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00:08More than a quarter of all the nations on earth are former British colonies.
00:13And scattered across the world are the ruins of the British Empire.
00:18Statues to kings and viceroys, slave fortresses, plantations, schools, railways, and prisons.
00:28At its height, the British Empire, the biggest there has ever been, ruled over a fifth of the world's land surface and almost a quarter of its people.
00:41And perhaps the greatest legacy of the British Empire is a living legacy.
00:47There are today literally billions of people whose ancestors in different ways were part of this story.
00:54For this episode, we asked people from across the world to share their views on the contested histories and the modern hybrid identities that were left behind when, after four centuries, the British Empire finally came to an end.
01:11Stories of empire, we flatten out people within them.
01:15Everybody who is British behaved in one way.
01:18Everybody who is Indian behaved in one way.
01:20So whether something is ethical or unethical, how they interacted, what they felt, we lose a lot of that richness and I think it's a shame.
01:27I don't think that there is only kind of one side to the story of empire, you know, not everything was negative.
01:35Histories of empire really do allow us to understand, you know, why there's so many people from Caribbean, Asia, and everywhere else here now.
01:42Looking back on my life and reflecting on choices that I made, an indigenous woman in the middle of Britain, who would have thought?
01:50Talking to you now about the impact that that colonialism has had on my people, that's me, that's who I am.
01:58I'm an umaha wa'ubadi.
02:00The history of the British Empire lives on across the world, even here, on the great plains of Canada, in the vast spaces of the province of Alberta and the tiny city.
02:30And here, in the vaults of the local museum, is an object so precious to the indigenous Kainai community, that before it can be revealed, it has to be blessed in a traditional ceremony.
02:47The object is something I've known about for years, but what I haven't realized until this moment is just what it means to the Kainai people.
02:57Because to carry out the ceremony that's needed for me as an outsider, to view it, a teepee has been erected here, and elders from the tribe have gathered to carry out that ceremony.
03:09Because this object is a vital piece of their history, but it's also a piece of history of the British Empire.
03:17The object in question is known as the great war deeds of Mike Mountain Horse.
03:25Mike Mountain Horse was a member of the Kainai blood tribe, who, as a subject of the British Empire, took the warrior traditions of his people into a war his ancestors could not have imagined.
03:38The first world war.
03:48Each of these panels represents a memory, an event that Mike Mountain Horse lived through on the Western Front.
03:56His war deeds depict the trenches, shells detonating over the heads of the figures, artillery, explosions, and death.
04:12Over a century after he returned from the trenches, his descendants revere this object.
04:24It is both part of their spiritual world and, as much as any document in any archive, it is a record of history.
04:34What do the war deeds of Mike Mountain Horse mean to you and your people spiritually?
04:43For him to sign on a dotted line to protect his country, in a much bigger stage, he must have had a great understanding of the purpose he had in his life.
04:57Millions of men got back from the Western Front, traumatized.
05:05Is the painting a form of therapy for someone like Mike Mountain Horse?
05:09Oh, definitely.
05:10To be able to share the difficult things that he went through and putting it on that hide is to tell everybody in the world this is what happened.
05:20You know, so it went from here to there.
05:22But the result is also something which is a piece of history.
05:26That's right.
05:27That's right.
05:28We didn't write anything down.
05:30A lot of the teachings that we have, because of our oral history, it's really an experiential learning.
05:39It's really an experiential learning.
05:40It's really an experiential learning.
05:41That's right.
05:42We want to get to the future of our oral history.
05:43That's right.
05:44We have to get back to our oral history.
05:45It's really an experiential learning.
05:48The homelands of the Kainai people.
05:55The landscape Mike Mountain Horse knew
05:57lie 4,500 miles from the battlefields of Europe.
06:02Part of the Canadian prairies,
06:05it is a land of vast plains and deep river valleys,
06:08home to the reserves and the settlements
06:11on which many Kainai people still live.
06:15This landscape could hardly be more different
06:18from the fields of France and Belgium
06:20where the Western Front stood.
06:23And Mike Mountain Horse found himself on the Western Front
06:26because he and his people were subjects of the British Empire.
06:31And in the early years of the 20th century,
06:34after more than 300 years of empire building,
06:37that meant that he was part of a vast global system
06:41that in all sorts of ways tied together
06:45were over 400 million people,
06:48almost one in four of everybody on the planet.
06:53And perhaps nothing gets across the scale and the reach
06:58and the diversity of that empire
07:00than the fact that people who lived in places as remote as this
07:06could find themselves transported across oceans
07:09to fight and to labour in the name of that empire.
07:15Mike Mountain Horse was one of 4,000 indigenous Canadians
07:20who fought in the name of the British Empire.
07:23And they were not alone.
07:26Volunteers from the Caribbean colonies rushed to join the British Army.
07:31Thousands of Africans were recruited
07:33to take the war to Germany's African Empire.
07:37And from India, over a million men were sent
07:40to the Western Front and the Middle East.
07:44With many Indians supporting the war
07:46in the hope that their loyalty
07:48would win them a greater voice in Indian politics.
07:52The First World War ended
07:54not only with victory for the forces of Britain and its empire,
07:58but with the last great expansion of that empire.
08:03Because it was in the years after the war,
08:06in the early 1920s,
08:08as Britain took over the colonies of the defeated powers,
08:11that the empire reached its maximum size.
08:15And yet, at that moment,
08:17as the Union flag was raised over new colonies,
08:21the empire was just one generation away from collapse.
08:28The idea that the empire was approaching its final decades
08:38would have seemed ridiculous
08:40to the thousands who gathered here on this ridge
08:43to the north of Delhi in the year 1911.
