Dal Quotidiano canadese “THE GLOBE AND MAIL”: Britons starting to examine colonial history

JAMES GRIFFITHS ASIA CORRESPONDENT

Even by the standards of the British, the Opium Wars (the first was 1839-1840) were a shameful example of imperial avarice. Fought on behalf of drug dealers, they were widely denounced at the time.
Shift has been gradual, but British institutions are looking at historical links to slavery
On a damp spring day, I walked to the Hong Kong Cemetery, near the city’s famed Happy Valley Racecourse. Winding my way through hundreds of marble and stone graves, I eventually reached one belonging to Miles Monk Magrath. Dating from 1864, it was covered in green and orange lichen, its lettering barely readable.
Mr. Magrath is an ancestor of mine, my first cousin four times removed (or, to put it another way, his uncle was my great-greatgreat-grandfather). I have lived in Hong Kong since 2014, and visited the cemetery several times, but it was not until last year, when reading a family history, that I noticed Mr. Magrath was listed as having died in Hong Kong. I found an entry for his grave in a cemetery database (which gets his age wrong, due to a misreading of the weathered stone) and went to visit.
Seeing the state of the grave, I decided I would try to restore it, and, with the help of a local preservation society, applied for permission to do so. Work, life and the unpredictable Hong Kong weather got in the way, but this spring, a week before Tomb Sweeping Festival, when Chinese families traditionally visit the graves of their ancestors, I finally got to scrubbing.
In large part, I did this for my late grandmother. She was fascinated by our family history, and we would talk about various distinguished ancestors and their adventures, which took them all over the world.
Our conversations would often skirt around the reason for this global spread: the British Empire.
Occasionally, however, my grandmother – who was born in Yorkshire in 1927, and witnessed the unravelling of that imperial project during her lifetime – would acknowledge that it was often less than glorious, even if her pride in our own ancestors never dimmed.
As I cleaned Mr. Magrath’s grave, alternately scrubbing and dousing it with water, I felt a certain level of discomfort about doing so. I still do now.
Mr. Magrath was a naval surgeon during the Second Opium War (1856-1860), when the British and French attacked the Qing Empire on dubious grounds, eventually forcing China to legalize the opium trade, and expanding the size of Britain’s burgeoning colony in Hong Kong.
Even by the standards of the British, the Opium Wars (the first was 1839-1840) were a shameful example of imperial avarice. Fought on behalf of drug dealers, they were widely denounced at the time, with William Gladstone saying in Parliament that “a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and have not read of.”
The Opium Wars form a key part of the “century of humiliation” in Chinese history, when the ailing Qing were assailed from all sides by foreign powers, who carved the country up before the empire finally collapsed. The sacking of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860 is still cited by Chinese leaders today, and the grounds have been kept in their partially destroyed condition as a reminder of historical suffering.
Growing up in the United Kingdom, I knew none of this history, and I was not alone. Then prime minister David Cameron attracted outrage in China when he wore a poppy on his chest during a visit in 2010 (opium is derived from poppies, which, like in Canada, are a symbol of Remembrance Day in the U.K.). In his memoirs, one of Mr. Cameron’s predecessors, Tony Blair, admits to a “fairly dim and sketchy understanding” of Hong Kong’s history when he oversaw its handover to China in 1997.
Similar ignorance is common about other imperial projects. Since gaining independence in 1947, the Indian government has demanded the return of the Kohi-Noor diamond, given by colonial administrators to Queen Victoria and now part of the British crown jewels. Indians are often shocked to discover Brits know little to nothing about the controversy, which is rarely mentioned in the U.K. except around royal events such as King Charles III’s coronation (when the crown bearing the diamond was tactfully excluded).
“We ran the biggest empire in human history and act like it never happened,” said Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain. “There are a lot of reasons for this amnesia: it’s a painful, difficult history, it’s complicated, and it’s much easier to focus on First World War and World War Two. But there’s also the extent to which this history was deliberately suppressed.”
This included the destruction of records as the empire was unravelling, particularly in Africa, where departing colonial officials tried to cover up atrocities such as the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau in Kenya.
Even today, the U.K. government has fought long and hard to stop the release of papers relating to the partition of India in 1947, and many documents around the Hong Kong handover and other former colonies remain classified.
But gradual shift is under way. British institutions, from the National Trust to The Guardian newspaper, have begun examining their historical links to slavery, and even King Charles has signalled support for research into the monarchy’s role in the trade. The lobby group Heirs of Slavery was formed in April, by descendants of people who benefited from the practice, to push for reparations.
In Canada too, a reckoning is under way. Governor-General Mary Simon has said that “for the longest time our history didn’t reflect the richness” of the country’s diversity, with “racism presented as fact” and Indigenous people left out of the story. This is slowly starting to change.
Mr. Sanghera pushed back at those who claim such actions are applying modern morality to the past. “Empire was opposed at the time consistently,” he said, both overseas and at home in the U.K., “and we forget that.”
There is an appetite for work challenging the old orthodoxies. Mr. Sanghera’s book is a bestseller, and he is about to publish a work for children, Stolen History: The truth about the British Empire and how it shaped us. Podcasts such as Stuff the British Stole (coproduced by the CBC) and Empire, hosted by British historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, have also found large audiences.
But at the same time, a backlash from the right has tried to stem this introspection. Britain’s Conservative government has attacked efforts to take down statues of slavers, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the country’s first non-white leader, once suggested “vilification of the U.K.” should be treated as dangerous extremism.
Critics of empire, particularly those who are people of colour, such as Mr. Sanghera and renowned Black historian David Olusoga, have come under intense attack from the right-wing press. Mr. Olusoga often travels with a bodyguard, and Mr. Sanghera described “waking up each morning and dealing with people who are trying to destroy you.”
“But the international conversation is happening,” Mr. Sanghera said, pointing to similar movements to examine the imperial pasts of France and Germany. “So that’s going to influence Britain even if we’re reluctant to do it ourselves.”
I may feel ashamed of Mr. Magrath’s role in the British Empire, but how he felt we do not know, no letters from him survive. Likely he did not give it much consideration. Writing of naval memoirs in his book The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, journalist David Grann said their authors “rarely depicted themselves or their companions as the agents of an imperialist system.”
“They were consumed with their own daily struggles and ambitions,” he said. “But it is precisely such unthinking complicity that allows empires to endure. Indeed, these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving – and even sacrificing themselves for – a system many of them rarely question.”
Centuries later, for many of us who descended from those who benefited the most from this system, this is only just beginning to change.