00:03:32.000But what I go on to say is, well, no, you can't identify the British Empire with Nazism in any respect.
00:03:41.000It wasn't essentially racist or exploitative.
00:03:45.000And then you add to that the fact that there were persistent humanitarian and liberal threads to imperial policy, anti-slavery.
00:03:56.000And then from about the 1860s onwards, the Empire learnt from the fact that it lost the American colonies in the 1780s,
00:04:04.000and was committed to making Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand independent.
00:04:10.000And they were virtually independent by 1930.
00:04:12.000And India was put in the same track at the end of the First World War.
00:04:15.000And then the final thing, the point I make is that the fact that the Empire was committed to fighting the massively murderous and essentially racist regime in Nazi Germany,
00:04:31.000and from May 1940 to June 1941, it was the only military opposition to Nazism, with the exception of Greece.
00:04:41.000That fact tells you something about the fundamental values of the empire, notwithstanding all sorts of injustices and evils and elements of racism within the empire.
00:04:54.000And, Nigel, I know we touched on this last time. Before we talk about the British Empire specifically, I've been reading a lot in the context of the conflict in Ukraine.
00:05:04.000And I've been reading a Russian guy called Alexander Dugin.
00:05:10.000But one of the things, he's part of this movement in Russia, these so-called New Eurasians.
00:05:16.000And it's funny reading him, because his book was written not that long ago, I think in 2000.
00:05:22.000And he goes, Russians are an imperial people.
00:05:24.000We must be expanding in order to survive and to exist.
00:05:27.000Can you talk to us about, because I think part of the reason we have this one dimensional conversation about this issue is, we seem to have forgotten that other countries had empires too.
00:05:43.000What is the rationale for building a country that essentially not a nation state, but it's a combination of different ethnicities and different relationships to each other?
00:05:57.000The focus certainly in America and in this country is on European empires and white empires and British Empire, in particular.
00:06:06.000Whereas empire has been an historical phenomenon since the 4000 BC in Mesopotamia.
00:06:16.000Arabs did it, Africans did it, the Chinese still do it, the Comanche did it in the southwest of the US and of what's now the US in the 1800s.
00:06:27.000So there's a strange focus on European empires, which we could talk about.
00:07:49.000But then in the case of the British Empire, trade, a major motive.
00:07:55.000So, that's the main reason, the first reason why the British ended up in Africa and in India.
00:08:03.000And then you've also got, ironically, you've got anti-imperial endeavours.
00:08:07.000So, one reason the English first pitched up on the coast of North America was to set up posts or ports from which English raiders could raid Spanish shipping at a time when imperial Spain, Catholic Spain, was threatening little Protestant England.
00:08:28.000So, the motives for empire are various.
00:08:33.000And you mentioned the Russian, the current Russian example.
00:08:37.000So, I guess some proponents of empire think that a certain piece of territory belongs to them by right or by nature or something.
00:08:49.000So, some Russians think that Ukraine is an internal part of Russia, regardless of what Ukrainians think.
00:13:31.000But we have to, and this is related to the very last point, we have to take on board the fact that slavery and trading in slaves was a universal institution almost from the dawn of time.
00:13:50.000So long before Europeans got into it, and the Portuguese were the first in the 1440s, in terms of trading in Africans.
00:14:01.000I mean, Bristol was a slave market in the medieval period.
00:14:05.000Irish slaves being traded to Norsemen who then took them down the Volga to the Black Sea.
00:14:11.000So there's lots of slave trading around Europe, but also Africans were involved in trading other Africans as slaves to the Romans, and then to the Muslim Arabs.
00:14:24.000The Comanche, the Amerindian people who dwelt in the southwest of what's now the United States, according to one eminent historian, ran a vast slave economy in the 1700s.
00:14:40.000And then in the 1700s, in Jamaica, when slaves escaped from the plantations and went into the forested interior, the mountains interior of Jamaica, they were called Maroons.
00:14:58.000And I was in Raleigh, North Carolina in January, visiting my wife's family there, and I went to the Museum of the History of North Carolina.
00:15:09.000Which told me that on the eve of the American Civil War in 1860, there were 30,000 freed slaves in the state of North Carolina, some of whom owned slaves of their own.
00:15:23.000And my point is, we have to accept the fact that for many people, even former slaves, owning slaves was acceptable or normal.
00:15:37.000And even if you were in the 18th century, 19th century, you might well object to cruel and inhuman forms of slavery, and yet still think that slavery was a kind of a fact of life.
00:15:53.000So we just have to accept that and get our heads around it.
00:15:57.000It doesn't necessarily mean that everyone until us was morally corrupt and morally insensitive.
00:16:12.000So there was nothing exceptional about the British involvement in slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries.
