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00:09If there was one thing 18th century British gentlemen thought they knew more about than
00:15port or racehorses, it was liberty. They basked in it. It was the reward, they told themselves,
00:25for nearly a century of civil wars that had helped make Britain the freest country of religion.
00:31They built temples in their gardens devoted to it. They even wrote it a hymn.
00:39Pity the rest of the enslaved world deprived of its manifold blessings.
00:47But the real payoff of liberty had been riches and power from around the globe.
00:56With liberty had come trade, and trade had wrought perhaps the most staggering transformation
01:03of national power in all British history. From being a tiny outcrop of insignificant islands
01:10off the northwest coast of Europe, Britain had expanded into a global power. The shadow of
01:17Britannia now fell across America, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent. It had taken barely
01:25a century. And unlike the Roman Empire they so admired, they dreamt of a British Empire that
01:32would endure. One based on trade, not on conquest. It would be an empire of liberty, they thought,
01:41Britain writ large, sharing its bounty with the world.
01:48So how was it that in little over a century the people that thought of themselves as the freest on
01:54earth
01:55ended up subjugating much of the world's population? How was it that a nation which had such a deep
02:01mistrust of military power ended up the biggest military power of all? How was it that the empire
02:07of the free turned into the empire of the slaves? And how was it that profit seemed to turn not
02:14on
02:14freedom but on raw coercion? How was it that we ended up with the wrong empire?
02:44Yeah.
03:09Ask any British gentleman in the middle of the 18th century
03:13to draw you a map of the British Empire, and it would have looked like this.
03:19To the east, there were trading posts in India,
03:23tiny enclaves that had been there for 100 years,
03:26shipping home printed cottons and silks.
03:30A commercial enterprise run by the East India Company, not the government.
03:36There would be no colonies in Asia.
03:44But Britain could look west as well as east,
03:47and west was a whole different story.
03:54To the west was America, Britain west, in fact.
03:57Two million people living between the Atlantic seaboard and the Appalachian mountains.
04:02They'd come from York to New York, from Hampshire to New Hampshire,
04:06and they all ate, slept and breathed the same mantra, liberty and Britishness.
04:13They had first arrived in the early 17th century,
04:16seeking their fortune or religious tolerance.
04:20Time enough to build farms, communities, towns and cities even.
04:25Certainly time enough to deal with the troublesome natives,
04:29to make alliances where possible,
04:31and if not, to wipe them out or drive them inland.
04:37Within the settlements and houses of the Virginia tobacco planters and Massachusetts merchants,
04:42the silverware was a little simpler,
04:45the furniture not quite so hepplewhite as back home in England.
04:49But that very simplicity spoke to their origins,
04:53the quest for liberty and the drive for honest self-improvement.
04:58But it was rather small potatoes, shall we say,
05:02if what you really had in mind was a palazzo in England,
05:05rather than a picket fence in New England.
05:08Suppose you wanted to make a serious fortune.
05:10Now, where could that happen?
05:14In the mid-17th century, the Caribbean was where?
05:19Nobody settled in the West Indies in order to read the Bible unmolested.
05:23This was not Massachusetts.
05:27No, you braved the fevers and the swamps for one reason alone,
05:31to make yourself very rich, very fast.
05:38Serious profits were already being raked in,
05:41catering to Europe's little addictions.
05:43Chocolate, coffee, and in England, of course, especially tea.
05:49But as a money spinner, nothing compared with the stuff you added
05:53to make them more palatable, sugar.
05:57Once seen as a luxurious drug, it was now a necessity,
06:01the cash crop of the empire.
06:05Barbados provided the perfect habitat to grow the sugar cane,
06:10tropical heat and saturating rains.
06:12So the British began to settle in the West Indies,
06:15transforming virgin forest into a patchwork quilt of sugar plantations.
06:29But Queen Sugar was a bitch,
06:32demanding absolute service before she'd spill her bounty.
06:40She took 14 months to get ripe, all eight feet of her.
06:44But when she was ready, she was ready.
06:48Cut the cane up once, get it to the crushers before it's spoiled.
06:54Boil the juice before it degraded,
06:56all very messy and all very dangerous.
07:02By the side of the crushing mills hung a sharpened machete,
07:06ready to sever the limbs of anyone who got caught in the rollers.
07:13What she needed was a combination of strength and lightning speed.
07:19What she needed were human beasts of burden,
07:23strong, quick, durable, and uncomplaining.
07:27One commodity would be reaped by another.
07:31By slaves.
07:36Sitting in the grand plantation house,
07:38next to the mills that turned sugar into liquid gold,
07:42what did you care if you had to go to West Africa to buy the slaves
07:45and ship them back across the Atlantic?
07:51Oh, yes, the logistics were difficult.
07:54But nothing the greatest seafaring nation in the world couldn't handle.
08:03The British were good at commodities.
08:13A couple of thousand pounds
08:15bought you 200 acres of Barbadian cane fields,
08:19a mill and a hundred-odd slaves.
08:23And within a few years,
08:25it returned an equal amount every year for the rest of your life.
08:30You were now among the richest men anywhere in the British Empire.
08:36The slave economy in the Caribbean
08:38wasn't just a sideshow of empire.
08:40It was the empire.
08:41Three and a half million slaves were transported in British ships alone.
08:49They went to British plantations
08:51to make British profits and build British cities.
08:55Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow,
08:58where the cult of liberty was still on everyone's lips
09:01in smart coffee houses.
09:06Apart from the occasional visiting Quaker,
09:09an exiled Puritan,
09:10there was a deafening silence in the land of liberty
09:14about turning fellow men into work animals.