08:46Because this was the site
08:48of perhaps the most flamboyant ceremony
08:51in the whole history of the British Empire.
08:54The Grand Durbar of King George V.
08:57The Grand Durbar of King George V.
08:59200 Indian princes,
09:01along with the British officials and soldiers
09:03who administered the Raj,
09:05and tens of thousands of guests,
09:07gathered here to offer obeisance to the king-emperor.
09:13This monument marks the exact spot
09:16from which the king surveyed the scene
09:18and gave a historic speech.
09:21At the very end of his speech,
09:25this British king informed the Indian people
09:28that the capital city of their country was to change.
09:32India was no longer to be ruled from Calcutta,
09:36the city from which the old East India Company
09:38had grown rich and powerful back in the 18th century.
09:43Modern 20th century India was to be ruled from Delhi.
09:46But this wasn't simply to be a transfer of power
09:51from one city to another.
09:53A new city, a new Delhi, was to be created.
09:59The Durbar of 1911 was part of a strategy
10:03that had been developed in the decades
10:05since the so-called Indian Mutiny.
10:09The British aim to inspire loyalty
10:11among their Indian subjects
10:13by using spectacle
10:15and by co-opting Indian traditions.
10:19But the Durbar and the decision to move the capital
10:23also reflected a new imperial reality.
10:28Historian Swapna Little has written about New Delhi
10:32and about why it was built.
10:34What does it say about British power in India,
10:38this decision to create this new capital?
10:41The kind of state that the British Empire was,
10:44was one that sought, at least,
10:47a semblance of legitimacy
10:49in the eyes of the Indian people.
10:52And when we come to the beginning of the 20th century,
10:55was fighting this difficult battle
10:57with Indians who were demanding more and more
11:00and being denied again and again.
11:02Because this is the age of the rise of Indian nationalism.
11:04Of Indian nationalism.
11:06So there's a rethinking of the image of empire.
11:10And the idea was that we have to give in
11:13to some of the, shall we say, reasonable demands.
11:17But how do you make the British Raj more acceptable in Indian eyes?
11:22And the idea is Delhi.
11:25In order to reduce British Indian government's role
11:28to that of an imperial power,
11:31giving more autonomy to provinces.
11:34So it's a devolution.
11:35But under British control.
11:36Yes, and this is what brings us to why Delhi,
11:40because then you are remaking the British Raj
11:43in the image of, shall we say, other Indian empires.
11:48It was the capital of the Mughals.
11:50It was the capital of earlier sultanates before that.
11:53So it has that aura of power.
11:56The architects are given this very clear brief
11:59that you must draw on this legacy
12:02of imperial monumental architecture around you
12:06in order to design this city.
12:09So the planning of the city, for instance,
12:11this central vista, which came to be called King's Way,
12:14is exactly parallel to Chandani Chowk,
12:18the main ceremonial avenue of the Mughal city.
12:21And the use of red sandstone,
12:24this is the material of which
12:26a lot of the monumental imperial architecture in Delhi
12:29of earlier eras is also built.
12:31So you have the Red Fort, for instance.
12:34It's not easy to transport all of this here,
12:36but they think it worked their while to do this.
12:39The appeal of Delhi was that it had all of these associations
12:43with past great Indian empires,
12:45but all of those empires had fallen.
12:47So in a way, there were those at the time
12:49who thought this was kind of a bad omen to move to Delhi,
12:53to be surrounded by the ruins of earlier empires.
12:56It's interesting that all the objections to this programme
12:59actually come from prominent conservative British voices.
13:03There are very few Indians who are against this.
13:06In fact, they are all for it.
13:08The Indians recognise it for the concession it is
13:11to Indian demands.
13:13Their strategy is, let's go to the next step now.
13:15Let's ask for more.
13:16So the symbolism, the taking of these motifs and designs
13:20from Mughal history, that's appreciated.
13:22But it's not enough.
13:24It's one step in a series of demands.
13:26Absolutely.
13:27The British seem surprised by it,
13:29but really they shouldn't have been
13:31because British responses never kept up
13:35with what Indians would demand.
13:38And this is an inexorable march towards independence.
13:43The new capital for the new phase of British imperial rule in India
13:51took 20 years to build.
13:5350 miles of roads were cut across a city of parliaments,
13:58ministries, homes and shops that covered 62 square miles.
14:02The final cost was over 10 and a half million pounds.
14:09Almost a billion pounds in today's money.
14:13The official opening of New Delhi took place two decades
14:17after the plan to move the capital from Calcutta
14:20had first been announced.
14:22The building of this city, the building of all of this,
14:26that had been achieved at colossal expense.
14:29This city was regarded as such a priority
14:31that work continued even through the darkest years
14:35of the First World War.
14:37But the year in which that grand inauguration ceremony took place,
14:41that was 1931,
14:44just eight years before the outbreak of a Second World War.
14:50When the empire went to war in 1939,
14:55attitudes towards the conflict and towards the empire
14:58were very different to those that had dominated back in 1914,
15:03when India's ruling elite had embraced the outbreak
15:07of that war as a chance to win concessions.
15:11In 1939, the coming of war intensified the growing campaign
15:15for an end to British rule,
15:18a reality that was concealed behind the wartime propaganda.
15:22This poster was produced in 1941 by the Ministry of Information,
15:28Britain's wartime propaganda ministry,
15:32and it projects the image that the government wanted to project
15:35under a fluttering union flag
15:37are men representing the armed forces of Britain.
15:41In the front row is a British sailor,
15:44an Australian soldier, and a Canadian M,
15:47and behind them are soldiers from Britain and New Zealand.
