Michael: Kevin, quick poll. Is the British Empire something to be proud of, or ashamed of? Kevin: Whoa, starting heavy today. I'd say... it's complicated, isn't it? If I have to pick, probably more on the shameful side, given what we know now about, well, everything. Michael: That's a very diplomatic and thoughtful answer. But here’s the kicker: a recent YouGov poll found that nearly a third of Britons believe former colonies were better off under the empire. Kevin: A third? Seriously? That's... a staggering number. Michael: It is. And that massive disconnect between the historical reality and the public memory is exactly what we're diving into today. This idea of a national amnesia is at the heart of Sathnam Sanghera's book, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain. Kevin: Sanghera... he's a journalist, right? I remember his name. Not a traditional historian. Michael: Exactly, and that’s the crucial part. He's British, his parents are Sikh immigrants, so he approaches this not as a distant academic but as someone living with the empire's legacy every single day. The book was a huge bestseller, won major awards, and even sparked a Channel 4 documentary, because it clearly hit a very raw nerve in the UK. Kevin: I can see why. That poll result alone is proof of that. Michael: And this idea that so many people hold such a positive, almost rosy, view of empire isn't an accident. Sanghera argues it's the result of a massive, collective, and very convenient act of forgetting.

Kevin: Okay, 'collective act of forgetting.' That sounds like a conspiracy, but I have a feeling it's more subtle than that. How does a whole country just… forget? Michael: It’s less of a conspiracy and more of an unspoken agreement to look the other way. Sanghera calls it "selective amnesia," and he points to these powerful myths we tell ourselves. Take the Indian Railways. Kevin: Right, the classic example. The one thing everyone brings up to say, "See? The empire did some good!" They built thousands of miles of track, connected a subcontinent. That's a good thing, surely? Michael: It's the poster child for benevolent empire, isn't it? A gift to the Indian people. But Sanghera just dismantles that myth piece by piece. First, the motivation wasn't benevolence; it was profit and control. The railways were designed to get raw materials like cotton out of India to British factories, and to get British manufactured goods into Indian markets. Militarily, they were essential for moving troops quickly to crush rebellions. Kevin: Okay, so it was self-serving. I can buy that. But it still benefited India in the long run, right? Michael: Here’s where it gets darker. The financing was a complete racket. The British government guaranteed private British investors a 5% return on their investment—double what they could get in London—paid for by the Indian taxpayer. There was zero incentive to be efficient. Companies would build winding, unnecessarily long routes just to drive up costs, because their profit was guaranteed. Kevin: Hold on. So the Indian people were forced to pay for a railway system designed to exploit them, and they paid extra so British investors could get rich? Michael: Precisely. And it gets worse. Sanghera uncovers that during devastating famines, funds that were specifically ring-fenced for famine relief were diverted by British officials to expand these private railway lines. Kevin: That's monstrous. They were literally choosing railway profits over starving people. Michael: It's a brutal calculation. And this is the history that gets airbrushed out. When Sanghera pitched a documentary about the true story of the railways, a producer actually told him, "Viewers don’t like to have their prejudices challenged." And that's the amnesia machine in action. Kevin: Wow. That producer's line says it all. It’s not that we don't know, it's that we don't want to know. It makes me think about my own education. We did the Tudors, we did the World Wars. The entire British Empire, the biggest thing our country ever did, was basically a footnote. A total blank. Michael: And that blank space is the most important part of the story. It’s what allows the myths to grow. It’s why you can have colonial-themed tours and products today, like the resurrected East India Company selling tea and biscuits, marketing itself as 'the Google of its time' without a hint of irony about the violence and exploitation it was built on. Kevin: The Google of its time? That's some serious rebranding. It’s like selling merchandise for the Death Star and calling it a marvel of engineering. Michael: A perfect analogy. And that sanitized, comfortable version of the past is what most of us in Britain have inherited.

