BONUS: Anticolonial Resistance with Dr. Priyamvada Gopal

and foster that. We're back today with another bonus conversation for a popular If you haven't yet listened to the first season of Unpopular, you should go ahead and do that because there are a lot of amazing stories on different people in history who resisted the status quo and we're persecuted for it. But today's conversation is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be speaking with Dr Preambata Gobel, who is the author of the

book Insurgent Empire, Anti Colonial Resistance and British Descent. And my hope for these conversations is that we can add just another layer on top of this conversation around descent and around what discent means today and around what we can learn about the histories of descent and the legacies of descent. And Dr Gopel has a lot to say and knows a lot about descent and anti colonial resistance, and I really hope that you enjoy today's conversation. So

let's get into it. My name is Priamboda Gopo and I'm a lecturer in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge in the UK. So you have a book, Insurgent Empire about anti colonial resistance. As I understand it, you came kind of about, you know, doing all the research on this topic and writing this book from a controversial instance. UM, A little back and forth that happened

in the beginning. Can you tell me about that? Yes, So I was invited onto the BBC, onto one of its kind of flagship, the discussion programs on the radio UH, to discuss empire. UM. One of the occasions for that discussion was I think the publication of UH, the right

wing historian Neil Ferguson's book on the Empire. And in the course of that discussion there were five of us in that discussion, it became very clear that the presenter, the host stands and Ferguson stands was one that was very much about how great the British Empire had been and how even though there might have been a kind of few, uh, you know, mishaps on the whole. It was a benevolent force that shaped the world for the

better in the image of Britain. Um. There were two people of color on the panel, the eminent black theologian Robert Bedford and myself, and it ended up being kind of a strange discussion where it was only Robert and I who were raised seeing some doubts about whether the Empires had been all that great um, And we brought up questions of slavery in venture, racism, uh, you know,

land grabs, ethnic cleansing, famines um. And all of that was sort of, you know, treated slightly dismissively by certainly by Ferguson Um. And then that evening the BBC took a very unusual step where they did another program basically in which they brought on an Indian woman to say I think in in one sense that I was not representative of Indians um, and that a lot of Indians were very grateful to the Empire, and that they really

cherished the memory of the Empire and so on. So that incident has never quite gone away from for me, and I've written about the Empire since then in the British press. I've been involved debates around decolonizing the curriculum, and also about how we commemorate the Empire. So this book is kind of related to that incident, but also

to discussions that I've had since then. And also it's partly a response to my students often telling me that they're not taught anything about the empire, um that when they are taught something about the Empire, it's very very generally, very positive and very sketchy in the details. Why do you think that is, Why is it that that your students are taught about the empire in that way? And why does this idea persist that the empire was kind of the savior and viewed in this positive light. Well,

I think, you know, there are many reasons. One of them is that, uh, the idea of having headed a benevolent and great empire is still extremely important to British national self image, certainly the official self image, as is propagated by government and by the mainstream media. There. I think that there is an awareness that if you open up that can of empire then there are a lot of worms in there, and I don't think there is an appetite to deal with the ugliness that might surface.

I mean, the fact is that any discussion about the Empire is going to be very difficult for all concerned. You know, whether whatever race or ethnicity or religious background

you're from. It's a very complicated and in many ways, very ugly story, very demanding story, I would say, And I don't think that the school curriculum is at all equipped to discuss difficult issues and not not unlike you know, slavery in the United States force people to come to terms with some very complicated and less than pretty sides of their own history. So I think there's a general reluctance.

There is certainly an enforced amnesia about the less palatable sides of empire and what is out there in the public domain is is really banal. It's very facile. It's sort of like, yeah, there were a few bad things, but you know, on the whole it was really quite good. Um. And I think that that story would be blown to pieces if there was any serious engagement with the Empire.

So I think I think this kind of British self conception, national self conception is very dependent on the idea of having not only having had a great empire, but also therefore being an important country today in the world. At a time when it's frankly losing um its status and its powers, it becomes even more important to kind of

click to that story. So, speaking of slavery, there is also here around slavery this idea that largely persisting, not that everybody thinks about it this way, but this kind of overarching idea that slaves were kind of docile, that they didn't resist, that they even you know, we're happy about the lots of their lives, and that's just not true. You know, we have a lot of you know, historical documentation about the fact that slaves did resist um and

in so many different ways. And that's that's also true when it comes to anti colonial resistance and the British Empire. So can you talk about how people did resist or kind of you know, the ways in which they resisted um imperialism and when it came to the British Empire. Yeah. So I actually began the book with a chapter that I pulled out later on just because it became too complicated.

