- 2 months ago
From the rice fields of Bengal to the throne of England, every life under the empire was bound to every other.
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Colonial Subject
2:28 The Foot Soldier
4:42 The Merchant
7:14 The Missionary
9:54 The District Officer
12:27 The Colonial Governor
14:32 The Colonial Office Mandarin
16:44 The Cabinet Minister
19:11 The Prime Minister
21:38 The Monarch
Every episode takes a lot of research and writing. Drop your next video idea in the comments. I read them all.
Subscribe so you don't miss the next one! 🔔
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The Colonial Subject
2:28 The Foot Soldier
4:42 The Merchant
7:14 The Missionary
9:54 The District Officer
12:27 The Colonial Governor
14:32 The Colonial Office Mandarin
16:44 The Cabinet Minister
19:11 The Prime Minister
21:38 The Monarch
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Colonial Subject
00:02You wake up in a village in Bengal. The sun is already hot.
00:06You can hear the rooster outside. Your wife is grinding spices on a stone.
00:11Your three children are still asleep on the floor.
00:14The hut is small. The walls are mud. The roof is thatched.
00:18Your father built this house. His father built the one before it.
00:22Your family has lived in this village for 400 years.
00:25You are a farmer. You grow rice and lentils on a plot of land that used to belong to your
00:30grandfather.
00:31It does not belong to him anymore. It belongs to a British company called the East India Company.
00:37They came 50 years ago.
00:39They came with soldiers and ships and contracts that nobody in your village could read.
00:43By the time anyone understood what was happening, the land was theirs.
00:47The taxes were theirs. The court system was theirs.
00:51You walk to the field. You bend over the soil for 12 hours.
00:55The sun beats down on your back. Your hands are cracked. Your feet are bare.
01:00The harvest this year is poor. The rains came late.
01:04The British administrator does not care about the rains. He cares about the tax.
01:09The tax is the same whether you ate this year or starved.
01:13Two of your neighbors starved last year. You buried them yourself.
01:17The British call this place a jewel of the empire.
01:20They write about it in their newspapers in London.
01:23They draw maps of it for school children.
01:25They name streets after generals who burned villages like yours.
01:29You have never seen a British person up close.
01:31You have seen them on horses in the distance.
01:34You have seen their soldiers march through your village taking grain at gunpoint.
01:38Your grandfather told you stories about a time before the British came.
01:42A time when there were Mughal emperors and local princes
01:45and a system that was not perfect but at least made sense.
01:49That time is gone. It will not come back.
01:52Your son will inherit nothing.
01:54Your daughter will marry into another village just like this one.
01:58Your name will not appear in any history book.
02:00The British keep records of every shilling they extract from your land.
02:05They do not keep records of you.
02:07You are a number on a tax roll.
02:09You are a body in a field.
02:12You are a piece of the machine that feeds an empire on the other side of the world.
02:16The cycle of your life is the same as your father's and his father's.
02:20Plant.
02:21Tend.
02:22Harvest.
02:23Pay.
02:24Survive if you can.
02:26The empire does not care if you do.
02:28Level 2.
02:29The Foot Soldier.
02:30You are 19 years old.
02:32You enlisted in the British Army last year.
02:34You grew up in a coal mining town in Wales.
02:37Your father worked in the pits.
02:38Your grandfather worked in the pits.
02:40You did not want to die underground at 40 with black lungs.
02:44So you signed your name on a form at the recruiting office.
02:47The sergeant gave you a shilling and a uniform.
02:49He told you that you would see the world.
02:51He was right about that.
02:53They shipped you to South Africa first.
02:54You fought in a war you did not understand,
02:56against people you had never heard of.
02:58You watched men from your village die from dysentery before they ever fired a shot.
03:03You watched other men die from bullets fired by farmers defending their farms.
03:07You did not feel like a hero.
03:09You felt like an animal.
03:10They moved you to India after that.
03:12You guarded a fort on the northwest frontier for two years.
03:16The local people called you names you did not understand.
03:18They threw rocks at your patrol once.
03:20Your sergeant ordered the line to fire.
03:22Three boys died.
03:23The youngest was maybe nine.