15:52At the back is an Indian soldier,
15:55and the positioning of these men
15:57reflects the racial hierarchies of the British Empire,
16:00because India's contribution in terms of soldiers
16:03was by far the greatest of any of the colonies.
16:06By 1945, the Indian army was two and a half million strong.
16:12Only at the very back, up in the corner,
16:15do we have a depiction of an African soldier.
16:18But looking at this poster here in India,
16:21underneath a memorial to Indian soldiers
16:24who died in the First World War,
16:27what is most striking is that this image
16:30bears almost no relation to reality,
16:33because the war years here in India
16:35were not years of togetherness.
16:38They were years of mass political protest,
16:41years of British political oppression,
16:44and the years of a catastrophic famine in Bengal
16:47in which around three million Indians died.
16:51And at the end of the war, after all of that,
16:55it was obvious to many people
16:56that demands for Indian independence
16:59had just grown too strong,
17:01and that Britain, economically, militarily, and politically,
17:04was just too weak to resist those demands.
17:09In 1946, the British government accepted the inevitable,
17:14and the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten,
17:17was dispatched to India.
17:18He was tasked with plotting a path to independence,
17:24which by then, it had become clear, meant partition.
17:28And fearful that India could slide into a form of civil war,
17:33independence and partition were rushed.
17:36When Independence Day came in 1947,
17:40two nations emerged,
17:41and two independence ceremonies were held,
17:45one in Lahore in Pakistan.
17:46the other in the parliament of New Delhi,
17:51the city from which the British had imagined
17:54that they would continue to rule over India.
17:59On the eve of independence,
18:01seven out of every ten subjects of the British Empire were Indian.
18:06At the stroke of midnight,
18:09those 400 million people became citizens of independent India or Pakistan.
18:16For two centuries, India had been an economic and military engine
18:20that had kept the whole system of empire working.
18:23It was in India that the British really learned how to be imperialists.
18:27India's economy had been tethered to the needs of Britain.
18:31And the Indian taxpayers had paid not just for their own colonisation,
18:36but for the development and the defence of other parts of the empire.
18:40And Indians themselves had been shipped right across the British Empire
18:45to grow sugarcane in the Caribbean
18:47and to build the railways in East Africa.
18:51India's people, India's economy,
18:54had been key to making the British Empire possible.
18:57And then, in 1947,
19:00with Britain exhausted and virtually bankrupt
19:03after five years of war,
19:05this whole system suddenly came to a violent end.
19:09The legacies of that moment of partition
19:15and of the violence that accompanied it
19:18are part of the family histories of millions of people.
19:21It was chaos. It was absolute chaos.
19:25It was one of the largest mass migrations in human history.
19:2815 million people displaced.
19:30So many deaths.
19:32The judge who was tasked with spitting India and Pakistan
19:36was only given five weeks.
19:38Our family would have had land in Sindh
19:41and our home was in Jalandhar, in Punjab, in India.
19:45And in 1947, when the partition happened,
19:49Sindh fell into Pakistan and Jalandhar fell into India.
19:53And my great-grandparents were in Sindh at the time.
19:58What eventually transpired was my great-grandmother
20:01jumped into a well to save herself
20:05from either being abducted or raped.
20:09And my great-granddad died fighting,
20:13trying to protect himself and his family.
20:16They also had their daughter with them,
20:18my great-aunt, who also took her own life.
20:21And my granddad would have been a ten-year-old
20:24waiting in Jalandhar for his parents to come home.
20:28Despite the loss of India,
20:41Britain, after the Second World War,
20:43still ruled over tens of millions of people,
20:47scattered over dozens of colonies and protectorates,
20:50and in the self-governing dominions
20:53like Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
20:55But in the aftermath of the Second World War,
21:00Britain faced a crisis at home.
21:03Shortages of basic foods like milk, eggs and cheese
21:07were worse after 1945 than they had been during the war years,
21:12and rationing continued into the mid-1950s.
21:16The nation that had been the world's banker
21:20now had debts of £3.5 billion
21:23and was dependent upon loans from the United States.
21:29To generate income to pay off those vast debts
21:33and produce food for a British population
21:36desperate for better times,
21:38politicians turned their attention
21:40to the most neglected part of what was left of the empire,
21:45Africa.
21:48In the late 1940s,
21:50thousands of agriculturalists, climatologists and engineers
21:54were sent to Africa to launch an agricultural revolution.
21:58The most grandiose of the investments in Africa
22:03was focused on Kenya and Tanganyika,
22:06modern Tanzania.
22:07It was a vast scheme to grow groundnuts,
22:11peanuts that could be crushed for cooking oil,
22:14one of the everyday essentials
22:17in desperately short supply back in Britain.
22:20The whole scheme was built on the belief
22:24that modern machinery,
22:26heavy tractors and bulldozers,
22:28would simply be able to sweep away the vegetation
22:32here in East Africa.
22:34And then, when the land was cleared,
22:36crops could be planted and harvested again
22:39using the latest machinery.
22:42But the tractors imported into East Africa from America
22:46had been designed for the prairies of the American Midwest.
22:51They weren't strong enough.
22:53They just weren't resilient enough
22:54to take on this sort of dense African bushland.
22:59And so, there weren't enough spare parts.
23:02There wasn't enough space in the workshops
23:04to repair machines.
23:06There wasn't even enough diesel.
23:08And so, despite all of the ambition
23:11and all of the money thrown into it,
23:12the groundnut scheme very rapidly began
23:16to fall behind schedule and go over budget.
23:20The generation of experts and civil servants
23:24who were sent to Africa
23:25were almost all veterans of the Second World War.