I began the book talking about some of the lost slave rebellions that took place between eighteen o seven, the abolition of the slave trade, and then the eventually mancipation by eight UM. That so to year period was filled with rebellions, as of course there were rebellions before as well. And one of the reasons I wanted to begin with the slave Uh, the slavery part of the British empire, um is that slaves rebelled constantly in a slavery required

an immense course of apparatus. As we know. Um. I think this is true of America, but I think it's very true of Britain. Is that Britain also likes to think of itself as the abolitionist nation. So um, it likes to think of itself not as a nation which undertook slavery for several centuries, but as the nation which led the way in abolishing slavery. And in order to hold onto that myth, which is a kind of a white savior myth, the all the focus is put on

people like Thomas Clarkson and Wilbertforce. Uh and uh, you know, the idea is that white, enlightened white men came and freed the slaves. But actually I wanted to begin by talking man, how slaves rebelled all the time, even after the so called abolition of the slave trade. It didn't

abolish slavery as we know. So, UM, I begin with the insight which the American historian of Empire of Slavery, pardon me, Herbert Attecker says, which is that resistance is absolutely key to history, and the resistance of slaves is absolutely key to the history of slavery. And I take

that into a thinking about the empire as well. And I also very deliberately begin with Frederick Douglas, the great former slave and a black abolitionist, who noted very powerfully that power concedes nothing without a demand, and that against struggle is absolutely central to freedom, and that the story of abolition as as something led by white people, has to be challenged. So that is the insight that I take from slavery into empire. I'll give you an example, um,

of one of the kinds of rebellion. I'm talking about. The colonized and the enslaved rebelled in all kinds of ways. There's no simple single way of rebelling. They would drew labor, there was active rebellion with arms and with force, or

they are undertook demonstrations passive resistance. There isn't a single way of resisting But one very interesting example, which I talk about in terms of a clash of freedoms, takes place in eighteen sixty five in Jamaica, uh in Morant bay Um, and this involved freed slaves and their descendants are undertaking and uprising, which is essentially about the terrible conditions in which they live after so called emancipation, because

what are they emancipated into. They are emancipated into absolute poverty, and they are essentially told that they may no longer be slaves, but they need to continue working on the plantations for a minimum you know, next to nothing, poverty wages um, and that that is the definition of freedoms. They're now free to be wage laborers. And their answer is essentially sorry, no, this is not this is not

our understanding of freedom. That for us to go back and work on the plantations, even if it is as nominally free laborers. To us, that is far too close to the conditions of slavery. Our idea of freedom is having a very small plot of land that we can farm and be truly independent on that. We don't want profits, we don't want to be part of the entire economy. We're not interested in being entrepreneurs. We want our own independence and our autonomy by farming our own land and

feeding ourselves and our families. And this is the kind of this is at the heart of the rebellion in Morante Bay. So I also talk about the ways in which it's not just that, um, the colonized are rebelling, but they're also putting into the phray their own ideas of freedom, which are very different from the ideas of freedom that are put in place by capitalism and colonialism.

I mean, for me, and in the book throughout I talked about the very intimate relationship between colonialism and capitalism and that that is challenged by those who resist the empire. Can you talk a little bit more now about the relationship between capitalism and colonialism. Well, I think that, um, you know, there's a tendency sometimes in our discussions of colonialism to talk about the cultural aspects. You know that we talk of it as one nation versus another nation.

So we might say, for instance, India became independent or Nigeria became independent, um, And that I think is a very limited way of looking at it. What what we know is that of course there are cultural dimensions to empire there were very profoundly degrading racial dimensions to empire. But at what was empire at the end of the day. Empire at the end of the day was about profits. Um. It was about extracting labor. It was about extracting resources.