09:18The scale of profits sealed the conspiracy of silence.
09:26Well, here's a little thing of devilish prettiness.
09:29Silver, looks like jewellery,
09:31might be a hat pin or something like that.
09:33But it's not.
09:34This is an object which marked the passage
09:37of a human being to a thing.
09:39This is a branding iron.
09:40And once these initials were burnt into your flesh,
09:43you are no longer a person.
09:45You're an object.
09:46You're a commodity.
09:47You belong to someone.
09:49You're a beast of burden.
09:54Your journey into hell started months earlier in Africa.
10:02It's described in one of the few surviving accounts
10:05by Oleuda Equiano,
10:07one of the millions to experience the nightmare.
10:11Captured as a small boy,
10:12he was separated from his sister,
10:16then dragged to the coast
10:18and to the waiting slave ship.
10:26When I looked around the ship
10:28and saw a multitude of black people
10:31of every description
10:32chained together,
10:34every one of their countenances
10:36expressing dejection and sorrow,
10:40I no longer doubted of my fate
10:42and quite overpowered with horror and anguish,
10:47I fell motionless on the deck.
10:56To make the venture profitable,
10:59the slaves were stacked in two layers within the hold,
11:02with only about two feet
11:04between the planks below
11:05and the planks above them.
11:09The air soon became unfit for respiration
11:12from a variety of loathsome smells
11:16and brought on a sickness among the slaves
11:19of which many died.
11:22This deplorable situation
11:24was again aggravated
11:26by the galling of the chains
11:27and the filth of the necessary tubs
11:31in which the children often fell
11:33and were almost suffocated.
11:36The shrieks of the women
11:38and the groans of the dying
11:39rendered it a scene of horror
11:41almost inconceivable.
11:51You're a ship surgeon.
11:52It's your job to go into the hold of a morning
11:54and examine the condition of the cargo.
11:57What do you find?
11:58Well, for a start,
11:59you find a lot of dead slaves,
12:01some of them manacled together,
12:03the living and the dead,
12:04still chained as one pair.
12:06What have you got to do with them?
12:07Well, you take the pair up to the deck,
12:10strap them to the grating,
12:11sort out the living from the dead,
12:13throw the dead overboard.
12:15There are the sharks.
12:16There are always the sharks waiting, grateful.
12:22If you were one of those
12:23who made it to land alive,
12:25your troubles had just begun.
12:30Naked, but for a loincloth,
12:32you were once again paraded and poked at,
12:35your teeth inspected like horses.
12:40Violence, the threat or the application of it,
12:44ran the system.
12:46Women were the objects of particular terror.
12:49In one year,
12:50a Jamaican overseer of a plantation
12:52aptly called Egypt
12:54gave 21 floggings to women,
12:57each no less than 50 lashes.
13:01Equiano says it was common
13:03at the end of the beating
13:03to have the victims kneel
13:05and thank their masters for the treatment.
13:10The same overseer also recorded
13:13with the same matter-of-fact manner
13:15that she'd had sex
13:16with 23 slave women that year,
13:19not including his regular mistress.
13:25Only Sundays offered some moments of joy.
13:28The market and the music allowed slaves
13:31to recreate some sense of community
13:33and the Africa they'd left behind.
13:36At no time was there more joyous music
13:40than at a funeral,
13:41because death, at last, was liberty.
13:45Death was the return home.
13:51It was very important
13:53for such a momentous journey
13:54to have something like this,
13:56something African,
13:57although made in Barbados.
14:03A necklace of teeth,
14:05shells and bones,
14:07discarded trinkets,
14:08copper and bronze rings.
14:10A necklace of teeth,
14:18shells and bones,
14:21so a people who legally
14:24had no possessions at all
14:26reserve what they'd hidden away
14:28for this last important journey
14:30so their spirits
14:32could return to Africa
14:34with dignity.
14:35I wanna cross over
14:38into Canberra
14:47For the British,
14:49it was the perfect set-up.
14:51Their ships dominated the oceans,
14:53their slaves brought them profit,
14:55the world was their oyster.
14:57But someone else
14:58was eager to prise it open.
15:01The French.
15:05They'd fought for centuries
15:06and they would fight again.
15:08The Hundred Years' War
15:09of the Middle Ages
15:10would become
15:11the Seven Years' War
15:12of the 18th century.
15:16Agincourt fought
15:18not in a muddy field
15:19but in battles
15:20around the globe.
15:24It turned out
15:25that the combo
15:26the British most despised,
15:29Jesuits,
15:30professional soldiers
15:31and bureaucrats,
15:32were stealing the empire
15:34before their very eyes,
15:36starting with continental America.
15:38Just singing patriotic anthems
15:40was not going to stop them.
15:42Only war would.
15:43And war,
15:44as the Romans discovered,
15:45changes everything.
15:47The first victim
15:48is liberty
15:49and the second
15:50is profit.
15:53The French
15:54had been in North America
15:55for as long
15:56as the British,
15:57based in Canada
15:58to the north
15:58and Louisiana
15:59to the south,
16:01and exploring the Mississippi
16:02and the Ohio River Valley
16:04in between.
16:06It didn't take a genius
16:07to work out
16:08that a cordon
16:09of French forts
16:10linking Canada
16:11to Louisiana
16:12would box
16:13the British colonies in.
16:15It would be death
16:16by slow strangulation.
16:18The days of the ad hoc empire
16:21were drawing to a close.
16:23Empires were not
16:25for sharing.