23:29And they were proud of Britain's wartime tradition
23:32of overcoming obstacles by improvising.
23:35And so, when it became clear
23:37that the machines brought to Africa
23:39were not up to the task,
23:40they again improvised.
23:42580 Sherman tanks
23:46left over from the war were purchased.
23:49And the engineers at the Vickers factory in Newcastle
23:53removed the guns and the armour
23:55and converted Sherman tanks
23:58into heavy bulldozers,
24:00known as Shervicks.
24:02Yet, even these Shervicks,
24:04each of them weighing 18 tonnes,
24:07were not capable of clearing the land
24:09at the speed envisaged in the original plans.
24:14And across some of the areas,
24:16identified for groundnut cultivation,
24:19the British planners encountered another enemy,
24:22the baobab tree.
24:23The teams that were sent out to clear the land
24:28for the groundnuts discovered
24:29that even converted Second World War tanks
24:33couldn't topple baobab trees.
24:36And even when baobab trees were cut down,
24:39it was almost impossible to remove
24:42their huge, bulbous roots from the soil.
24:45And there is something ironic
24:47about this vast investment
24:50in the African empire
24:51being stopped literally in its tracks
24:54by these trees.
24:56Because baobabs are not just enormous,
24:59they're also ancient.
25:00These trees can live for over 2,000 years,
25:05which means some of the baobabs
25:07that stood in the way of the groundnut scheme
25:10in the middle years of the 20th century
25:12had been standing back in the first years
25:16of the 17th century,
25:18when the first English ship set sail
25:20to establish the first English colonies.
25:24These trees were older than the British Empire.
25:27These ancient trees and this ancient landscape
25:31in the end defeated the economic planners
25:35of post-war Britain.
25:37In 1951, the government finally cancelled
25:41the groundnut scheme,
25:43an imperial fantasy that had wasted 36 million pounds,
25:48a billion pounds in today's money.
25:52Britain's attempt to use its African colonies
25:55to solve its domestic problems
25:57had been a failure.
26:01Post-war Britain was not just blighted by shortages
26:04and burdened with debts.
26:06It was also devastated by years of bombing.
26:10The damage was so extensive
26:12that it was visible from the air.
26:16Just after the war,
26:17the aerial reconnaissance planes
26:19of the Royal Air Force
26:20that had been used to find targets
26:22in Germany during the war
26:24were deployed for a very different purpose.
26:29What the RAF produced
26:30was a huge aerial survey of the nation,
26:34a photographic doomsday book
26:36of Britain after six years of war.
26:39These are the docks of Liverpool.
26:43This is what is left of the centre of Bristol.
26:45And this is the devastation
26:49around St. Paul's Cathedral.
26:52The scale of the damage was enormous.
26:55The whole nation was in desperate need
26:57of reconstruction and modernisation.
27:03To rebuild the country,
27:04it was estimated that 1.3 million additional workers
27:08were needed.
27:09And one way the government set about finding them
27:12was by encouraging immigration.
27:15Between the late 40s and the 1960s,
27:17hundreds of thousands came from Ireland,
27:20thousands more from the displaced persons camps
27:23of Eastern Europe.
27:24And this place, Tilbury Docks,
27:27is famous today as the port
27:29into which one ship arrived.
27:31The Windrush,
27:33carrying hundreds of workers
27:34who had come to Britain from the Caribbean,
27:37Britain's oldest colonies.
27:39The passenger list of the Empire Windrush
27:44that arrived here at Tilbury
27:46on the 21st of June, 1948,
27:49has become a rather famous document
27:52in British history.
27:54And if we look in this column
27:56that describes the profession, occupation,
27:59or calling of the passengers,
28:01we can see that many of the people
28:02coming to Britain on the Windrush
28:04to begin new lives
28:06have exactly the skills
28:08that post-war Britain desperately needed.
28:11So there's a gentleman here
28:13from British Guyana
28:14who is an engineer.
28:16On the following page,
28:18there's a long list of people
28:20arriving from Bermuda,
28:21and among them is a boilermaker.
28:24Here is an electrician.
28:26And there is, of course,
28:28a story to be told
28:29about these people,
28:31about their contribution,
28:32about the obstacles and the racism
28:34that they faced in post-war Britain.
28:37But there's another story
28:39about movement
28:40and about migration
28:41around the British Empire
28:42that we talk about a bit less.
28:46And that story can also be told
28:47through the stories of the ships
28:49that come here to Tilbury docks
28:51and the passengers
28:52who came through these arrival halls.
28:55This is another passenger list
28:59for another ship,
29:01the Malloyer.
29:02And that was here at Tilbury
29:04on the 10th of June, 1948,
29:07so 11 days before the Windrush arrived.
29:11And this, again,
29:12is a long list of passengers.
29:14But these people
29:16are not coming to Britain
29:18to start new lives.
29:19These people are emigrants.
29:22These are people leaving Britain.
29:24And they're headed
29:25to what this form describes
29:27as their country
29:28of intended future
29:30permanent residence,
29:33which, in the case
29:34of all of these people,
29:35is either Australia
29:36or it's New Zealand.
29:38And let's look
29:39at that same column,
29:41profession, occupation,
29:42or calling of the passengers.
29:45And here we have
29:45a truck driver,
29:47a factory worker,
29:48a labourer.
29:49There's a woman here
29:50called Margaret Black.
29:52She's heading off
29:53for a new life in Australia.
29:55And under profession
29:56or occupation,
29:57she's listed as a hospital worker.
29:59And the timing here
30:00is what is critical.