It was about taking land where necessary in order to perform these functions. Um, it was about bringing profits back from the colonies into what we call the metropol the great European empires, bringing money back to Europe, and slavery was a foundational moment for that reason. You know, often slavery has talked about in a very self serving way as something quite separate from empires, you know, something of

an accident before you know, everything became better. But actually slavery is very foundational to empire because it is a it's this kind of primary moment of extracting labor in order to make capital. Uh, you know, Western capitalism is founder it on the extracted extorted labor, on free labor, on black people and subsequently indentured people. We often don't talk about indenture. Slavery was replaced by indenture, which was,

you know, just a few steps better than slavery. So I think that for me, Uh, you can't make sense of the imperial project if you don't talk about capitalism, because it is all about putting into place capitalism. So we're not post empire. We are living in a world in which our everyday lives are shaped by uh. You know, people will use the word legacies, but I tend to use the word afterlife. We have the afterlife fire with us today in the ways in which we live economically

and deal with each other. Yes, so often, it seems like in conversations here in the US when it comes to things like acknowledging the great economic you know, success that place has had, for instance in the South and the colony is like, oh, they were successful because of indigo, because of because of In so many of those conversations, enslaved people aren't mentioned at all, but also integral to that whole process and the economic growth of that place.

So yeah, there's a there's a huge hole there. So absolutely, yes, yes. So what were some of the goals of anti colonial resistance? What was success? What I guess success if you could use that word, Where were some of the goals of things that people wanted to come out of their resistance to colonialism? Now, it's very important to remember that. Um, when people resisted colonialism, it wasn't a kind of simple Okay,

we are anti colonial and we want colonialism gone. Um. You know, very often, as in the case of Morant Bay, which I just discussed, UM, they will demand, for instance, for plots of land to farm. UM. In the cases of India in the early twentieth century and um the West Indies in the nineties, twenties and thirties, it was demands for better conditions, better ages, um. Um, you know,

more rights, more civil rights. UM. So often anti colonialism took the form of demanding rights from colonial powers and their representatives. So there isn't a single model antic colonialism, nor is it simply a case of wealth. You know, we are anti colonial and we want colonialism over. You know, often it because they came at it with specific uh demands and specific agenda. So as I said, there's there's

the land question in uh Jamaica. When you get to India, there are demands for foreign products to be removed, for the Indian markets to be uh, you know, self sustaining, to for local products, local industry to not be decimated by foreign products, by by British industry, protecting local industries. UM. In the nineteen twenties, there are several strikes, a great deal of labor unrest in India, which was about you know,

better conditions for workers, for not being exploited again. In the nineteen thirties, much of it takes the form of labor rebellions. There are also demands for more freedom of expression, for the right to assembly. We have to remember that all the rights that people in Britain were starting to take for granted in the UH, in London, in England in the twentieth century, those were not rights that people

in the colonies had. So you know, all the things that you know, British people took as as normal freedom of expression, freedom to right, freedom of pressed, anti censorship, the right not to be jailed because you held a demonstration, these were not rights that were available in the colony. So often anti colonial UH struggles took the form of demands for these things. In the nineteen twenties, after the

end of the First World was something very interesting happens. UM. You start to have the idea of self determination coming into the Phray very very obviously it's coming from the fact of the Russian Revolution which is incredibly inspirational to people under the yok of colonialists and the idea that kind of so called backward nations can actually revolt against autocracy and tyranny, and that it can actually be done, that you can put in place a new kind of

way of governing, a new kind of economic order. Lennon's idea of self determination is important. At the same time, of course, you've got the Western powers talking the talk of liberty, peace, justice, the quality of nations. Right, so the European nations in the United States, now led by Woodrow Wilson, are talking about self determination, and of course in theory this is all about uh, you know, global rights.

But what are the colonies discover their colonies discovered? That Wilson doesn't really mean it to apply to the colonies. Wilson means, you know, international order, peace, justice, human rights for United States and Europe. And this enables anti colonial activists, campaigners thinkers to say, well, hang on a second, we fought alongside you in the First World War because you said this was a war for justice, peace and human rights and freedom. Well what about these things for us?