16:27The British
16:27would have to fight
16:29to keep theirs.
16:32It was commonly thought
16:34by politicians
16:35that war was coming,
16:36that it wasn't a prospect
16:38anyone much relished,
16:39except someone
16:40who made global victory
16:42his Alpha
16:43and Omega.
16:45And that man
16:46was William Pitt.
16:48For better or worse,
16:50it was William Pitt,
16:51neurotic,
16:53gouty,
16:54irascible,
16:54either manically hyperactive
16:57or collapsed
16:57in a kind of
16:58paralysing gloom,
17:00who was the British Empire's
17:01true visionary.
17:03He believed
17:04with an almost
17:05feverish intensity
17:06that what was at stake
17:07in the life
17:08or death struggle
17:09between France
17:10and Britain
17:11was not just
17:12who would get
17:12the lion's share
17:13of wealth,
17:14but whether the world
17:16would be conquered
17:17by liberty
17:17or by despotism.
17:21The first rounds
17:23went badly
17:24away for the
17:24forces of liberty.
17:27British troops
17:28were wiped out
17:30in the backwoods
17:31of New York State
17:31by the French
17:32and their native allies.
17:38So Pitt unleashed
17:40his biggest weapon,
17:43his war chest.
17:45He would fight
17:47the First World War
17:48with columns of figures
17:50as well as
17:51columns of soldiers.
17:53Pitt spent
17:5418 million pounds
17:56a year,
17:57twice the government's
17:58annual income.
18:03This flew right
18:04in the face
18:05of the empire's
18:06basic principle
18:07that it shouldn't cost,
18:08but as Pitt calculated,
18:11you can't make a profit
18:12from empire
18:12if it's not
18:13your empire.
18:16After one more setback,
18:18there were nothing
18:19but glories.
18:251759
18:26was a year
18:27of military miracles.
18:30The strongholds
18:31of the French empire
18:32fell,
18:33one by one,
18:35to truly British forces,
18:37highland regiments
18:38often leading the way.
18:39In India,
18:41the French Sugar Islands,
18:42West Africa,
18:43and Nova Scotia.
18:46Horace Walpole
18:47boasted,
18:48Our bells
18:49are worn threadbare
18:51with the ringing
18:51of victories.
18:54But there was no victory
18:56as sweet
18:57or as significant
18:58as the one
18:59that broke the back
19:00of French power
19:01in North America
19:02for good.
19:04General Wolfe's
19:06conquest of Quebec.
19:09It was exactly
19:10the kind of thing
19:11Pitt adored,
19:13an attack
19:13so improbable
19:15that even Wolfe
19:16himself assumed
19:16it couldn't work.
19:19He designed it
19:21more as a glorious death
19:22than a likely victory,
19:24climbing the sheer cliffs
19:26that protected the city
19:27and surprising,
19:29and were they surprised,
19:30the French.
19:34After a suicidal charge,
19:36the defenders
19:37were cut down
19:38in a monstrous volley.
19:48True to his script,
19:50Wolfe took a shattering
19:51shot to the wrist,
19:52then bullets
19:53in the guts
19:54and chest.
19:57Bleeding into the arms
19:58of his brother officers,
19:59he died
20:00as the first
20:01imperial romantic martyr,
20:04duly set in marble
20:05in Westminster,
20:11Abbey.
20:13Victory in Quebec
20:15and then Montreal
20:16totally transformed
20:17the British Empire
20:18in North America.
20:21Pitt had made America,
20:23as he supposed,
20:24British forever.
20:32and he must have felt
20:33he'd made the world safe
20:35for liberty to triumph.
20:39The age of imperial Britain
20:41as a world power
20:43was about to dawn,
20:44was it not?
20:45There was reason
20:47for the new young king,
20:48George III,
20:49to be the first Hanoverian
20:51to admit out loud
20:52that I glory
20:54in the name
20:55of Britain.
20:58Even an American
20:59in London
21:00like Benjamin Franklin
21:01couldn't help
21:02but agree.
21:03He wrote that
21:04the foundations
21:06of the future grandeur
21:08and stability
21:09of the British Empire
21:10lie in America.
21:13Just 17 years later,
21:15he was signing
21:16the American Declaration
21:17of Independence.
21:19So what went wrong?
21:24How could it all
21:25have been thrown away
21:27in less than a generation?
21:30Pitt would learn
21:31that even victories
21:32come at a cost
21:33and in Britain's case,
21:35that cost
21:36would be America.
21:40Perhaps the resources
21:42of the British Empire
21:43were now terminally
21:44overstretched.
21:45Perhaps that young empire
21:47might turn out
21:48to be a 30-year wonder.
21:50At any rate,
21:51if they were going
21:51to defend
21:52the status quo,
21:53they were going
21:54to have to have
21:54a huge transcontinental army
21:57and an even bigger navy.
21:58And if that army
22:00and that navy
22:00was going to be funded,
22:02the burden of taxes
22:03had better not
22:04just fall on
22:04the British themselves.
22:06So the colonists
22:08who were supposed
22:09to enjoy their protection
22:10were going to have
22:12to cough up
22:13their share
22:14of the money.
22:17and they'd do it
22:18through taxes.
22:21Taxation,
22:22the very thing
22:22that had triggered
22:23the British civil wars,
22:25would do so again,
22:26this time
22:27in America.
22:31The taxes
22:32may have been different,
22:33but the result
22:34would once again
22:35be disaster.