03:25Nobody wrote about it.
03:27Nobody investigated.
03:28You wrote a letter home to your mother and lied about everything.
03:31Your pay is one shilling a day.
03:33You spend most of it on rum and tobacco.
03:36The officers eat better than you do.
03:38The officers sleep in tents, while you sleep in barracks with 40 other men.
03:42The officers came from public schools and rich families.
03:45They will be promoted no matter what they do.
03:47You will never be promoted, no matter what you do.
03:50That is the system.
03:51You learned it on your first day.
03:53You drill every morning.
03:54You polish your boots every night.
03:56You stand for inspections that last for hours.
03:59You salute officers who are 19 years old and have never been in a fight.
04:02You take orders from men who would not last 10 minutes in your village back home.
04:06They tell you that you are defending civilization.
04:09They tell you that the empire is a force for good.
04:12You do not argue.
04:13You do not have the words to argue.
04:16You just keep marching.
04:17You keep firing when ordered.
04:19You keep guarding the flag.
04:21The empire moves you around the world like a piece on a board.
04:24Egypt, Burma, Sudan, Hong Kong.
04:27You see places your father could not have pointed to on a map.
04:30You bury friends in dirt that nobody back home will ever visit.
04:34You write letters that get shorter every month.
04:37You wonder sometimes what it was all for.
04:39You do not let yourself wonder for long.
04:41Level 3.
04:43The Merchant
04:44You run a trading company out of an office in Bombay.
04:47You came out from Liverpool 15 years ago with nothing but a letter of introduction from your uncle.
04:52Now you have a warehouse, a clerk, and three local agents who do most of the actual work.
04:58You buy cotton, indigo, tea, and opium.
05:01You ship them on company vessels.
05:03You sell them in markets from Singapore to London.
05:06You make a profit on every transaction because the system is built to give you a profit.
05:10You do not see yourself as a colonizer.
05:13You see yourself as a businessman.
05:16You shake hands with Indian merchants every day.
05:19You drink tea with Parsi traders in Bombay clubs.
05:22You attend dinners hosted by Maharajas who treat you like an equal.
05:26You tell yourself that this is partnership.
05:29You tell yourself that everyone benefits.
05:32The truth is more complicated.
05:34The truth is that the trade routes are protected by the Royal Navy.
05:38The truth is that the laws are written in London.
05:41The truth is that when a local prince refuses to sign a treaty, the army shows up and the prince
05:47changes his mind.
05:48You benefit from all of this.
05:50You did not create the system, but the system makes you rich.
05:54Your profits would not exist without the gunboats.
05:57You live in a bungalow on Malabar Hill.
05:59You have six servants.
06:02A cook, a butler, a nanny for the children, two gardeners, and a man whose entire job is to fan
06:08you while you sleep.
06:09You pay them less in a month than you spend on a bottle of wine.
06:13They thank you for the work.
06:15You are a generous employer by local standards.
06:18You go to the club every evening.
06:20The club is for British members only.
06:22There is a sign at the door.
06:24However, Indians are not permitted.
06:26Even Indians who have been knighted by the Queen.
06:29You never question the sign.
06:31The men you drink with at the club are merchants like you.
06:34Bankers, shipping agents, tea brokers, opium dealers who do not call themselves opium dealers.
06:40You talk about the markets.
06:42You talk about the cricket scores.
06:44You complain about the heat.
06:46You never talk about the famine in Orissa that killed a million people last year.
06:50You never talk about the fact that Indian farmers were forced to grow indigo for export instead of rice for
06:56their families.
06:57You send your sons back to England for school when they turn ten.
07:01You will not see them for years.
07:03Your wife is unhappy here.
07:05She drinks too much.
07:07She hates the heat and the insects and the loneliness.
07:10You make more money every year.
07:13You tell yourself that is what matters.
07:16Level 4.
07:17The Missionary
07:18You arrived in East Africa five years ago with a Bible and a pair of boots.
07:23You came from a small town in Yorkshire.
07:26You believed God had called you.
07:28You believed you were going to save souls.
07:31You have learned that the work is more complicated than that.
07:34Your mission station sits on a hill outside a village.