Um and that hypocrisy that you know, that realization that uh, global didn't really include the whole world, that the colonies were still expected to be subservient to Europe and eventually the United States. I think that provokes a great deal of anger. One of the interesting episodes that I write and talk about in the book is the Italian invasion of what was then known as Abyssinia, the country that we know as Ethiopia today. Italy invades Ethiopia again, having

done it earlier in nineteen thirty four. At the end of nineteen the Emperor Highler Selassi takes an unprecedented step for a non Western nation. He goes to the League of Nations and he says, excuse me, We've just been invaded, and you have a consensus that sovereign nations cannot be invaded. So what about me? What about my country? And it turns out that the League of Nations has absolutely no

intention of restraining Italy. Britain has no intention of, uh, you know, doing anything about it, and highlights Selassie realizes by taking this public stance, he not only realizes, but he makes very visible the double standards, and this set sort of a great wave of rage across the African

and Caribbean world. And it really is one of the kind of foundational moments in twentieth century Pan Africanism, which is to say, right, so the standards that apply to the white world, uh and are pretended to be universal, really don't apply to us. And that's the kind of moment when self determination becomes absolutely key across the colonized world, and it becomes very clear that self determination will not be quote unquote given by or appor America. It will

have to be seized. We'll be back with more with Dr Gobel after this break. So I know that a lot of the time anti colonial resistance was met with resistance by establishments and by this state. What did that look like? I know that you've mentioned that there were wars under Queen Victoria. So if there are, those are some of the examples of resistance to resistance, and what

are some of the other ones as well? Well? I think this is the other aspect of empire that is quite casually forgotten, certainly in Britain, which is that it was a very very bloody enterprise. It was met with resistance, just as slavery was met with resistance all the time. Slaves were always rebelling. The colonized were always rebelling. So what do you do when you have rebelling, unquiet populations. Of course it takes the form of that famous uh,

you know British saying the natives are restless tonight. The natives were always restless. And what did that means? It meant you had to bring arms. You had to bring in the maximum gun um and so you have wars throughout the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Rebellion was endemic in the rebellion was endemic across Africa. I can't list the number of wars that really were about putting empire into place,

really were about so called pacifying natives. Well, let me just mention a few, and just from the kind of mid nineteenth century onwards. You've got the Jossa War in South Africa. You've got the Anglo Persian War. You of course have the Indian Uprising in eighteen fifty seven, which I talk about. You have the so called Maori Wars in New Zealand. You have the Ashanti Wars in Ghana, the Zulu Wars again in Southern Africa. Um. I write about the British invasion of Egypt in eighteen eighty two

and the resistance to that. You have no less than three wars in Afghanistan. They were known as the First, Second, and Third Afghan Wars respectively. There were the wars in

Sudan around the heavy the headiest wars. You have campaigns at the beginning of the twentieth century in Somaliland, so you know I mean, And of course there's China where you have the Boxer Rebellion also a nine, and prior to that, the Opium Wars, which was a way of forcing British mercantile interests into a very resistant Chinese empire. So is just completely endemic. And when they're not taking the form of wars, they are taking the form of

very brutal counter insurgencies. So in eighteen sixty five, the incident that I referred to as a Morant Bay rebellion, that was put down with great bloodiness, despite the fact that there was actually very little violence on the part of those who led the uprising, and there were executions those martial law imposed houses were burned, people were killed. Um. And the other point that I make is that often these repressions came back home to Britain, and not all

of Britain was comfortable with the violence being undertaken. And so what I write about in much of the book is the people who are saying, not in our name. So people are saying, wait a second, why did you you know, hang so and so? Why there were so many houses in Jamaica burnt down? Why were so many Indians put into jail? Why are our gunships in Egypt? So there are people also saying, why is all this happening in our name? Why so much bloodshed taking place

in our name? So, really, what you've got is either kind of repression of strikes. You have arrests, detentions, martial law, actual killing, actual wars. You know, so that the violence of empire um is very very strong. In fact, there's a there's a wonderful book by John Newson Joe called The Blood Never Dried, which is really about how there is no dry blood and Empire at constant bloodshed, constant spilling of blood in the face off between resistance to

empire and putting down that resistance. I'm wondering what what kind of people were actually resisting. So I can imagine, you know, they're seeing all this violence happening around them, and there could be an element of like having to have a lot of thought put into the resistance and a lot of courage to actually go out and do it. But on the other side, I know that they were fighting for survival and basic rights, So it's like what they had to do? So what what? What kind of

people were resisting? What? Who were they? Well, as you might guess, the answer to that is quite varied. Uh you know. One of the things about the book is that I obviously end up talking about the most prominent figures. I end up talking about the figures who had a voice, who had an impact, and for obvious reasons, many of them, not all of them, but many of them are male, Many of them are educated. Many of them have a certain degree of uh No, I wouldn't say class privilege,