30:02The Malloyer
30:02leaves Tilbury docks
30:04exactly 25 days
30:06before the new
30:07National Health Service
30:09opens its doors
30:10for the first time.
30:12And the first crisis
30:13faced by the NHS
30:14is a lack
30:16of hospital workers
30:17and nurses.
30:19And there are
30:19thousands of other nurses,
30:22thousands of other people
30:23with critical skills
30:24who leave on thousands
30:25of other ships
30:26in the years
30:27after 1945.
30:30Ever since the 17th century,
30:33the colonies had been places
30:35to which British people
30:36had travelled
30:37in the hope
30:38of transforming
30:39their fortunes.
30:40But the last
30:41great wave
30:42of imperial emigration
30:44was unlike
30:45all those
30:46that had preceded it.
30:48Emigration
30:48had always been
30:49part of the story
30:51of the British Empire,
30:52but the emigration
30:52that takes place
30:53after the Second World War
30:55takes place
30:55in a very different context.
30:57Absolutely.
30:58In the 1920s,
30:59the British
30:59wanted to get people
31:01to emigrate
31:02to the Empire.
31:02There was high unemployment
31:03and there was a worry
31:05about overpopulation.
31:06After the Second World War,
31:08the story
31:08is radically different.
31:09There's a shortage
31:10of labour
31:10and actually a worry
31:11about population decrease.
31:14Nevertheless,
31:14emigration
31:15is back on the agenda.
31:16People want to go
31:17and the government
31:18wants to encourage people
31:19to go
31:19to the so-called
31:21white dominions.
31:22So this is Australia,
31:23New Zealand, Canada?
31:25Exactly.
31:25The old settler colonies?
31:26The old settler colonies,
31:28which were sometimes called
31:29the British Commonwealth
31:30of Nations,
31:31including the United Kingdom
31:32itself.
31:33And yet,
31:34even though they are
31:35desperately in need
31:37of every labourer,
31:38every worker,
31:39every skilled worker,
31:40that they can keep,
31:41British governments
31:42not just encourage,
31:44they even subsidise emigration.
31:47They subsidise emigration.
31:49They want to maintain
31:50the British Empire
31:51as a world power.
31:53And it's been pulled apart
31:54as a world power
31:55because the United States
31:56is so strong.
31:57So Canada is getting closer
31:58to the United States,
31:59so are Australia
32:00and New Zealand.
32:01So the British government
32:02wants to send
32:03more British people,
32:05British stock
32:06is the phrase,
32:07to populate these places
32:08so that they remain
32:09in some sense
32:10within the British orbit.
32:13They're worried
32:13that if,
32:14as actually happens,
32:15the Australians bring in
32:16displaced persons
32:17from Greece
32:18and from Italy,
32:19that Britishness
32:19will be diluted.
32:21So we have
32:21an extraordinary situation
32:22where the United Kingdom
32:23is exporting people.
32:26I mean,
32:26over a million people
32:27go in the late 40s
32:28and 1950s.
32:30In a country
32:30of less than 50 million?
32:32Yeah.
32:32That's a very
32:33considerable number
32:33of people.
32:34It is.
32:35Immigration
32:36into the UK
32:37is much lower
32:38than immigration.
32:40So the idea
32:41that we have
32:41that post-war Britain
32:43is a country
32:44of immigration
32:45from former empire
32:47is actually misleading
32:48because the great movement
32:50is out there.
32:50Because it's small numbers,
32:50particularly in the 14s.
32:51It's small numbers.
32:52It's very small numbers.
32:53We're very aware
32:54that immigration
32:55from the Caribbean
32:56and from India
32:57is going to change Britain.
33:00But it's far more people
33:01come from Ireland.
33:02Far more people
33:02come from Ireland
33:03and more people
33:03from continental Europe,
33:04actually,
33:05than from the Caribbean
33:07or from India.
33:08And it's also important
33:09to note that
33:10the British government,
33:11like the Australian government,
33:13the Canadian government,
33:14want to keep
33:14the country white.
33:15Immigration
33:16from the Caribbean
33:17and India
33:18is absolutely
33:18not encouraged.
33:20They only want
33:21Europeans
33:22or British stock
33:23to come to their country.
33:25So it's a profoundly
33:26racist understanding
33:27that's at work here.
33:29And this is one
33:30of the big stories
33:31of the British Empire
33:31and one of the most
33:32forgotten stories
33:33that it was
33:33an empire of emigration.
33:35It's one of these
33:36remarkable cases
33:37where really,
33:38really important
33:39facets of our history
33:40are not common knowledge.
33:44By 1952,
33:46around half a million people
33:47had left Britain
33:48for the Commonwealth.
33:50But that year
33:51came to be remembered
33:52as the start
33:53of a new age.
33:55One that began
33:56not in Britain,
33:57but in one
33:57of Britain's
33:58African colonies.
34:01This is Treetops,
34:03a safari lodge
34:04in Kenya.
34:06On the 6th of February,
34:071952,
34:09the then
34:09Princess Elizabeth
34:10was here
34:11when her father,
34:13George VI,
34:14died
34:14and she became queen.
34:18Here in Kenya,
34:20Princess Elizabeth
34:21became queen
34:22not just of the
34:23United Kingdom,
34:25but of what
34:25in the early 50s,
34:27even after
34:28Indian independence,
34:29remained an enormous empire.
34:32And so,
34:33at the beginning
34:33of the second Elizabethan age,
34:36there was still the view
34:37within Britain's
34:38governing classes
34:39that despite the setbacks,
34:41despite the country's
34:43precarious finances,
34:45that the Commonwealth
34:46could still guarantee
34:47a degree of global influence,
34:49and that there were
34:50parts of the empire,
34:51certain colonies,
34:52in which British rule
34:54could continue
34:55in some form
34:56for decades,
34:57perhaps even
34:58for another generation.