07:37There is a church, a school, a small hospital, and a cluster of huts where you and your fellow missionaries
07:43live.
07:44The villagers come to the hospital because the medicines work.
07:47The villagers come to the school because their children can learn to read.
07:51The villagers come to the church because attendance is required for access to the school and the hospital.
07:56You did not invent this arrangement.
07:59You inherited it.
08:00You teach English.
08:01You teach the gospel.
08:03You teach the values you grew up with.
08:05You also teach that the old gods are demons.
08:08You teach that the old customs are sin.
08:11You teach that the chiefs are wrong.
08:13You teach that the mothers and grandmothers who carry the wisdom of generations are leading children to hell.
08:19You believe some of this less than you used to.
08:22You came convinced that you were bringing light to darkness.
08:25You have lived here long enough to know the people are not in darkness.
08:28They have stories.
08:30They have systems.
08:31They have a moral code that is in some ways stricter than the one you grew up with.
08:36You write home about the converts.
08:38You do not write home about the doubts.
08:41You walk a line every day.
08:43You feed children who would otherwise be hungry.
08:45You also tell them their grandmothers worship demons.
08:49You set broken bones with skill the village elders cannot match.
08:53You also dismantle the authority of those elders, one Sunday sermon at a time.
08:58The colonial administrators love you.
09:01They send their reports to London, praising the civilizing work of the missions.
09:05The army loves you.
09:07They know that a village with a mission station is easier to govern.
09:10The merchants love you.
09:11They know that converts wear European clothes and want European goods.
09:16You did not choose any of these alliances.
09:19You did not refuse them either.
09:21You have baptized 2,000 people.
09:23You have buried more than you can count.
09:25You bury a child every week from diseases that would not kill her in London.
09:30You pray for them.
09:31You write their names in a book.
09:33You wonder sometimes what God thinks of all this.
09:36You do not write that down.
09:38You came here to save souls.
09:40You have started to wonder which souls needed saving.
09:43You hold communion on Sunday mornings.
09:46You listen to the choir sing hymns in a language their parents do not know.
09:50You think about home.
09:52You do not know if you can go back.
09:54Level 5.
09:55The District Officer
09:56You are 32 years old and you administer 500 square miles of British India.
10:02You have a degree from Oxford and three years of training at the Colonial Service College.
10:06You speak Hindi and a little Urdu.
10:08You ride a horse to villages that do not have roads.
10:12You sit under a tree and listen to disputes brought by farmers and merchants and widows.
10:17You issue rulings on the spot.
10:19There is no appeal.
10:20You are the law in this district.
10:23You collect the taxes.
10:24You enforce the regulations.
10:26You decide which roads get repaired.
10:28You decide which canals get dug.
10:31You decide which villages get a new well and which villages keep drinking from the polluted river.
10:36You are 32 years old and you have more power over more lives than any man in your hometown ever
10:42held.
10:43You take the work seriously.
10:45You read the files.
10:47You walk the fields.
10:48You learn the names of the headmen in every village.
10:51You think of yourself as a fair administrator.
10:54You believe in the empire.
10:56You believe that British rule is the best thing that has happened to this part of the world.
11:00You believe that the educated Indians who agitate for independence are misguided children.
11:06You also see the things you do not write in your reports.
11:10You see the malnourished children in villages where the rice goes to export.
11:14You see the way the police you command extract bribes from people who cannot pay them.
11:19You see the way the legal system favors anyone who can speak English over anyone who cannot.
11:24You write recommendations sometimes.
11:27You suggest reforms.
11:29The reforms are studied in committees in Calcutta and then in London.
11:33They die in those committees.
11:35The system continues.
11:37You continue with it.
11:39Your wife joined you two years ago.
11:42She came from a small village in Surrey.
11:45She has not adjusted.
11:47She hates the heat.
11:48She hates the insects.
11:50She hates the way the servants stare at her.
11:52She drinks gin in the afternoons and reads the same six novels over and over.
11:58You tell yourself that the work is worth it.
12:02You attend ceremonies where local princes pledge loyalty to the queen.
12:06You shake their hands.
12:08You smile for the photographer.