but they have access to uh platforms. Um. But the truth is that ordinary people were rebelling all the time. We do not know their names. So we do not know all the names of the men and women who were involved in the Morad Bay rebellion. We do know the most famous people, people like Paul Bogel or George William Gordon, who I write about. Who are the men who uh you know? Can come to the front as

leaders and whose impact has felt back in Britain. In Egypt in eighteen eighty two, you have a man called Ahmad Urabi who comes from a very humble peasant background, but he becomes a leader in the army and the Egyptian Revolution of eighteen eighty two is named after him as the Arabi Rebellion. UM. In India, you have lots of very ordinary people involved in the boycott movement, in the Swadeshian movement at the end of the nineteenth beginning

of the twentieth century. But then you have uh, you know, quite famous nationalist figures who emerge as as prominent in that. When you get to Britain in the mid in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, UM, you you're looking at people who have come there from India and from the

African continent and from the from West Indies, um. And they are kind of really interesting figures because they're connected to the resistances, rebellions, insurgencies that are taking place back in their home countries and they are kind of presenting and interpreting them for a British audience. So there are there's a man called Schapourgi Subplatvala, who I write about,

who's a communist. Eventually he starts out in the labor movement in Britain and then he becomes a communist, but he's kind of representing in his speeches and in his writings, he's representing the millions of people who are involved in labor organizing and labor demanding labor rights in India. And then you have people like the famous Uh Trinidadian British writer Clare James, who also of course spends a lot of time in America, very involved with both the American

and the British left. You have the less well known but equally brilliant George Padmore, also from Trinidad UH, very much involved in organizing both around labor issues and around race and anti colonialism UM. And then when you get to Mauma, which is the rebellion that I end with Mauma importation marks it's of course the rebellion of the Kenyan land and freedom Army UM. Again you have thousands and thousands of ordinary Kenyan men and women, many of

whom died in the course of the rebellion. And but then you have more, you know, more famous names like Tom Moboya or Joe More Kenyatta who became involved as became the kind of figureheads. Even though Kenya Kenyatta was not actually literally involved with that movement, he became a kind of figurehead for it. So you've got a mix

of famous names, many of whom I talk about. You've got some less well known names, um, and then you have the you know, thousands and thousands of ordinary people, including women I mentioned in passing the famous Nigerian market women's revolved. We don't know that you know the great names around that they're not household names, but they do come back to Britain. Knowledge of it does come back

to Britain through the writings of these other people. I'm assuming that right now you're asking me about anti colonial figures, uh from the colonies? Yes, okay, So back in Britain, you've got people I began a few minutes ago by saying that you know, there were people who were saying, well, wait a second, what's going on? Why is this happening

in our name? And again there are many many ordinary people who are kind of signing petitions, writing letters to the editor, going to demonstrations at Trafald Square, or going on marches, or you know when when the British government in India imprisons thirty two people really on trumpet up charges and something known as the merit conspiracy case in seven uh thousands of ordinary Britain's signed petitions and and letters saying free the prisoners. Why are you imprisoning them

in our name? But there are others who are more prominent. So um I talked about in the nineteenth century, people like Ernest Jones, whose name will be known to some people because he's one of the leaders of the Chartist movement in Britain, which was a movement for rights for ordinary people, voting rights and franchise rights as well as

labor rights. Um I talked about a man called Richard Congreve who was influential in intellectual circles and who was one of the first people, you know, in eighteen fifty seven to say we should leave India, and we should leave India unconditionally. What is happening there in our name is unconscionable. I talked about a man called M. Wilfred Blunt, very unusual figure who is sorry, did you want me to stop there? No? No, no, I would love for

you to talk about Wilfrid Blind. He was one of the people who I really wanted to hear about because I'm so interested in that kind of change, because I think there's this narrative around resistance where it's like this person was always so on board and always had this moral compass, but there is the that capacity. You know, are those instances where people did um go through a process of learning and change their minds about resistance. No,