35:00But the second Elizabethan age
35:06was not to be
35:07a new chapter
35:08in the history
35:09of the British Empire,
35:10but an age
35:11of decolonisation.
35:14In Africa
35:15and the Caribbean,
35:16demands for independence
35:18became irresistible.
35:20And in 1956,
35:22after independent Egypt
35:23nationalised
35:25the Suez Canal,
35:26the limits
35:27of British power
35:28were exposed,
35:29when the United States
35:30forced Britain
35:31and her allies
35:32to withdraw
35:33after an invasion.
35:35With Britain's position
35:37in the world
35:37fatally undermined,
35:40the late 50s
35:41and the 1960s
35:42saw members
35:43of the British royal family
35:45become participants
35:46in a familiar ritual.
35:50At stadiums
35:51and racecourses
35:52across the world,
35:53crowds were gathered,
35:55political leaders
35:56assembled.
35:57The Union flag
35:58was lowered
35:59and the new flags
36:00of new independent nations
36:02raised.
36:04The apparent ease
36:05with which the British
36:06negotiated
36:07the peaceful surrender
36:09of the empire
36:10they had spent centuries building
36:12was presented
36:13as one of the empire's
36:14last great achievements.
36:20The transition
36:21from empire
36:22to commonwealth
36:23was portrayed
36:24almost as a miracle.
36:27And while there were
36:29many colonies
36:30in which British rule
36:31was peacefully dismantled,
36:34this was often
36:35not the case
36:36where white settlers
36:37had arrived
36:38in large numbers
36:39and taken control
36:40of the land,
36:42which was exactly
36:43the state of affairs
36:44in the colony
36:45in which the second
36:46Elizabethan age
36:47had begun.
36:48Over there
36:51is the
36:51Treetops Hotel
36:52that tourists
36:53from Britain
36:54have been visiting
36:55for decades
36:56to see the place
36:57where Princess Elizabeth
36:58became Queen Elizabeth.
37:00But that,
37:01that is not
37:02the original building.
37:04The original
37:05Treetops
37:06stood about here,
37:08where I am now.
37:10And the reason
37:11that it's not here now
37:12is because
37:13it was destroyed.
37:14It was burnt down
37:15just two years
37:17after the Queen
37:17had visited.
37:19It was a victim
37:20in a rebellion
37:22that broke out
37:22within months
37:23of the Queen's visit.
37:26The fertile highlands
37:28of Kenya
37:29had been identified
37:30as being suitable
37:31for white settlement
37:33back in the last years
37:34of the 19th century.
37:36And after both world wars,
37:38British veterans
37:39had been encouraged
37:40to settle here.
37:41By the 1950s,
37:44around 30,000
37:46white farmers
37:46owned 12,000
37:48square miles
37:49of the best land
37:50in Kenya.
37:52The Kukuyu,
37:54a people
37:54of over a million,
37:56owned just
37:572,000 square miles.
38:00Among the land
38:01taken from the Kukuyu
38:02was the land
38:03upon which
38:04the Treetops Lodge
38:05had been built.
38:07In 1952,
38:09when Queen Elizabeth
38:09was at Treetops,
38:11a movement
38:11was gaining support
38:13among the Kukuyu
38:14that aimed
38:15to recover their land
38:16and end British rule
38:18in Kenya.
38:20That movement
38:21was called
38:22the Land and Freedom Army.
38:25It was also known
38:26as Mau Mau.
38:28Although the vast majority
38:30of the people
38:31killed in the Mau Mau
38:32conflict
38:32were Africans,
38:34the killings
38:34of white settlers
38:35shocked the British
38:36authorities
38:37into action.
38:38their response
38:40was a huge
38:41military deployment.
38:43Thousands of soldiers
38:44were sent to Kenya
38:45from Britain
38:46and from other
38:46African colonies.
38:49And the bombers
38:50of the RAF
38:51were used
38:52to bomb
38:52Mau Mau positions
38:53in the forests.
38:56But the British
38:57also set up camps
38:59in which
39:00hundreds of thousands
39:01of Kenyans
39:02were imprisoned,
39:03processed
39:03and interrogated.
39:06Today,
39:07in the 21st century,
39:09memories of
39:10what happened
39:10in those camps
39:11have returned
39:12to haunt
39:13both Kenya
39:14and Britain.
39:16In the countryside,
39:1850 miles
39:19to the north
39:19of Nairobi,
39:20lies
39:21Muweru High School
39:22for boys.
39:23But these buildings have been repurposed
39:31because Muweru was not designed or built to be a school.
39:36These buildings were built back in the 1950s
39:39and in recent years, Kenyan historians have gone back to the archives,
39:44back to old maps and official British documents
39:47to recover the story of what happened here and in places like it.
39:53Anthony Mayuna is one of those Kenyan historians
39:56and his work has helped uncover what happened
39:59when Muweru was in internment camp
40:02and British colonial forces were based here.
40:06This building was a barracks,
40:08maintained with a hot shower, electricity and all that.
40:11So soldiers, this is where they live?
40:13Yes. There's a swimming pool nearby.
40:16There's a swimming pool?
40:17Yeah. In every camp there was a swimming pool for the British officers.
40:20They used to also have a hangman.
40:22Was there a gallows in this camp?
40:25Yes. People were being hanged during the night.
40:28So it was not shown in the public.
40:29So the hangman would get up in the middle of the night?
40:32Yes.
40:32And people would be hanged?