Michael: And that blank space, that amnesia, doesn't just stay in the past. Sanghera's most powerful argument is that these imperial ghosts are walking among us. They're in our politics, our culture, our heads. Kevin: Okay, that sounds dramatic. I need a concrete example. How does something from 150 years ago affect, say, the Brexit debate? That feels like a stretch. Michael: It feels like a stretch until you look at the language and the logic. A core idea behind Brexit was "British exceptionalism"—this deep-seated feeling that Britain is special, different, and can "go it alone." Sanghera traces this directly back to the imperial mindset. For a century, Britain did go it alone. It dominated a quarter of the globe. Kevin: So the "Global Britain" slogan is basically a reboot of a 19th-century imperial worldview? Michael: It's an echo of it, absolutely. Especially the obsession with free trade. Brexiteers often talked about breaking free from the EU to forge new trade deals, harking back to Britain's 19th-century glory days as a free-trading nation. But Sanghera points out that "free trade" in the imperial era was anything but free. Kevin: What do you mean? Michael: It was often enforced at the point of a gun. Look at the Opium Wars. The British wanted to trade with China, but China wasn't interested. So, Britain flooded the country with opium grown in India, got a huge portion of the population addicted, and when the Chinese government tried to stop it, Britain declared war. Twice. All in the name of "free trade." Kevin: That's not free trade; that's drug trafficking backed by a navy. Michael: Exactly. Or look at the Irish Potato Famine. A million people starved to death while Ireland was still exporting food to England, because the British government, in its devotion to free-market principles, refused to intervene. Some of the deadliest calamities in the empire's history happened in the name of free trade. So when we hear that phrase today, it carries the ghost of that history, whether we realize it or not. Kevin: That is a wild and deeply unsettling connection. It reframes the whole conversation. What about on a more personal, psychological level? Does this 'empire state of mind' affect how British people think? Michael: Sanghera argues it does, in some very strange ways. For instance, he points out Britain's curious love for the "heroic failure." We don't just celebrate victories; we have a special place in our hearts for glorious defeats. Kevin: Like Dunkirk. Michael: Dunkirk is a classic. But he uses an even starker example: the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War. A British force, armed with modern rifles, was completely outmaneuvered and annihilated by a Zulu army with spears. Over a thousand British and allied soldiers were killed. It was a catastrophic, humiliating defeat caused by arrogant, incompetent leadership. Kevin: So how on earth do you spin that into a heroic story? Michael: You focus on the last stand. You ignore the incompetence and instead write poems and paint epic pictures of the last few soldiers fighting to the death against overwhelming odds. You turn a disaster into a testament to British grit. Sanghera says this pattern—finding heroism only in the jaws of disaster—is a deep-seated part of the national psyche, an echo of an empire that constantly had to justify its violent and often disastrous actions.

Kevin: So we're living in a country shaped by an empire we've collectively decided to forget. We have the historical hangover without remembering the party. What's the takeaway here? What are we supposed to do with this knowledge? Michael: Exactly. And Sanghera is very clear that this isn't about wallowing in guilt or self-flagellation. His point is that you simply cannot understand modern Britain—its unique form of multiculturalism, its deep-seated racism, its political crises, its identity crisis—without understanding empire. It's not about blame. It's about diagnosis. You can't treat a condition you refuse to acknowledge. Kevin: It’s like trying to fix a car engine without ever looking at the blueprints. Michael: That's a great way to put it. The empire is the blueprint. And for too long, the history has been written by the people who benefited from it. There's a powerful quote from the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe that Sanghera uses, which I think sums it all up: "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." Kevin: That's powerful. It's about who gets to tell the story. And for centuries, we've only heard from the hunter. It makes you wonder, what parts of our own history—personal or national—do we choose to forget? And what are the consequences of that forgetting in our lives today? Michael: A question worth thinking about. And Sanghera’s work is a brilliant, necessary, and surprisingly compassionate place to start. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Join the conversation with the Aibrary community. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.