I would say that that is the key point. You know, very few people, including anti colonialists in the colonies, emergence fully fledged resistance. There's a constant process of learning, people learning from ordinary insurgencies, people learning from their reading, people learning from other people. So Blunt is a is a kind of particularly fascinating example. I can see why you were interested in him, because he begins as someone who you wouldn't dream would become a resistant. He's born into

the establishment. He's an aristocrat. His family is conservative voting. There are landowners. He lives a kind of very typically rich landowner life. He you know, it's like he's a party boy, he's a he's a kind of ladies man. He he hunts, he horse rides. Uh, he you know, goes to Balls and and and and becomes a diplomat very closely tied up to many political figures and the British establishment. And then he becomes, by the end of his life a fierce anti colonialist. I mean, he's constantly

condemning Brickland's imperial adventures. He even ends up going to jail because he stands up for Ireland and he protests against what is being done to Irish peasants who are being evicted from their land. Now, how does this happen. It happens simply through a process of learning and engaging with other cultures, but it also happens by witnessing the Egyptian Revolution. Blunt goes to Egypt several times with his wife,

Lady Anne. Both of them are very interested in horses, They're interested in Islam, They're interested in you know, they're kind of classic orientalists. They're very fascinated by the exotic orient and that draws them in the first instance. But then they witness this revolution which is taking place led by Colonel la Rabi who I just mentioned. And witnessing that revolution, witnessing and talking to the key figures in bought in that revolution, talking to Islamic intellectuals and reformers

at the Azhar or the University Empire. Blunt changes, and you know, I think we know more about him because he's one of the people who documents his change. He you know, he's he's constantly writing, and he's saying, and he's constantly assessing his own changes. And he basically says, you know, I began as somebody who loved Britain and who thought that Britain was the fount of liberty and that you know, Britain would never stand in the way of liberty. But my god, I was wrong, and how

betrayed I feel by my own country. And he actually ends up saying, I consider myself now not an Englishman but an Egyptian patriot, which is you know, quite startling. And the stakes place in the course of about three to four years, and by the end of the nineteenth century he's writing these astonishing pieces in newspapers where he's just saying, you know, your people are just going to worship in front of yourself. You're gonna look at yourself

in the mirror and worship your own image. You have no sense of of the horrors that you have unleashed in the world. And that's a really remarkable transformation. It's one of the more dramatic transformations. But I think there are versions of the story in the case of other people. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon. I been thinking about newspapers. What role did the press play when it came to resistance. Well, as you might expect, the mainstream press are largely in the

form of The Times. Newspaper was on ambiguously then as now Um an imperial organ um. It was, as Ernest Jones would say in eighteen fifty seven, it was the dishonest organ of the laden Hall money mambers. But Jones is one of the many people who are producing, you know, in much the way that you are, a kind of alternative press. So he edits a paper called the People's Paper.

And the People's Paper documents the resistance in India, and it's documents British misdeeds in India, and it says, listen, you know, the people who are doing this in India in our name are also the people who are oppressing us back in Britain. So it is better for us to throw our celebrity behind the Indian rebels then to identify with our rulers, simply because we share the same race. There are other newspapers to which people write letters. A

Blunt writes, of course, to The Times. He also writes to the Manchester Guardian, which is a liberal paper then as now, which carries a mix of views and tendencies on empire. UM. There are other papers. Sylvia Pankhurst, the great feminist, who edits a paper which begins as though as the Women's Dreadnought, and then it becomes the workers Dreadnought.

Is the Worker's Dreadnought becomes one of the kind of you know, anti imperialist newspapers for a time in the in the immediate First World War period and just after UM and there are the kind of smaller newspapers Uh

and Organs on the left. UM. I talk about a Labor Party independent Labor Party newspaper called The New Leader, which certainly in the nineteen thirties and forties stakes increasingly anti imperialist stances, in part because of the influence of people like C. L. R. James Uh and George Padmore who are writing for them, UM and who are very much involved in advising them Uh so, yeah. I mean

there's there's a kind of alternative press. The mainstream press which could really be only boiled down to the Times at the and the Guardian mixed bag. I would not call them the the primary platforms for any form of

criticism of empire. There's a there's a line that you've said before that really really struck me, and that was when you said there was no period that was completely about pride or shame, and this idea around how so many people of so many different backgrounds were joining together to do the work to resist, and I would love for you to talk a little bit more about what you meant by there was no period that was completely

about pride or shame. I think what I was saying, in at least in the video was that nothing, uh is a no nation, but particularly not the British Empire can be either just about pride or just about shame. None of us has histories in which we can say, oh, this is all unambiguously about pride, nor do we all have histories where we say, oh my god, it's all just completely miserable and shameful. We all have historical backgrounds, whether as nations or as people's or as communities that