22:42What happened in America
22:43was really round two
22:44of those wars,
22:45the civil war
22:46of the British Empire,
22:48with the Hanoverians
22:49playing the part
22:50of the Stuarts
22:50and the Americans
22:52the heirs
22:53of the revolutionaries,
22:55of Cromwell
22:55and of William III,
22:57the inheritors
22:58of a true British liberty
22:59that had somehow
23:01got lost
23:01in its own motherland.
23:04One such American
23:05was John Adams,
23:07a Boston lawyer
23:08and politician,
23:09deeply red
23:10in history
23:11and philosophy,
23:12and one of the most
23:13eloquent patriot leaders
23:14in the colonies.
23:16He believed fervently
23:18in those hard-won liberties,
23:20no taxation
23:20without consent,
23:22no standing armies,
23:23no martial law.
23:28When he looked
23:29at what Britain
23:29had become,
23:30he no longer recognised
23:32that pristine
23:33temple of liberty
23:34and no wonder.
23:36Thanks to the
23:37unrelenting wars
23:38with France,
23:39Britain had become
23:40a huge military state,
23:42supporting a massive army,
23:44navy
23:44and an insatiable
23:46tax-collecting machine.
23:50Adams' Britain,
23:52the Shrine of Freedom,
23:53was, of course,
23:54a fantasy,
23:55a dream Britannia.
23:56But this was a dream
23:58that John Adams
23:58woke up with
23:59every morning.
24:00and from such
24:02nagging visions
24:03comes action.
24:07He would not pay
24:08the taxes
24:09and he was not alone
24:10in this struggle.
24:14Angry, wealthy Boston
24:16in the 1760s
24:17was exactly the kind
24:19of place that might
24:20breed a revolution.
24:23Adams,
24:24his friends and neighbours,
24:25argued about everything.
24:27They attended
24:28public meetings
24:29in droves.
24:31Gossip flew around
24:32the cobbled streets
24:33in minutes
24:34and roused the citizens
24:35to use their muscle,
24:37fast and fierce
24:39in opposition
24:39to British taxes
24:40and those
24:41who tried
24:42to enforce them.
24:44Stunned by this
24:45strength of feeling,
24:47the British hit on
24:47attacks by stealth.
24:50One only of interest
24:52to bureaucrats,
24:53something the mob
24:54couldn't possibly notice
24:56or so they thought.
25:00So when the British
25:01government decided
25:03to put a stamp
25:04on the paper
25:04which official documents,
25:06handbills and newspapers
25:08were printed on,
25:09what in London
25:10looked harmless enough
25:11in Boston
25:12seemed like a tax
25:14on knowledge.
25:15In that dangerously
25:16over-informed city,
25:18it really lit a fire.
25:22After all,
25:23who uses official documents
25:25and who reads newspapers?
25:27Well, only every single
25:29lawyer, merchant,
25:30minister, publisher,
25:31printer and pamphleteer
25:33across the 13 colonies.
25:36Anyone who has to deal
25:38with an official document
25:39now hates you.
25:41And who are they?
25:43Only the best educated
25:44and loudest
25:45of the colonial population.
25:48Their leadership
25:49was prepared
25:50to mobilise anger
25:52on the Boston streets.
25:54The mob tore down
25:56the house
25:57of the governor
25:57of Massachusetts.
25:59Back in Britain,
26:01this violent opposition
26:02divided Parliament
26:04almost as strongly.
26:06The government
26:07was outraged
26:08at the insolence
26:09of colonials
26:10who were protected
26:11by our care
26:12and demanded
26:14that they should
26:15yield obedience.
26:17up got William Pitt,
26:19the man who done
26:20most to make
26:21America British,
26:22to demand
26:23the repeal
26:24of the Stamp Act
26:25and save
26:25his empire.
26:28I rejoice
26:30that America
26:31has resisted.
26:32I would argue
26:33that even under
26:34former arbitrary reigns,
26:36parliaments
26:37were ashamed
26:37of taxing a people
26:39without their consent.
26:41The gentleman asks,
26:42when were the colonies
26:44emancipated?
26:45But I desire to know
26:47when were they
26:48made slaves?
26:52As the war
26:53for public opinion
26:54escalated,
26:55the American politician
26:56and publisher
26:57Benjamin Franklin
26:58produced an image
27:00that quickly seized
27:01the public imagination,
27:03a nightmare vision
27:04of a dismembered
27:05Britannia,
27:06ruined by alienating
27:08her colonies.
27:12Tensions rose
27:13in London
27:14and Boston.
27:15Parliament did eventually
27:17repeal the stamp duty,
27:18but still the Americans
27:20boycotted
27:21British goods.
27:22Parliament
27:23put troops
27:24on the streets
27:25of Boston
27:25to keep order.
27:26The Americans
27:27assaulted
27:28and abused them.
27:32Then,
27:33in one notorious
27:34incident,
27:35the tormented
27:35Redcoats
27:36opened fire
27:37before the State House.
27:39Five Bostonians
27:41were left dead
27:42on the street.
27:45Shot by the killings
27:47over the next
27:48three years,
27:49both sides
27:50let things calm down.
27:55Eventually,
27:56the British
27:57dropped all their taxes
27:58except one.
28:01That on tea.
28:09The import duty
28:11had even been lowered
28:12to sweeten the cup.
28:14The government
28:15supposed no-one
28:17would notice the tax.
28:19Well,
28:19they noticed.
28:21The ships carrying the tea
28:23duly arrived in Boston.
28:25Unloading them
28:26meant paying
28:27the import duty.