12:10You sign documents that move millions of pounds from one ledger to another.
12:14You go home and you pour yourself a whiskey.
12:18And you think about retirement.
12:20You think about a cottage in the Cotswolds.
12:23You think about quiet mornings with no petitioners at the door.
12:26Level 6.
12:28The Colonial Governor.
12:29You govern a colony now.
12:31Maybe it is Jamaica.
12:32Maybe it is the Gold Coast.
12:34Maybe it is Burma or Trinidad or one of the smaller possessions in the Pacific.
12:38The exact location does not matter.
12:40The job is the same everywhere.
12:41You represent the crown.
12:43You answer to the Colonial Office in London.
12:45You preside over a legislative council that includes a few wealthy locals and many British officials.
12:50You give speeches.
12:52You attend parades.
12:53You dedicate hospitals and schools and bridges.
12:55You pretend not to notice that the people who use those facilities are not the people who paid for them.
13:00You live in Government House.
13:02It is the largest building in the colony.
13:04There are 30 servants.
13:05There are formal dinners every week.
13:07There is a ballroom that is used for state occasions and that sits empty most of the year.
13:12Your wife wears jewelry that costs more than the annual wages of every laborer on the plantation outside town.
13:18You are aware of this.
13:19You do not dwell on it.
13:21You manage the colony like a business.
13:23The colony exports sugar or cocoa or rubber or tin.
13:27The colony imports manufactured goods from Britain.
13:30The trade is structured to make sure the colony stays poor and the metropole stays rich.
13:34This is not your decision.
13:36This was decided long before you arrived.
13:39You are an administrator of a system that you did not design but that you protect.
13:44There is unrest sometimes.
13:45A strike at the docks.
13:47A protest in the market square.
13:48A pamphlet by a local writer who has been reading too much European philosophy.
13:53You have options.
13:54You can ignore it.
13:55You can negotiate.
13:56You can crack down.
13:58You usually crack down because cracking down is the safest career move.
14:02The colonial office in London does not punish governors who maintain order.
14:06It punishes governors who lose control.
14:08So you order arrests.
14:10You order beatings.
14:11You order the local press shut down.
14:13You write reports describing the agitators as a small minority of troublemakers.
14:18You go to bed knowing that some of those troublemakers are men whose only crime was asking why their children
14:23cannot vote.
14:24You serve five years and then you are reassigned.
14:28You will be a baronet someday.
14:30Your sons will go to Eton.
14:35You work in Whitehall now.
14:37You have an office in a building on King Charles Street.
14:40You are 50 years old.
14:42You have spent your entire career in the colonial service.
14:45You served as a district officer in India.
14:47You served as a deputy governor in Nigeria.
14:50Now you sit at a desk in London and you decide the policies that shape the lives of 400 million
14:56people across the empire.
14:57You read dispatches every morning.
15:00Reports from governors, ambassadors, military commanders.
15:03Each report is a window into a world.
15:06A famine in the Punjab.
15:07A border dispute in the Sudan.
15:10A labor strike in the West Indies.
15:11A native uprising in the South Pacific.
15:14You read them all.
15:15You write recommendations.
15:17You attend meetings where decisions are made about troop deployments.
15:21And tariff structures.
15:23In the appointment of new governors.
15:25You do not see the consequences of your decisions in person anymore.
15:29You see them in numbers.
15:30You read that grain exports from India increased by 12% this year.
15:35You do not see the village where the children are eating bark.
15:38You read that a tribal uprising in the Sudan was suppressed with minimal casualties.
15:42You do not see the burned villages or the bodies in the wells.
15:46The numbers protect you.
15:48They are a screen between you and the human cost of what you do.
15:51You believe in the empire.
15:53You truly believe.
15:54You believe that British rule has brought peace and order and modernization to places that had none of those things.
16:00You believe that the empire is a force for civilization.
16:03You can recite the arguments.
16:05You have made them in speeches.
16:06You have written them in white papers.
16:08Some part of you knows the arguments are not entirely true.
16:12You push that part down.
16:13You go to your club.
16:15You drink port with men who think exactly like you.
16:17You go home to your house in Kensington.