40:33People who have been convicted to hang would be hanged.
40:36And then buried in unmarked graves.
40:39There must be graves just within the compound.
40:41Because so many people died here?
40:42Yeah.
40:43And have the children at this school taught what happened here?
40:46They know. In fact, they know.
40:48Those soldiers and that hangman may have been the people who killed their ancestors.
40:54Yes.
40:54But I think those people who are Maumau were very much traumatized.
41:00They don't speak so much about what happened.
41:04So you have this age where people don't want to talk about places like this.
41:07Exactly.
41:09At no other time in the history of the empire did the British authorities use the death penalty
41:16as regularly as they did in Kenya in the middle years of the 20th century.
41:231,090 Kenyans were hanged during the Maumau emergency.
41:29But Mweru's school contains relics of other horrors.
41:34This room is a torture room, both physical and mental.
41:39A person was put here, removed from another detainist.
41:42And put into solitary confinement.
41:44Exactly.
41:45For you to confess, water was poured.
41:48The prison guards would fill the floor with water.
41:51And you have nowhere to sleep.
41:52So you have to leave this place.
41:54You have to leave the place being maimed, almost crippled.
41:59I can assure you, many of the detainists were castrated in this room.
42:05Castration.
42:06In this room?
42:07Yeah, I met survivors.
42:08In fact, I counted about three of them.
42:10How was that done?
42:11Pliers.
42:12With pliers?
42:13Yes.
42:13Oh, my God.
42:14This one.
42:16Those who could not survive died.
42:19Their next trafficking could not be informed because it was something the colonial government
42:25were to hide about.
42:25In fact, I was told that there were more than 20 such cells within Muero.
42:34I've been to the sites of former detention camps and former concentration camps all over
42:40the world.
42:41But I've never been to somewhere like this.
42:44A former camp in which people were abused and tortured.
42:49That isn't a museum or a heritage site, but that is a working school.
42:53And that decision to reclaim this history and to repurpose this site is one that's been
43:00taken very purposefully and very deliberately by many people in Kenya who were determined
43:05that this terrible chapter in Kenyan history not be forgotten.
43:10Back in the 1950s, when news broke of what was happening in places like this, there was an outcry
43:20in Britain.
43:21It was the killing of 11 Mau Mau detainees in another camp, a place called Holla, that led
43:28to the shutting down of the camps.
43:30By 1960, the Mau Mau rebellion had been defeated.
43:34And yet, to keep control, the British had been forced to make huge political concessions.
43:41Concessions that led, in 1963, to Kenyan independence.
43:46But in the months before the dignitaries and the crowds gathered for the independent ceremony
43:52in Nairobi, the British authorities had set out to control how the history of the British
43:58Empire in Kenya would be remembered.
44:00And in the last weeks of 1963, planes left Nairobi carrying crates of documents, just as documents
44:09had been removed in the final days of British rule in other colonies.
44:15Historian Riley Linebar has studied what happened in the archives of Britain's last colonies in
44:21the last years of empire.
44:23This document is from 1961, and it's to be distributed, it says, among government officials
44:32in Nairobi, in Kenya.
44:34And it is very strikingly marked with a big letter, W. What does that mean?
44:41The W stands for WATCH.
44:43It's a part of a new record-keeping system that this memorandum is describing.
44:471961, Kenya's constitutional independence is being negotiated.
44:52And we're about two years away from independence itself.
44:54Two years away from independence.
44:56What the W here indicates is for any person handling this document, they know this is a
45:02secret.
45:03It should not be available for anyone to see unless deemed an authorized officer.
45:09Does it give us the criteria?
45:10It does.
45:11There's four criteria.
45:13A, prejudice the security of the Commonwealth or of any friendly state.
45:18Or B, embarrass Her Majesty's government.
45:21Or C, give a political party in power an unfair or improper advantage.
45:28Or D, endanger a source of intelligence or render any individual vulnerable to victimization.
45:34Now, some of those criteria are entirely reasonable.
45:37Intelligence, the safety of people whose names appear in the documents.
45:41Point B, about embarrassing the government.
45:46That's not about security.
45:47No, it's not clear what it's about.
45:51And so it provides those interpreting this memorandum a wide remit to decide for themselves
45:56what would be embarrassing or not.
45:59When a document has been stamped with a W, what becomes of it?
46:05Either it's slated to be removed to London or, as the document itself will tell us, it
46:12will be destroyed.
46:13Some of the documents that received the W stamp were burnt or drowned in open water.
46:20This reveals how committed not only the colonial administration in Kenya was, but the colonial
46:26office in London to keeping secret evidence of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.
46:32So in this case, what they mean by might embarrass the government, they mean evidence of torture,
46:37of murder, of camps in which people were held for years?
46:41Correct.
46:42And all of this is being done in secret.
46:44It says secret at the top of each page of this document.
46:48It's all being done as a self-conscious act of secrecy.
46:51If we come here to point 15, indeed, the very existence of the Watch series should never
46:57be revealed.
46:59And to the same end, the name Legacy should not be used in a non-designated context.
47:04That title, Operation Legacy, that's fairytelling.
47:08There's a fear precisely of sort of an African reinterpretation of the history of the British
47:14Empire.
47:15How widespread is Operation Legacy?
47:17It's empire-wide.
47:19So this is a project of secret keeping that is not limited to the transition to independence.
47:25And in fact, the project of record removal continued through the mid-1990s.
47:31One legacy of Operation Legacy is that it's enabled people even today to convince themselves
47:38that the British Empire was unique among all empires in which it didn't have these crimes,
47:43these blemishes, these terrible incidents, these racism, all the things that are destroyed
47:48in the documents that are spirited away.
