Any great empire involving millions of human beings, will have examples of crime, sin, excess, corruption and so on. (See Genghis, Rome, Persia etc).

The wonder of the British empire does not lie in its failings. Mankind always falls. No, the wonder is in the extraordinary decency and courage of so many of its people, the genuine desire to build and improve the world – in the image of Britain, usually. The wonder is not the years of slavery, but stopping it with sea power. Or abolishing widows dying in fire, or imprisoning criminals in India instead of crushing them by elephant.

My feeling is that, in general, British presence was usually an improvement over the constant tribal war that was stopped by British regiments. The empire dragged a lot of places like Sarawak in Borneo from continuous slaughter and savagery into the modern era. Places like Hong Kong, Calcutta and Canada were created whole, pretty much. (Or saved fron the French, which is just as good.)

The love of that empire is shown in all those who came to save her in WW2 – from India, Nepal, Australia, Africa, Canada, America etc. Millions. That is the only proof that matters. Bless em all.
The French of course, formed the Vichy government and we had to sink their fleet.

All lights fade, even the brightest. Still, on balance… I think we can be pretty proud of our particular bonfire on the hill.

Mr Mount, why do you consider only two options: woke or dead? To them can be added “alive and not woke”.

On Empire, has there been a single one in history that has not had slavery or dominated other nations or peoples? Even smaller entities, like tribes have taken the people of other tribes and treated them badly, mostly very badly. Until the great awakening of the Enlightenment, was it not normal, de rigeur even, for progressive nations to create international empires with all the advantages to the home nation, irrespective of the disadvantages to others? In those times empire building was an overwhelmingly respected, perhaps even necessary, occupation for any nation with ambitions to do better in the world. It was normal and nearly everybody did it or they wanted to do it.

And as empires go, I’d venture the British Empire was the very best! Trade based, stable, long term, building joint British and local governmental structures wherever possible, fostering mutual respect and producing the world-class post-colonial collaborative, mutually supportive group: The Commonwealth.

Turning to the vast Transatlantic slave trade was it not made entirely possible, because of the pre-existing, traditional slave trade within Africa itself? The European colonialists turned out to be, essentially, new customers for the native slave traders. In this both (black) seller and (white) buyer were complicit and can there really be any rational argument that could convince that one is more complicit than the other? There was no one “colour” of a people to blame for Slavery. They were effectively all at it.

Until Britain decided to formally stop it’s own involvement in slavery. And once they did, then to make a fully serioustry to get other countries to stop it too, despite great, voluntary, costs in doing so. Britain had the moral courage to do so. This was no post-modern lust to “be on the right side of history”, no cheap vain calculation – just a general public view that came to a head because of some brave, inspired individuals who made it their collective mission to stop slavery for all in the world. And if the British Empire had not been as strong as it was, then the number and the suffering of slaves of other countries would have grown and suffered far longer without British intervention.

We can be proud of the British Empire (by the values of its time) and equally proud of its singular role in putting an end to world-wide slavery.

I forced myself to finish reading this article, but it was so poorly argued in relation to modern reality…which was surely the point I had to finish so I could comment.

Using examples from 1938 Alabama, Powell from 1950 and 1975… Then suddenly launches into Brexiteers (30 years later) using what I can only describe as leaps of illogic posed as logic.

Apparently Brexiteers
– cannot imagine sharing a “simple code of practice”,
-are comparable to calling 100 years, many countries atrocities & murder of millions by Communists as “not properly tried”
– Heartless extremists who want no immigration and have no humanity and would rather see people drown…oh and all with “hostile vigilance”

– Then we go back to referencing someone from that died in 1869 (Palmerston)?!
– Compare the British Empire to the Romans and Ottomans rather than the vastly more appropriate French, Portuguese or Dutch.

He grabs random facts from history that suit his argument, then tries to shoehorn this into justifying Brexiteers = horrible stupid people.
In a word, Remoaner.

I’ve probably missed a lot but I’ve made my point I hope.
Unherd, disappointed.

The danger of the far right is regularly trundled out to make any number of sloppy arguments, yet the far right generally represents a sliver of a population and is not the reason that there is heightened discord between left and right.
What is happening is that there is a backlash against the radical left, to the extent that classical liberals and the centre left are moving to centre right.

What I like about Unherd is right here, the article putting one side, the comments the other. Regarding the idea suggested by the article; again if you’re asking me to not love my country for what she is, her history, her people & her culture, then you’re wasting your ink. If you’re asking me to view it all critically- I do, but I still love her. As I’ve said numerous times of my beloved Tottenham Hotspur; I love her like a wayward child. I love her failings, though they pain me often. Wokery is a negative for those it disempowers. In this respect I do choose death. Begone.

There is so much opinion in this article as opposed to facts, I’m just going to pick out one piece of daftness. “the psychopathic temporary General Dyer.”
 Dyer was born in India 1864 and spent his early years there, he spoke fluent Hindustani. Europeans like him and their families lived with the 1857 Indian Rebellion massacres of European men, women and children, over 2000 casualties, fresh in their minds.
He was an experienced soldier, had rescued the fort at Chitral amongst other actions. The massacre at Amritsar was roundly and rightly condemned in Britain. The evidence against Dyer however, in the cold light of day, seems to show that fear and paranoia about the risk of another rebellion (there had been attacks on Europeans in the days just prior), caused him to over react and make a serious error of judgement and tragedy ensued.
There is no evidence of psychopathy in Dyer’s life either before the massacre or after. It is merely an insult to add force to an opinion.