00:16:19.000What was exceptional and extraordinary was that toward the end of the 18th century, partly because of Enlightenment views, mainly because of Christian views,
00:16:34.000the idea that owning other human beings as property, began to be questioned on principle.
00:16:41.000And so in 1787, you get the creation of the Society for the abolition of slavery in England.
00:16:49.000I think Denmark was the first state in Europe to abolish the slave trade within its limited territories.
00:16:56.000Britain followed three years later, 1807.
00:17:01.000And then in 1833, the empire abolished slavery as an institution within its territories.
00:17:08.000So let me just make this clear, because at the moment, in recent years,
00:17:16.000we've been encouraged in Britain to look again at the horrors of slavery in which our ancestors were involved for 150, 200 years, as if nothing had changed.
00:17:29.000So the fact that Britain was among the first states in the history of the world to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery,
00:17:41.000and it then led the world in suppressing both of those, as I said, from Brazil across Africa to Malaysia.
00:18:00.000And we carried on doing that until the end of the empire in the 1960s.
00:18:06.000And in the 1820s and 30s, the slave trade department in the British Foreign Office was the largest unit.
00:18:13.000And in the 1830s or the 40s, thereabouts, 13% of the total manpower of the Royal Navy was devoted to stopping slave ships leaving West Africa for the Americas.
00:18:32.000Just stopping that, quite apart from stopping slavery elsewhere.
00:18:37.000So I do think we need to remember the fact that we couldn't undo what we'd done for 200 years worth of enslaving.
00:18:46.000All we could do was stop it and then try and stop it elsewhere.
00:18:50.000So I think we need to remember the bit of history that's closest to us.
00:18:54.000Nigel, isn't there one reason that perhaps it's hard to see things in that way?
00:18:59.000And that is, although I have a whole chapter in my book about this as well, and the point you make, I make too.
00:19:06.000The one thing that I think we could all agree was somewhat different about the British Empire is because it was technologically the most sophisticated nation in the world at the time.
00:19:15.000It had technology that allowed it to transport people in a way and to places that previously people would have struggled to do.
00:19:23.000The idea that you could transport millions of people across the Atlantic Ocean, really, that would have been unavailable to almost anybody.
00:19:30.000And so even though we know that the trans-Saharan slave trade, which took slaves from sub-Saharan Africa to the Maghreb to the Middle East, it lasted longer and had more people.
00:19:41.000And they were treated far worse, by the way. But it doesn't have the same imagery in our minds as people being stuffed into the hold of a ship in terrible conditions and being sailed to a completely foreign land and dumped there and forced to work in the plantations.
00:19:57.000Isn't that one of the reasons that just as human beings, we feel a very strong reaction to what we're being told?
00:20:04.000That's a fair point, Constantine. Just to be clear, the British didn't start that. The Portuguese were doing that.
00:20:11.000They were transporting slaves to the Canary Islands just off the coast of West Africa in the 1440s.
00:20:21.000So, yes, Europeans who had developed the naval technology to transport goods and people across oceans, I suppose that may have been the first time that had happened.
00:20:33.000And the conditions in the slave ships were horrendous. And the wastage, the human wastage, the percentage of enslaved Africans who died on route was high.
00:20:46.000Although for commercial reasons, those trading slaves improved conditions such that the number of people dying on the ships declined.
00:20:57.000Still doesn't excuse it. So that's probably true.
00:21:03.000So, so, so the, the conditions on the ship on the slave ships were, uh, horrendous.
00:21:09.000Um, but I think, um, so notwithstanding that.
00:21:15.000I guess my point Nigel is sorry, but I feel I've sidetracked you a little bit is it's almost like you're right.
00:21:22.000And in fact, in the research that I did, uh, somebody argued actually that slaves were the first good that people ever traded potentially.
00:21:29.000Um, but my point is, it's almost like this is going to sound crass and deliberately.
00:21:34.000So, cause I'm trying to make the point it's like everyone did it, but the British Empire was just better at it.
00:21:39.000And that's why we're more perhaps ashamed because we did it on quite a large scale and very effectively.
00:21:45.000Um, yes, that, that, that might be the case.
00:21:49.000Although I think one shouldn't downplay the, the horrors of the, um, slave trade across Africa.
00:21:55.000And when, when Europeans like David Livingston witnessed, it was just horrible, smaller in scale, I grant you, nor should we downplay the, the horrors of being, um, enslaved and carted off to the coast of North Africa, ended up in the slave galley.
00:22:10.000Um, um, uh, that wasn't pretty either.
00:22:16.000So, but, but, uh, your point's well taken.
00:22:18.000And there were forms of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, domestic slavery, which were more humane.
00:22:24.000So certainly, uh, more, there were more and less humane forms of slavery.
00:22:28.000And the, the, the one in which the Europeans, not just the British engaged, transporting people across the Atlantic and then the slave plantations was among the worst.