28:29On the night
28:30of December 16th,
28:331773,
28:34the largest
28:35haul in Boston
28:36was filled to capacity
28:37with people
28:38listening to orators
28:39warning
28:40that to bring the tea
28:41ashore,
28:42much less to brew it,
28:43was to swallow
28:44slavery along
28:45with the cuppa.
28:48At a pre-arranged signal,
28:50the doors burst open
28:51and a group of patriots
28:53dressed up in blankets
28:54as Mohawk Indians
28:55urged the crowd
28:57to storm the ships.
29:00about 30 to 60
29:02of our Mohawks,
29:03with their faces
29:04all blackened up,
29:05blankets still in place,
29:07climbed aboard
29:08with lanterns.
29:09They used
29:10hatchets,
29:11which they called,
29:11of course,
29:12tomahawks,
29:13to break open
29:13the chests
29:14and pour the stuff
29:15straight into the water.
29:23For those who knew,
29:25and of course
29:25the leaders
29:26of the Patriot Campaign
29:27were very shrewd
29:28about this,
29:29understood that
29:30it was indeed
29:31an incredibly
29:32fateful moment.
29:34John Adams
29:35said,
29:37this was
29:37the most
29:38magnificent moment
29:39of all,
29:40that I cannot
29:41but call it
29:43an epoch
29:44in history.
29:45how right
29:47he was.
29:51To punish
29:53Boston,
29:53the British
29:54now closed
29:55its port,
29:56galvanising
29:57all of the
29:58American colonies
29:59to come to
30:00the distressed
30:00city's aid.
30:02Cartloads of food
30:03came from
30:04colonies
30:05north and south.
30:06George Washington
30:08declared,
30:09the cause
30:10of Boston
30:10now is
30:12and ever will
30:12be
30:13the cause
30:13of America.
30:18and yet
30:19still
30:19there was
30:20hesitation
30:21on the
30:21brink
30:21of
30:22catastrophe.
30:24Few
30:25wanted
30:26irrevocable
30:26divorce
30:27from the
30:27motherland.
30:30In London,
30:31King George III
30:32and his government
30:33believed
30:33rebellion
30:34had already
30:35started
30:35and had
30:36to be
30:37nipped
30:37in the
30:37bud.
30:39in Parliament,
30:41William Pitt
30:42made a
30:42last-ditch plea
30:43for sanity
30:44and reason.
30:47Did their
30:48lordships
30:48not understand
30:49that in
30:50fighting the
30:51Americans
30:51they were
30:52fighting
30:52their own
30:53ghosts,
30:54the ghosts
30:55of English
30:56liberty
30:56past?
31:01What
31:01though you
31:02march
31:03from town
31:03to town
31:04and from
31:04province
31:05to province,
31:06though you
31:07should be able
31:07to enforce
31:08a temporary
31:09submission,
31:10how shall
31:11you be able
31:11to secure
31:12the obedience
31:13of the country
31:14you leave
31:14behind
31:15to grasp
31:16the dominion
31:17of 1800
31:18miles of
31:19continent,
31:20populous in
31:21numbers,
31:22possessing
31:22valour,
31:23liberty
31:23and resistance.
31:27The spirit
31:28which resists
31:30your taxation
31:30is the same
31:32spirit
31:32which called
31:33all England
31:34on its legs
31:35and by the
31:36Bill of Rights
31:36vindicated
31:38the English
31:38Constitution.
31:40This
31:41glorious spirit
31:42animates
31:43three millions
31:43in America
31:44who prefer
31:45poverty with
31:46liberty
31:47to gilded
31:48chains
31:49and sordid
31:50affluence
31:50and who will
31:52die
31:52in defence
31:53of their
31:54rights
31:54as free
31:55men.
32:03George III's
32:05ministers
32:05were having
32:06none of it.
32:07Parliament's
32:08authority as
32:09the supreme
32:09government of
32:10the empire
32:10was at stake
32:11and if necessary
32:13it had to be
32:14backed up
32:14with bullets.
32:17So few
32:18were surprised
32:19when the
32:19first blood
32:20was shed
32:21at Lexington
32:21outside Boston
32:22on April
32:2319th
32:241775.
32:27Redcoats
32:28had been sent
32:28to seize
32:29militia arms.
32:30They arrived
32:31just before
32:32dawn.
32:34Nobody knows
32:35who
32:35but inevitably
32:36someone fired
32:39and in response
32:41the British
32:41shot their muskets
32:42straight into
32:43the ragtag
32:44group of
32:45colonial militiamen
32:46gathered before
32:47them.
32:48The redcoats
32:50stormed nearby
32:51Concord
32:51but were then
32:52forced back to
32:53Boston in bloody
32:54shock
32:55peppered with fire
32:56all the way.
33:02the dream of
33:04somehow remaining
33:05British and
33:06still being
33:07free had
33:08died along
33:09with the
33:10militiamen at
33:11Lexington and
33:12Concord.
33:13Now there was a
33:14different dream,
33:14a dream of a
33:15new country.
33:16It was an
33:17American dream.
33:24Once those
33:25shots had been
33:25fired, many
33:27more bodies
33:27would be laid
33:28beside those
33:29and conquered.
33:31It would be a
33:32war fought not
33:34just with muskets
33:35but with words
33:36and ideals.
33:40Adams and his
33:42fellow colonial
33:42leaders including
33:43Benjamin Franklin
33:44meeting in
33:45Philadelphia would
33:47publish their
33:47declaration of
33:48independence on
33:50July the 4th 1776.
33:54Yes, when the
33:55declaration accused
33:57a king, in this
33:58case George the
33:58third, of being a
34:00tyrant, it did
34:01sound remarkably
34:02like a chapter
34:03from a British
34:03history book.
