the population of many countries decimated by plague has been ridden out – so far – without too much of a disaster thanks to the immense progress of medical technology. By contrast, the eruption of war in Ukraine has revived concern that the ultimate consequence of the triumph of western technology could be nuclear disaster, which whilst unlikely in any one year cumulatively becomes much more likely in the course of a century or more.
Surveying Britain’s substantially imperial relationships with the wider world might prompt two simple Christian responses.
* Humility. Great brutality has been done for motives of greed, yet those who have sought to do good have often been compromised. We should tread carefully on the future.
* Hope. Humanity survives and thrives. We see God’s kingdom coming in a rich variety of ways. The evils of our past should not obliterate the benefits that billions are experiencing today.