This is a very one-sided article. All nations need to ‘struggle with the past’ (I think there is a wonderful German portmanteau word for this) but it needs to be balanced and honest: the woke teleological view of British history, ‘from unequal trade to slavery to industrialisation to capitalism and imperialism (Marx’s ‘Imperialism, the highest form of Capitalism’) to post-colonial exploitation and modern-day racism’ has a caricature truth about it but doesn’t bear much scrutiny.

I would have loved to study the history of empire at school and university but even my reading since suggests nuance is required not bold, and inaccurate strokes. We should also distinguish carefully between élite history, for which the caricature may hold more water, and the lot of ordinary people, who mostly lived poor, ill lives, and died young: there were no ‘splendid far pavilions’ for them and I still believe one could write a respectable, if certainly not complete, history of these Isles in which the concerns of empire, trade, slavery and its abolition, and colonialism, were bit parts.

I look forward to reading ‘Empireland’ but I really don’t accept the central premise, that all can be explained by our imperial history. For me, the things that distinguish us: the rule of law (and equality before the law), representative government (though it was a long time before we became a representative democracy), and a sceptical, slightly detached mode of thinking, long precede the imperial moment.

It seems to me that ‘better woke than dead’ is completely wrong; woke is being dead to the rich patterns of our history and instead seeks to simplify complexity, not to clarify, but to achieve very particular and modern political ends.

What planet is Mount on? When will he and his ilk get it into their skulls that Brexit had nothing to do with Empire and that Brexiteers did not get anything ‘wrong’ about it because they never even considered it. And it’s not the Right that is ‘rampant’ at the moment but Mount and his friends on the left. Their paranoia is evident in articles like this, which is just a lot of nonsense. Please Mr Mount, move on; Brexit is a fact, get used to it!

The phrase “For Brexiteers, the suppression of imperial memory becomes almost as important for the future of the nation as the promotion of the project was in its heyday” may hold for some who promoted it. And for sure there are lessons in history for those that would deny it – up to the point of this being used as a form of straw-man narrative warfare against those who voted Leave for unrelated reasons. It is a wilfully myopic and monochromatic view of voters to do this.

As someone only tangentially connected to Wolverhampton through near death (last rites) my own vote was nothing to do with the place or its history. It was based post-Greece on three governance criteria: Legitimacy, Accountability and Responsiveness – and an EU failure on three counts (coupled with corruption) in common with all monolithic attempts to rule through one homogenizing lens over 500,000 people.

As for anyone having grown up in or around mixed B’ham it may be fair to say that Muslims for one will be safer in Britain than in most of Europe – let alone China, and the progress made notably by England to date is likely to be accentuated rather than decreased as necessary immigration is sourced on a needs basis from a wider pool than just Europe (where political discourse on racial issues and tolerance is hardly encouraging). Birmingham vs Marseille or Warsaw? Brum, any day.

Attempts to shoe-horn Brexit votes into negative stereotypes and Empire narratives per Fintan O’Toole, based on some Brexit promoters’ views but ignoring voters and Brexit critics’ own agendas, is misleading – and to date such efforts have failed to show much more than the authors’ own frustrations.

Many (wealthy grouping) Brexit critics ignore the yawning pockets of inequality writ ever larger across the EU, separating haves and have nots by Audi autobahn by-passes to second-home comfort zones and oligarch enclave resorts, while ignoring EU failures in terms of the euro, defence, borders and foreign policy that serve to entrench decline and keep Africans and others from competing in blatantly-protected trade.

Quite simply it is a monolithic Fortress Europe and as such prone to extremist capture – having used a Gramsci strategy itself. Michel Barnier’s own volte face from Brexit positions to stand in French elections speaks volumes about EU integrity – and gloomy France.

The Barbary states of North Africa -modern Algeria, Tunisia, Libya- took thousands of white Christian european slaves.
The men were worked to death in the galleys; the women were for domestic slavery or the harem.
This didn’t end with Decatur’s raid on Tripoli in 1815, nor with Pellew’s attack on Algiers in 1816. It ended in 1830 when France colonised Algeria.
That’s only four years before the freeing of the last slaves in the West Indies. Are the societies of modern Algeria or Tunisia wracked with guilt over their past mistreatment of their slaves?

Most of this article is bullshit. I cannot speak to whether the summary of Sathnam Sanghera’s work is accurate or not having not read it, but I have read Robert Tombs’ book This Sceptred Isle as well as having paid close attention to the arguments of people like Fraser Nelson, Lord Frost and others such as Patrick Minford etc. These views are quite profoundly misrepresented above by the author, through the adoption of selective use of facts and oversimplification of nuanced viewpoints, which does typify the sillier political arguments over Brexit (on both sides, admittedly).

But that is no excuse: you either represent in good faith the views of those you criticise, or leave yourself open to charges of intellectual dishonesty. This a test that is failed by the author of this rather silly article here today.

What a confused, messed up individual. I hope I don’t see his byline too often in Unherd.

The EU has all of the liberal elite, most of the British media and half of British politicians on their side… reporting always from the EU’s point of view and eagerly attempting to undermine British sovereignty. And for what? Why do they want to be under the EU boot? Talk of Empire by writers such as this is delusional nonsense. Supporters of Brexit are not living in the past they are looking to the future unencumbered by an increasingly bureaucratic and undemocratic EU. It is the Remainers who are now living in the past.