34:05But that's not
34:06what everyone
34:06remembers.
34:07What we remember
34:08is something fresh,
34:10something profoundly
34:11American.
34:15we hold these
34:16truths to be
34:17self-evident, that
34:18all men are
34:19created equal, that
34:21they are endowed by
34:22their creator with
34:23certain unalienable
34:24rights, that among
34:27these are life,
34:29liberty and the
34:30pursuit of happiness.
34:35in April 1778, faced
34:37with the undoing of
34:39his life's work, an
34:40alliance between the
34:41old enemy, France, and
34:43the new dominion of
34:44liberty, America, Pitts
34:46tried to make one last
34:48parliamentary speech
34:49which would put some
34:49gumption into his
34:51demoralized
34:52compatriots.
34:53He struggled to his
34:55feet, but before he
34:56could pronounce, he
34:57collapsed back again into
34:59the arms of his fellow
35:00peers.
35:01When he died a month
35:03later, the right
35:04empire, the empire of
35:06liberty, died with him.
35:10It would take George
35:11Washington, now
35:12commander of the
35:13American forces, seven
35:15years of bloody
35:16fighting before
35:17independence became a
35:18reality.
35:21In that time, the
35:23Americans suffered as
35:24many defeats as
35:25victories, but gained
35:27the crucial support of
35:28France, Spain, and
35:29Holland, eventually
35:30forcing the British to
35:32surrender at Yorktown in
35:34Virginia in 1781.
35:42It may have been the
35:43end of one kind of
35:45British empire, but
35:46another one was waiting
35:48to be born.
35:5720 years after defeat in
36:00America, the British
36:01found themselves ruling
36:03millions in Asia.
36:07They hadn't planned it.
36:09They hadn't even dreamed
36:10it was possible.
36:11Why would they?
36:16Ever since the British had
36:18first come to India, early
36:19in the 17th century, they
36:21thought of nothing but
36:22trade.
36:24Their only presence was the
36:26East India Company, a
36:28commercial body there to
36:30make a profit.
36:36From toeholds on the
36:37southeast and western
36:38coasts, they bought
36:40brilliantly printed silks
36:42and cottons and shipped
36:43them home, where the
36:44parlours and bodies of the
36:46polite classes were
36:47suddenly transformed by
36:49splashes of Indian
36:50colour.
36:52A nice little business.
36:54But anything more
36:55ambitious was out of the
36:57question, for there
36:58already was an empire in
37:00India, one of the most
37:02spectacular in the world.
37:05world, the Mughals, the
37:15Muslim descendants of the
37:17Mongol conquerors of Asia.
37:21At their head was the
37:23emperor in Delhi.
37:26Across the land, a network
37:28of local governors loyal to
37:30him, the Nawabs.
37:33They had to give their
37:35permission for the East
37:36India Company to be there
37:38at all.
37:42To the Mughals, the British
37:44merchants were just extra
37:46pocket money, supplying
37:48silver to take Indian goods
37:50home.
37:51No more than a gnat on the
37:53elephant's rump, specks of
37:55bothersome dust on the
37:56emperor's peacock throne.
38:00But in 1739, that throne
38:03disappeared in the plunder
38:04taken by Persian invaders when
38:07they sacked Delhi and slaughtered
38:09its inhabitants.
38:18In the decades that followed, other
38:20invaders, Afghans from the
38:22northwest, rode deep into the
38:25Indian heartland, waging war and
38:27fighting battles on an unimaginable
38:29scale.
38:34The gorgeous fabric of the Mughal
38:36empire frayed and tore.
38:44Left to their own devices, the
38:46Nawabs started taking advantage of
38:49Delhi's weakness, raising their own
38:51armies, creating their own mini-states.
38:5818th century Mughal India was not
39:00some howling anarchy, begging for the
39:03British to come in and stop the
39:05rot.
39:05It was a patchwork of successor
39:08states, busy, elegant, robust and
39:11vigorous, many of them still using
39:13Persian law and Persian court style.
39:15And it was these up-and-coming
39:17states, not the decadent and corrupt
39:20petty kingdoms which the British
39:22always complained about, into which
39:24the East India Company smashed its
39:27way with a ferocious, unstoppable
39:29mixture of arrogance, ignorance and
39:32political cunning.
39:35No one in Delhi saw it coming.
39:39No one in London wanted it.
39:41But then, enter the French, enter
39:45trouble.
39:49It was the 1740s.
39:51Anglo-French rivalry was going
39:56global.
39:57What the French had been doing with
39:59native North American tribes, getting
40:02mixed up in their wars and alliances to
40:04steal a march on their rivals, they would
40:06now do in the Asian subcontinent.
40:12From Pondicherry, their base in the south, the
40:15French jumped into Indian politics, learning that a well-engineered coup could replace a neutral,
40:21local governor, local governor with a tame
40:24Nawaab, one who would not just help their business prospects, but shut out the British.
40:33So the British had little choice but to join in this game of Trump the Nawaab.
40:40To act was risky, but failure to act was commercial suicide.
40:46Not everyone in the little company settlements like nearby Madras was biting his nails at the idea of an Indian
40:54war.
40:57There was one young man who'd been sweating it out as a company clerk, for whom the drum roll of
41:03battle was an irresistible serenade.
41:08Robert Clive, like the East India Company itself, you might say, was never really cut out for business, at least
41:15not legit business.
41:17In Market Drayton, where he'd grown up, the Shropshire lad ran an extortion racket, threatening local shopkeepers with his own
41:24gang of toughs, unless they coughed up.