47:50It allows a sort of maintenance of a form of innocence.
47:54A form of innocence and also it has allowed a certain mythology and ignorance over the
48:00fact and reality of empire within the UK itself.
48:04The destruction of documents in Operation Legacy allowed certain parts of the history of empire to be forgotten.
48:13But that is not unique.
48:19After slavery was abolished, that history was slowly airbrushed out of the story of empire.
48:25The slave fortresses on the African coast were abandoned to the forests.
48:31The burial grounds on the plantations forgotten.
48:35The Australian families, descended from convicts, concealed their family histories.
48:42And some of the dynasties, grown rich from wealth acquired through the East India Company
48:47or in the West Indies, brushed those family stories under the carpet.
48:54One of the reasons this history is today re-emerging is because of another story
49:00fundamental to the British Empire, immigration.
49:08After the Second World War, just as the empire itself was falling apart,
49:13the peoples of the empire, despite official disencouragement, began to settle in Britain
49:19in large numbers and become part of British society.
49:24I think as I've gotten older, I've begun to see that Britishness takes influence from so
49:30many parts of the world and so many different communities have come to the UK and have brought
49:36bits of their culture, bits of vibrance to this country.
49:40People are kind of fed up of the story of empire being a monologue, told mainly by people who
49:46look and sound like me, frankly. There is a crisis in identity in Britain and I think partly that is
49:52because we have not had a grown-up conversation about our history.
49:55Immigration from the former empire has created new hybrid forms of British identity, which in turn
50:04have led to calls for a new, more inclusive version of British history.
50:08The fact that I've grown up here has meant that I do have this hybrid identity and therefore I'm not,
50:16you know, afraid to talk about Britain in a light that perhaps is not positive all the time.
50:21There's a mistake with patriotism, which means that you must always speak about Britain in a positive
50:25light, but that's just not the case because we need to look at British history as a whole.
50:29It is the reason why I have so much of the culture that I have today. It's the reason why I listen to
50:37circa music and I eat Caribbean foods and the mosque that I grew up in is an Indo-Caribbean mosque and every
50:44Saturday that was my experience.
50:46And yet there is still the view, among some, that the history of empire is better off forgotten or that
50:53the uncovering of this history is intended to make people feel guilty about events that took place
51:00before their birth.
51:00Learning the history hasn't made me hate Britain. The money that was created through slavery and empire,
51:08that's the money that I benefit from today. And the fact that that money was made from my ancestors,
51:14their like dehumanisation, exploitation, that is really complex.
51:19I've been on this journey to just discover my roots through London because the Raj, the East India Company,
51:26events in World War One, World War Two, all of that is the reason I'm here in London. And that's my story.
51:31As a historian, my attempts to make sense of my own hybrid identity takes me inevitably to the past
51:43and to two sets of documents, both held here at the National Archives. Together, those documents very
51:52personally reveal just how deep the history of empire runs. The first set of documents are the official
52:00records of a tiny event in the story of the British Empire, an attack by British forces on a small
52:08African city in the year 1892. This map shows the routes that the British forces took as they marched
52:17towards their targets. And each of these symbols of a crossed sword, that is a small battle, an engagement
52:25that they had with the local African people. And right at the top of the map is their destination,
52:32their target, the town of Jebu Ode. Now that is the modern Nigerian town of Jebu Ode. Here is a map
52:43of the town with its defensive walls and its defensive ditch. Also among these documents is this list of
52:52the weapons and the ammunition that the British forces took with them on this raid. There is seven
52:59pounder guns, that's artillery with 100 rounds. And there is a Maxim gun. And in 1892, this is just about
53:09the most high-tech weapon on earth. And we know that these weapons were used with devastating effect,
53:16because we have this account by one of the British officers. He says, nearly all the principal chiefs
53:23had been killed or wounded, and that there was not a household in Jebu Ode that did not mourn the loss
53:30of at least one of its members. Now, I've stood here in the archives many times and I've looked at documents
53:38and maps just like these, because there are many small wars and punitive raids in the history of the
53:45British Empire. But these documents to me are a bit different, because this town in Jebu Ode is where
53:55the Nigerian half of my family come from. And when I look at this list of weapons,
54:02these were weapons that were used against people that I'm descended from. Other documents right here
54:12in the National Archives that really complicate the picture. This is the discharge papers of another
54:21of my ancestors. His name was David Ewart, and he was a Scottish soldier in the British Army.
54:29He fought in a regiment called the 78th Regiment of Foot, and that was a regiment that was sent to
54:36fight in India. This letter explains what their task was. It says that their job was to defend territory
54:45recently acquired by His Majesty's and the East India Company's arms in various parts of India. It was
54:53the private East India Company, not the British state that paid David Ewart his army wages.
55:00And what all of this means is that I'm descended from a British colonial soldier and from Africans who
55:10were attacked by British colonial soldiers. And this complexity, this messiness, that is just a feature
55:18of the history of the history of empire. A history that just can't be understood through ideas of pride
55:26and shame, of them and us. And it's a history that we share with literally billions of people across the
55:33world. And whether we like it or not, whether we're comfortable with it or not, this is a history that runs
55:41too deep and matters too much for it to be brushed aside or wished away.
55:49Things are never as black and white as we think they are. And history is important. And I think
55:55people get really scared or upset that we're trying to take that away.
56:00When has ever knowing the truth about yourself and confronting your past, when has that ever been
56:08something that isn't beneficial to you?
56:11All we have are links and stories of each other. I don't think it's possible to think of empire and
56:17beyond that in any other way.
56:30So
56:43what
56:50is
56:52You
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