16:20You read the times.
16:21You go to bed.
16:22The empire is a machine.
16:24You are one of the people who keeps it running.
16:27You will retire with a knighthood.
16:29Your portrait will hang in a corridor.
16:31Your great-grandchildren will not know what you did.
16:33They will be lucky for that.
16:35The decisions you signed will outlive you.
16:37Some of them will outlive your country.
16:40Borders you redrew on a map will become wars you never lived to see.
16:43Level 8.
16:44The Cabinet Minister.
16:46You sit in the cabinet now.
16:48You are the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
16:51You answer to the Prime Minister and to Parliament and to the King.
16:55Your decisions move armies and reshape borders
16:58and determine whether millions of people live or die.
17:03You sit in a room with 20 men who run the government of the most powerful empire
17:07in the history of the world.
17:09You debate policies.
17:11You authorize expeditions.
17:12You approve the appointment of viceroys and high commissioners and ambassadors.
17:16You sign documents that send fleets across oceans and regiments across deserts.
17:22You are aware of your place in history.
17:26You know that the decisions you make will be studied in classrooms a century from now.
17:31You also know that the decisions you make will affect people you will never meet.
17:36Farmers in Kenya.
17:37Fishermen in Malaya.
17:39Merchants in Hong Kong.
17:41Shopkeepers in Cairo.
17:43Their lives bend around the policies you sign in London.
17:47You do not think about them as individuals.
17:50You think about them as populations.
17:52As markets.
17:54As problems to be managed.
17:56You give speeches in the House of Commons.
17:59You defend the empire against its critics.
18:01There are critics now.
18:03More than there used to be.
18:05Liberals and socialists and a growing number of voices from the colonies themselves.
18:09Indian lawyers educated at British universities.
18:13African writers publishing in British journals.
18:16They use the language of liberty and democracy and self-determination.
18:21They turn the empire's own values back on the empire.
18:25You do not have a good answer for them.
18:27You give the old answers anyway.
18:30Civilization.
18:31Order.
18:33Progress.
18:34Trust.
18:35The colonies are not ready.
18:37They will be ready someday.
18:39Not now.
18:40Not yet.
18:42There is always a reason that now is not the time.
18:46You sleep four hours a night during parliamentary sessions.
18:50You drink too much.
18:51Your wife sees you for an hour a day.
18:54Your children are at boarding school.
18:56You are at the peak of your power.
18:59You are also exhausted.
19:01You sometimes wonder if the empire is a god you serve or a beast that has eaten your life.
19:08You do not write that down either.
19:11Level 9.
19:12The Prime Minister.
19:13You run the country.
19:15You also run the empire.
19:17You stand at the top of a system that spans every continent.
19:21A quarter of the world's population lives under your authority.
19:24A quarter of the world's land is colored pink on the map.
19:28The Royal Navy controls the seas.
19:31British capital flows through every major port.
19:34British soldiers garrison cities from Cairo to Calcutta to Cape Town.
19:39You did not build this empire.
19:41You inherited it.
19:42The empire was built by men who came before you.
19:46Soldiers and merchants and explorers and bureaucrats
19:49who spent two centuries pushing the borders outward.
19:52You are responsible for keeping it intact.
19:55That responsibility weighs on you in ways you did not expect.
19:59The empire is not stable.
20:01It is never stable.
20:03Somewhere in the empire today there is a problem.
20:06A drought.
20:07A rebellion.
20:08A plague.
20:09A border dispute.
20:10A nationalist movement.
20:12A scandal in the colonial service.
20:14A dispute between settlers and natives.
20:17An economic crisis in a colony that depends on a single crop.
20:22You read the briefings.
20:23You make the decisions.
20:25You authorize the responses.
20:27You also manage parliament.
20:29You manage the press.
20:31You manage the king.
20:32You manage public opinion in a country where the empire is sometimes celebrated and sometimes
20:38questioned.
20:39You give the speeches.
20:41You defend the wars.
20:43You explain the costs.
20:45You mourn the soldiers who die in places most British people cannot find on a map.
20:50You talk about glory and duty and the white man's burden.
20:54You believe some of it.
20:56You do not believe all of it.