41:28Exported to Madras, Clive lived the life of the bachelor clerk, scribbling, sweating, drinking, fornicating, and making the whole thing
41:39bearable, only with pipes of opium.
41:44Scenting that powerful old aroma of money and fame, Clive made a career change, and he took British India with
41:53him.
41:55In the war that erupted between rival French and British-supported Nawabs, Clive turned a diversion into the main event.
42:04While both main armies were often a long siege at the mountain city of Trichonopoly, Clive took a handful of
42:11men and stormed the capital of the pro-French prince.
42:16He then held out for six long weeks against everything thrown at it.
42:21The effort fatally weakened the enemy, and the British client Nawab took power.
42:28The French gamble in South India was a busted flush.
42:33Clive had just broke the bank.
42:36Suddenly, the rest of India woke up to the fact that it was no longer dealing with a feeble little
42:42merchant fledgling.
42:44What it had got was a cuckoo in the nest.
42:49Up the coast to the north, the young, impulsive Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Udala, decided to do something about this
42:57threat.
42:59In 1756, he attacked the British settlement that had been established at the mouth of the Hooghly River since 1690,
43:08Calcutta.
43:14Most of its residents made it out of the town in time.
43:19The rest, 100 or so, found themselves imprisoned in a 20-foot square cell.
43:26With no food or water and virtually no air in the height of the Indian summer.
43:38Few came out alive, and the black hole of Calcutta now entered British history's lexicon of infamy.
43:50One of the survivors, John Zephaniah Holwell, wrote a book about the black hole on his way back from India
43:55to England.
43:56When it was published in 1758, it became an instant bestseller.
44:02Now, Holwell exaggerated the number of those who'd been suffocated on that hot night, multiplying them by about three, from
44:10around 40 to 120.
44:12Now, I don't think he was simply kicking up the number for the sake of sensationalism.
44:17He was making a point.
44:19And the point was that a regime that could do that, that was so cruel, so inhuman, scarcely deserved the
44:25name of a government at all.
44:26In fact, scarcely deserved to survive.
44:32Clive sailed north in Royal Navy ships, recaptured Calcutta, and then pursued Siraj Udala upriver.
44:41In June 1757, he took on an Indian army that outnumbered his 10 to 1.
44:50But Clive had been in India long enough to know there was more than one way to fight a battle
44:56here.
45:02The Battle of Plassey's gone down in imperial textbooks as one of those stellar victories,
45:08with a handful of European soldiers pulling off a long-shot victory against massed elephant cavalry.
45:16What really happened was that Clive cut a deal with Siraj Udala's second-in-command.
45:21Make sure your soldiers disappear and you can be the next Nawab.
45:25Well, of course, he went for it.
45:27The soldiers duly evaporated, and that was that.
45:34Courtesy of his tame new Nawab, Clive helped himself to a quarter of a million pounds reward.
45:41It made the delinquent from Market Drayton one of the wealthiest men in Britain, and Baron Clive of Plassey.
45:49When challenged years later at the scale of his plunder, Clive would reply,
45:56An opulent city lay at my mercy.
46:00Vaults were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels.
46:07At this moment, I stand astonished at my own moderation.
46:14The new Nawab would have disagreed.
46:18Clive cost him his independence, as well as his jewels.
46:23The British could and would replace him at their whim.
46:30As Clive turned from a general into a power broker, an Indian Caesar,
46:36suspicions began to mount back in London.
46:40Was this an economic exercise in damage containment, or was it empire building?
46:46For empires notoriously came with long bills.
46:53But Clive was one step ahead of them.
46:57He would solve all their problems by turning Bengal into a money-making machine for the company.
47:05Not by trade, but by collecting its land taxes.
47:11The temptation was not just for company men to build private megafortunes.
47:17It was for the company itself to want to grow rich fast.
47:22This was just so much easier than business.
47:26Increasingly, the stocking trade of British India was not spices, not cloth, but taxes.
47:32Taxes would have pulled down one empire in America, but now they were going to set one up in India.
47:40In 1765, the company was granted the right to collect the land tax across all of Bengal.
47:48For the British, it marked the irrevocable shift from trading to ruling.
47:55The theory of empire had been turned on its head.
47:58Trade can only thrive, that theory had said, when it's not lumbered with government or an army.
48:05Trade can only thrive in India, whispered Clive, when it hooks up with government,
48:11when it runs the tax system, and when it supports an army.
48:16And it happened in stark contrast to what was occurring in America at exactly the same time.
48:23In Boston, they were sending protesting mobs into the streets.
48:27But in Bengal, the money men were falling over themselves to bankroll the British.
48:33And the local land-owning tax collectors, or Zamindars, as they were called,
48:38would happily carry on harvesting the rupees as they had for the Mughals.
48:43The British even imagined that under their enlightened supervision,
48:48Bengal would be turned from a place of grinding toil into a model of progress.
48:53In theory, everyone was going to be happy.
48:58If the Zamindars could know for sure exactly how much tax they would owe to the government,
49:04they could go easy on their peasants.
49:06The peasants, in turn, would be able to be thrifty and industrious
49:10and produce a surplus for the market and plough back the profit into self-improvement.
49:20The only problem with this, of course, was that it was a total fantasy.
49:24The Zamindars' main interest was, and always had been,
49:28in shaking as much money as possible from their peasants,
49:32which they continued to do.
49:35So instead of beginning a chain reaction of benevolence,
49:39it started a pyramid of extortion.
49:43The government screwed the Zamindars, the Zamindars screwed the peasants.
