Radio 4's Start the Week - Empire Discussion
This week Andrew Marr presents a special edition of Start the Week. To mark the end of Radio 4's This Sceptred Isle: Empire series, some of this country's best-known historians will be examining how Britain and other countries around the world have been changed by their experience of empire. They'll be discussing whether Britain should apologise and make reparation for its imperial past or glory in it, and asking whether the twenty-first century will see the birth of new empires. Eric Hobsbawm, Niall Ferguson, Robert Beckford, Linda Colley and Priya Gopal join Andrew Marr.
- The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred by Niall Ferguson is published by Allen Lane.
- Jesus Dub: Theology, Music and Social Change by Robert Beckford is published by Routledge.
- Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence by Priyamvada Gopal is published by Routledge. Her essay on a Moral Empire can be found in the collection she is editing with Neil Lazarus, which will be published in the autumn as a special issue of the journal New Formations, to be called, After Iraq: Reframing Postcolonial Studies.
- The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm is published by Abacus, as is Nations and Nationalism since 1780.
- The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh by Linda Colley will be published by HarperCollins in the autumn. Captives is published by Pimlico.
2 comments:
Not as much a discussion, more a dictation by Furguson about his undying love for the British Empires rape of two continents...
Ali
dralfonzo.co.nr
Richard Gott, close friend of the KGB and all round 'useful idiot', has a piece in the Guardian that blames everything bad in the world today on the British. Obviously, before the Empire there was uninterupted joy and happiness.
Luckily, some of the comments disagree:
'Yes, people like the author, Richard Gott, and some of the commenters here, baffle me. Either they have no historical perspective at all, or they deliberately ignore all the various other empires and wars in history. From my name, you might correctly deduce that I'm Indian, and if India and Pakistan haven't solved the Kashmir problem for 60 years now, we can hardly keep blaming it on you guys.'
[...]
'Slavery is often mentioned, but it's rarely pointed out by the self flagalating brigade that the British Empire was the first in history to outlaw slavery, which persisted long afterwards in Africa and Arabia.'
[...]
'What no mention of Hong Kong? That place that was founded because of the opium trade? Plenty of dead-white-man-bashing opportunities missed there! Promlem is, when you compare HK to China, you are left with the feeling that colonialism is, on balance, a good thing. Perhaps HK was overlooked because the evil British showed once and for all that liberal capitalism is infinitely superior to the wonderful German/Russian doctrines of Marxist Leninism.'
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