20:58You know things that you cannot say in public.
21:02You know that the empire costs more than it produces in many places.
21:05You know that the colonies are increasingly restive.
21:09You know that the rising powers in Europe and America are catching up.
21:14You know that the empire cannot last forever.
21:17No empire ever has.
21:19You hope it will last through your lifetime.
21:22You hope it will last through your children's lifetime.
21:26You suspect it will not last through your grandchildren's.
21:30You walk into parliament.
21:32You give a speech.
21:33The members cheer.
21:34The empire endures another day.
21:38Level 10.
21:39The Monarch.
21:40You are the king.
21:41Or the queen.
21:43The crown sits on your head.
21:45You are not a politician.
21:46You are not a general.
21:47You are something older.
21:49Something stranger.
21:50You are the symbol.
21:52You are the empire.
21:53The whole machine of laws and armies and ships and ledgers ultimately answers to you.
21:59The soldiers swear their oaths to you.
22:01The governors are appointed in your name.
22:04The treaties are signed in your name.
22:06The wars are fought in your name.
22:08Your face is on every coin.
22:11Your portrait hangs in every government office from Ottawa to Wellington to Singapore to Lagos.
22:17Schoolchildren in every colony stand and sing about you.
22:20You are a god or close to one.
22:23You did not ask for any of this.
22:25You were born into it.
22:27Your mother was the previous monarch.
22:29Your son will be the next.
22:30The throne does not really belong to you.
22:33You are a tenant.
22:34You are a steward.
22:35You are a placeholder for an institution older than your family and bigger than any individual.
22:41You live in palaces.
22:43You ride in golden carriages.
22:45You wear robes that weigh more than a soldier's pack.
22:47You attend ceremonies.
22:49So many ceremonies.
22:51Coronations and jubilees and openings of parliament and reviews of troops and state visits and weddings and funerals.
22:58Your face must always be composed.
23:00Your words must always be careful.
23:03You cannot have political opinions.
23:05You cannot take sides.
23:06You can only embody the nation.
23:08You meet with the prime minister once a week.
23:11He briefs you on the empire.
23:12You listen.
23:13You ask questions.
23:15You give advice that is taken seriously even though you have no formal authority.
23:19The unwritten power of the monarchy is not in giving orders.
23:23It is in the conversations.
23:24The raised eyebrow.
23:26The careful question.
23:27The pause before answering.
23:29You are an old soul in a young body.
23:32Or a young soul in an old body.
23:35The crown does that to people.
23:36It compresses time.
23:38You meet your subjects at garden parties.
23:41You shake their hands.
23:42You ask them about their work.
23:43You see in their faces the weight of belief.
23:46They believe in you.
23:48They believe in the empire you represent.
23:50You cannot tell them what you actually know.
23:53You know that the empire is fraying.
23:55You know that the colonies are stirring.
23:57You know that the world is changing in ways that will sweep away everything your ancestors built.
24:02You smile.
24:03You wave.
24:05You pose for the photographs.
24:06You go back to the palace.
24:08You walk through corridors lined with portraits of monarchs who came before you.
24:12You wonder what they would say.
24:14You wonder what they would do.
24:16You go to bed in a room that has held kings and queens for centuries.
24:20You stare at the ceiling.
24:21You think about all of it.
24:23The villages and the soldiers and the merchants and the missionaries and the governors and the ministers.
24:29The whole vast machine that exists because somewhere a long time ago someone decided that one island would rule the
24:36world.
24:37You are at the top.
24:39You are also alone.
24:40The crown is heavy.
24:42Somewhere in a village in Bengal, a child is being born right now.
24:46He will inherit nothing.
24:48He will work the land that was taken from his great-grandfather.
24:51He will pay taxes to a system designed in London.
24:54He will never see your face except on a coin.
24:57You will never see his face at all.
25:00But your life and his life are bound together by an empire that owns them both.
25:05He is at the bottom looking up.
25:07You are at the top looking down.
25:10Neither of you is free.
25:11The cycle continues.
25:13The cycle continues.
25:13The cycle continues.
25:15The cycle continues.
25:16The cycle continues.
25:16You