The British Empire: Confronting a Complex Legacy
The article discusses how Britain is grappling with its imperial past through television programs, highlighting the nation's reluctance to address its colonial history. Two shows, "Empire" and "Make Bradford British," attempt to confront this historical amnesia and explore its impact on modern British identity.
Highlight: The history of the empire is conspicuously absent from the British school curriculum.
The author reflects on their own education, noting how British schools often skip over the empire's history, focusing instead on less controversial topics. This avoidance is attributed to the potential for conflict in multicultural classrooms.
Example: Teachers preferred to focus on "the evils of Hitler and the greatness of Martin Luther King" rather than addressing how some students' ancestors ruled over others.
The BBC documentary "Empire" aims to confront Britain's colonial past critically, exploring both the negative aspects and the empire's lasting influence on British identity.
Quote: "The country we live in the United Kingdom is an imperial creation. It's to the empire that we owe our sense of ourselves as somehow special."