00:23:10.000I mean, so I look back at slavery, having looked at Pol Pot's killing fields, having looked at the Holocaust, having looked at the, well, you know, the, the, the millions are lost their lives in German Mao's great leap forward and cultural revolution.
00:23:28.000Um, having looked at what Stalin did in Russia in the 1930s, um, having considered, um, having considered, um, having considered, so in other words, history is full of, um, massive inhumanity.
00:23:41.000Um, and I, I, I don't mean to diminish the, the awfulness of, of slavery.
00:23:47.000Uh, but the, you know, if you, if you want to, to get upset about the past, there's an awful lot you can get upset about.
00:23:54.000Um, and I, I still think, I still think, and, and, you know, there's nothing you can do, nothing we can do to save those who were enslaved and treated abominably by, uh, English or Scottish sailors in the, uh, 1700s.
00:24:13.000We can't undo that, um, but there was an awful lot of injustice about it.
00:24:18.000We can, we can't undo, uh, the, the, the maltreatment of industrial workers in mid 19th century Victorian England.
00:24:26.000We can't undo the injustices done to small kids set up chimney stacks.
00:24:57.000So, so, um, if you follow the, the Marxist, um, economic historian, um, Eric Williams, his 1940 book, Capitalism and Slavery argues that, um, the British.
00:25:10.000Made, um, the, the, the, the profits of the British made from the trade and slavery was a major, um, cause of Britain's industrial revolution taking off.
00:25:22.000Um, but, but I, uh, uh, unless you're a Marxist, uh, that's not, that's not a, um, uh, a popularly held view now.
00:25:33.000And historians of, um, the transatlantic slave trade and economic historians will not disagree with that.
00:25:40.000Um, um, um, the, the, to your point about the costs of anti-slavery, um, David Elthus, the economic historian, I think has, has written that in the period of roughly 1816 to 1860, um, uh, the British spent as much suppressing the slave trade and slavery as they had profited as much in the 50 years before the, the, the
00:26:09.980abolition. Um, and as I mentioned, in terms of, uh, the Royal Navy, um, 13% of his manpower at one point devoted to the West African squadron.
00:26:19.980I have read that 17,000 sailors lost their lives, probably from disease, trying to suppress it.
00:26:26.980And, and that was just the, just the Atlantic. Um, in fact, the empire was involved in, in anti-slavery for 150 years all over.
00:26:34.980Um, now, now, does that compensate for 150 years of slavery? Well, no, but, but, um, what's done is done.
00:26:44.980Uh, and so there's nothing can compensate. Uh, all you can do is, is try and do better. And we have done.
00:26:51.980And Nigel, this is maybe a, I don't know, is it an unfair question or not, but I feel like because we have this warped way of looking at history in, in the UK and in the West more broadly, what do you think that says about us and the stage of our civilization that we're at?
00:27:09.980We're at this excessive introspection, this, this kind of very one dimensional view of our history. Is it a signal of something? Is it a symptom of some kind of disorder? I don't know. What is it?
00:27:21.980Right. Well, first of all, I think it is dangerous. Um, uh, and the reason I wrote my book and I make that clear in the introduction was political. Um, and I, I don't pretend I don't have a political interest here. I do try to be fair.
00:27:37.980And accurate as far as I can. Uh, but I do have a political interest here. And my interest is in, in the confidence and the self-confidence of the West. Uh, because I, I, in trying to explain why it is that the, the only thing, uh, the critics of empire care about are white empires.
00:27:59.980And European empires and European empires. Um, why is that? Um, because I, I, I take it that the, the record of European empires and in particular the British one is a proxy for the record of the West.
00:28:13.980Um, and it is, I mean, for, um, for, um, in terms of European civilization from 1815 to 1914, roughly Britain was the leader. Um, and so, um, it, it, it bothers me that the record of the West is being, um, traduced, maligned. Um, because my, my worry is that it will reduce the faith of contemporary Britons.
00:28:41.980Contemporary Britons and younger Britons in the West and in Britain as an important, if secondary pillar of the West. So that is why it matters to me.
00:28:51.980Um, um, um, as to what it says about us, I mean, I, I have puzzled over why, I mean, in my book in, in the, in the, in the, throughout the book, I try and demonstrate how certain historians, not all, have, uh, taken the evidence and then made, um, judgments about the empire that the evidence just doesn't support.
00:29:15.840So the empire committed genocide in Tasmania or the empire committed, um, um, um, genocide in, in the Western plains of Canada in the 1880s.
00:29:27.940And I, I, I, I, I, I lay this out and if the reader wants to see the evidence, it's there in the book.
00:29:34.360And then I say, well, why, why, why, what propels the judgment way out in advance of the evidence?
00:29:43.480I mean, why go beyond the evidence to make a, uh, uh, an unsupported critical claim about British colonialism?