49:47The Zamindars went broke, the peasants were evicted
49:50and died in hundreds of thousands.
49:53So much for good intentions.
49:58And in short order, famine arrived in Bengal.
50:03Walking ribcages on the trunk roads,
50:06sorcery children dying in baked mud holes,
50:10flocks of kites landing on the carcasses of cattle.
50:15Perhaps a quarter of the population of Bengal perished,
50:19millions of people.
50:21Perhaps the British didn't cause it,
50:24but they certainly didn't help.
50:26Guilty or innocent, one fact was indisputable.
50:31Bengal now belonged to the British.
50:38Over the next 50 years,
50:41most of the rest of India would follow.
50:44New British armies would complete the job that Clive had started.
50:50For some who came after him,
50:52India was more than an invitation just to smash and grab.
50:59Warren Hastings,
51:00the first to hold the title of governor-general,
51:03was committed to the possibility of repairing the broken body of India,
51:08the Indian way.
51:11He learned Persian and four Indian languages.
51:16He founded the Asiatic Society,
51:19dedicated to understanding Indian culture.
51:24Commissioned the first Anglo-Hindustani dictionaries,
51:28translations of Indian law codes and the Bhagavad Gita.
51:37And under Hastings' administration,
51:40there was a tantalizingly brief moment
51:43when the two cultures actually converged,
51:46rather than collided.
51:52British men had Indian mistresses,
51:55even wives, sometimes two,
51:57one in Delhi, one in Lucknow.
52:03They went to cockfights,
52:05smoked hookah pipes with Indian princes.
52:11Made deals with Hindu money men.
52:26But for many of the British who came to India,
52:29there would be no home,
52:31just a cenotaph.
52:34Their presence immortalised only in stone.
52:43Acres in central Calcutta
52:45are still occupied by Park Street Cemetery.
52:52In the early days,
52:54one in three wouldn't make it through the first monsoon.
52:57In all, it's said,
52:59over two million Europeans are buried in India.
53:06And the imperial size of their graveyard monuments
53:10says something about a wish to be remembered,
53:13to leave an imposing mark on the subcontinent.
53:29But neither translations of Hindu epics
53:32nor Mughal-sized tombstones
53:35persuaded everyone that the British
53:37really were Indianising themselves.
53:39Many still saw them as conquerors
53:42to be resisted to the death.
53:53They were rulers like Tipu Sultan,
53:56who'd built up his southern Indian state of Mysore
53:59into a dynamic Muslim power.
54:01For 20 years,
54:03he bitterly and effectively opposed British rule,
54:07bloodying their armies
54:08and fighting their soldiers to a standstill.
54:18But it couldn't last.
54:23Tipu Sultan, the Tiger,
54:25would learn that a new kind of British governor-general
54:28had arrived at the end of the 18th century,
54:31contemptuous of Warren Hastings' tendency to go native
54:35and resolved to squash the least sign of local insurrection.
54:41The most uncompromising of all was Richard Wellesley,
54:45the older brother of the future Duke of Wellington.
54:48Yet again, France provided the impetus for action.
54:53With the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
54:56came the excuse to stamp on anyone
54:59who might be his Indian ally.
55:02And so Wellesley dispatched an overwhelming company army,
55:07the vast majority of its manpower,
55:09Indian sepoys, to Mysore.
55:13They stormed Tipu's island fortress, Syringapatham,
55:17and overwhelmed the Sultan's army.
55:20Tipu was as good as his word and fought to the death.
55:24His body discovered where the fighting had been fiercest,
55:27shot in the head and stripped of his jewels.
55:33Over the next two decades,
55:35Wellesley and his successors
55:37moved relentlessly across the subcontinent,
55:40picking off Indian states one by one.
55:44In one of Wellesley's letters to his wife,
55:47you can hear the authentic voice of the future of British India.
55:54Farewell, dear soul.
55:56I am about to arrange the affairs of a conquered country.
56:03The foundation stones of a true Raj
56:06were laid by Richard Wellesley literally in 1799,
56:10when he decided that British India
56:12had to have the kind of building that was fit for an emperor.
56:18So he built a classical palace in Calcutta,
56:22complete with busts of the Roman Caesars and grand colonnades.
56:26From it, Richard Wellesley surveyed with triumphal satisfaction
56:31the stupefying immensity of what had been done.
56:38It might be pricey.
56:42But Wellesley wasn't thinking about double-entry bookkeeping.
56:45He was too busy measuring his hat size for the victory garland.
56:50As far as he was concerned, what he had wrought,
56:52the empire he'd carved out,
56:54was the ultimate riposte to Napoleon's cheap jibe
56:57about the English being a nation of shopkeepers.
57:00They were not.
57:01They were a nation of empire builders,
57:04an empire of arms, of law, of engineering.
57:08These men no longer cared about an empire of liberty.
57:13That now sounded dangerously French,
57:17suspiciously revolutionary.
57:19Let the Americans play with the tomfoolery of democracy if they chose.
57:24As for the empire of liberty's twin, the empire of trade,
57:28surely it was understood now that something grander
57:31was in the offing than money-grubbing business.
57:35The Almighty had led them, by crooked steps to be sure,
57:39toward their true destiny as the modern Rome,
57:42instructor to the benighted,
57:44guardians of an empire which would make war to provide peace.
57:51And just think, Roman culture might have reached Spain and Jerusalem,
57:57but British civilisation would span the world.
58:01Or so we told ourselves.
58:04The Lord, the Lord, the Lord!
58:17The Lord!
58:19Come on, come on.