00:29:52.920Um, and I say to myself, well, um, you know, if, if the evidence, uh, as a committed Britain and as a committed Western, if, if the evidence, if the evidence requires me,
00:30:05.320um, obliges me to accept that my people did awful things in the past, um, then I need to accept that.
00:30:14.140But why would I, what, why would I choose to, to believe that my people did awful things in the past if the evidence doesn't require me?
00:30:22.180And I, I, I speculate as to what might be propelling this, but there is, um, there's a, there's a, there's clearly on the part of some, uh, critics of empire,
00:30:34.100uh, not just a readiness to accept the truth about the past, but a glee that they want to believe the worst.
00:30:41.300Well, this is why I bring up the point, because the facts are what the facts are, and we've already talked about it, like all empires, the British empire committed many atrocities and did many bad things.
00:30:50.340And like every society in history, it engaged in slavery.
00:30:55.500However, there is many ways to tell that story.
00:30:58.860I mean, as you point out yourself, a story could be, this is a country that did terrible things and you leave it there and you say, we're terrible people who must have turned forever.
00:31:07.960Or you could compare it to, to elsewhere and also go make the point that you've made, which is, and then we, we did what we could, and then we tried to deal with this and we tried to end it.
00:31:18.980And then actually we had to force, for example, countries in the Middle East to stop trading in slaves, a great cost diplomatically, militarily in human lives and so on.
00:31:28.340But there is a demand in our society for a particular story about that.
00:31:34.100And I am concerned, as you are, I think that that is not accidental.
00:31:39.780The demand for that particular narrative comes from a desire to deflate our confidence, to demoralize people in the UK and the West and America about their own history.
00:31:53.820And I just wonder if you had any thoughts on, you know, as a historian, on what happens to societies once they go down that path.
00:32:03.420Yeah, so I quote in the book, a passage from a novel by, by an Austrian novelist, Robert Musil.
00:32:13.400The novel wasn't completed on his death in 1942.
00:32:16.180It's called The Man Without Qualities, it's called.
00:32:22.180And it's set in the, I think before the First World War, on the eve of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
00:32:31.220And I can't remember the passage in its entirety, but what he says is this.
00:32:38.260He says that confidence in nations and empires collapses in the same way that it collapses in business concerns, when its credit is used up.
00:34:45.900So let's agree that the West has made serious mistakes.
00:34:52.940Every, as I say, every nation state or collection of nation states will have made serious mistakes.
00:34:56.760But it's still true that we are committed to a political way of life in which the power of executive government is limited by law, effectively limited by law.
00:35:16.700And that's one of the features of liberal democratic government, that it cannot do the kinds of things that President Putin is doing in Russia.
00:35:27.660And although President Putin might say, you know, this is the Russian way, there are plenty of Russians, speak for yourself, Constantine, who disagree.
00:35:35.200And even if they, plenty of Russians are critical of the West, but even plenty of people in Russia and indeed in China, certainly in Hong Kong, can see the evils of a repressive government that is subject to no effective legal control.
00:35:53.120So if you believe in the, if you believe that too much power is a dangerous thing for any state to have, if you believe in the importance of having the power of the state curbed by law, so that individuals can criticize it or get on with their lives in the way they choose.
00:36:16.160If you believe in the West, if you believe in a liberal political life, then the West, notwithstanding its mistakes, is something worth believing in.
00:36:27.060And there are plenty of people in Russia and China and Hong Kong today that would agree with that.
00:36:47.300Well, it's partly because people are saying this, they enjoy these freedoms.
00:36:51.600And part of my worry about contemporary Britons who know a little about their history, and I was growing up, I grew up in a time when you couldn't get out of school without having some idea of how we got in Britain to where we are today in terms of national and constitutional development.
00:37:10.600And even before I was 10 years old, I was laying reams of dates.
00:37:14.960So I had some idea of the kind of framework.
00:37:17.420My sense is, nowadays, young Britons are not taught history that way at all.
00:37:21.760So they don't have much idea of where this all came from.
00:37:26.360And I do get frustrated when it seems to me a lot of my fellow citizens forget just how extraordinarily fortunate we are in Britain, which now enjoys the greatest security, wealth, health, generally speaking, that we have ever enjoyed, and that, compared to most nations in the world, we're extraordinary.
00:37:48.820So I think we need not to take things for granted, the way we do.
00:37:54.240No, I would completely agree with that, Nigel.
00:37:56.340The question that I want to ask you is, you've been working in academia for the vast majority of your career.
00:38:03.780Have most of these ideas come from academia?
00:38:06.860And what responsibility do you think academia should take for this?
00:38:12.520Because there's a lot of people who put the blame solely at the door of institutions like Oxford University, Cambridge University, Ivy League.