are a mix of good and bad things. So it's really quite absurd, um, you know, when we here in Britain as we often do, and I'm sure there are versions of this in America. Oh, we must take pride in our history. The point is our history is a mixed bag. There might be some very wonderful moments in it and there are some very problematic, troubling, even shameful moments in it. So talking about history either in terms of all pride or all shame, to me, is an

unproductive discussion For me. I think the key word in talking about history is honesty. And I also think, and this is where I really agree with Jamaica Kincaid the writer, that we also all need to develop a more demanding relationship to history, which is to trying to think about

history in all its difficulty, in all its complexity. So these kind of simple minded emotions pride and shame, I have said, and I think that it's the note on which I end the book is that that is, these are not helpful terms around which to have a discussion. This is not about emotions. This is not about gripping up one kind of emotion or the other. Yeah, there are shameful moments and we need to you know, stay

are at them and accept that they happen. And then there are events in which, you know, we might take pride, but um, it can't be simple minded. Is that? I think that's really what I'm saying. Yeah. I do think that that's the thing that we are reckoning with in the US right now, having that conversation that people's legacies or histories were very complicated and very nuanced, and we

don't really know how to talk about that altogether. Maybe you know, individually, on an individual level, we can have those conversations within groups of like minded people, but I think with people who are you know, on different lean

different ways, that's a very difficult conversation to have. Because so many historical things have come up recently, as in you know, sixteen, the four hundredth anniversary of the first slaveship coming over, and also things like Confederate monuments and what we name buildings and establishments and who we name them after. So I do think that is definitely something that is troubling, you know, the national conversation right now.

It is, And I think but the other problem here is that if if one, if we only talk about it as national conversations, then already there is um a problem because nations do try to attach themselves to very simple ideas um. And so you know, Britain likes to think of itself, as I said earlier, as the abolitionist nation, which is an absurd idea. America likes to think of itself as the fount of liberty or fount of democracy,

which is an equally absurd idea. You know, all nations have very checkered histories, and they have very checkered histories in relation to each other and in relation to their populations. So you know, we need to ask what do we mean when we say the British nation or when we say India, you know, which is again a nation on the tremendous pressure right now in terms of who are we and what are we doing? And what are we

doing to the populations we call our own populations? H So you know that we need to actually take a good hard look at this weed well when we talk about the nation and and ask well, what are the constituent parts of the we, and how did this so

called we come to be? Yes? And it seems in America, if you don't talk about slavery, or you try to pretend slavery was okay, then you no longer have a national we, because you know, in slavery doesn't mean the same thing to everybody who has thought of that nation, and you you know, and having a very selective understanding of slavery is also not thought of any kind of we.

So I think it's a real mismatch between you know, when we use the national we and then we describe the nation in these fairly simple minded ways on which we are all ostensibly supposed to agree, right, right, So why do you think it's so important to recover the violence of imperialism and the dissident tradition in Britain. I think it's important precisely towards this discussion of what the

national we is. So I think that you know, for instance, Britain is a country not unlike America, but because of a different history. There is a very large Asian population. There is now an increasingly large Muslim population. Uh. There

is there are people from Ireland and Scotland. Uh. In in the wake of you know, Brexit, there are all kinds of questions about you know, whether there is even a United Kingdom, given that the Scots and the Irish voted very differently uh in relation to the referendum on

whether to leave Europe. So I think that that this conressly recovering the story of Empire is actually and this is what I'd say at the end of the book, perhaps rather controversially, is that having this discussion about the Empire is precisely what will enable some kind of national conversation to emerge, because the history of the Empire shapes every single person in Britain in one form or the other. UM.

And again, it's not not about pride or shame. It's it's simply about well, how did you come to be here and how were you produced by the Empire? And that actually I would go so far as to say that the equivalent would be I think slavery is the fundamental discussion alongside, of course, the question of Native Americans, uh, And that is the conversation on how was this land settled and who did the labor to make this land

what it is? Are the fundamental questions that Americans have to deal before you can start talking about, you know, immigrants and how you treat immigrants or whether who is an American and who isn't you have to say, well, you know, how did how did we come to settle this land? Then who worked this land and who contributed

to the wealth of this country. So if you don't have these foundational conversations, uh, and also in those conversations engage with kind of constitutive violence and repression, then you're in no position to have an honest discussion about national history or understand what the national we is. And I haven't fully got the answers to this because I didn't

produce this book. As you know, how to Resist, There's something to be learned from history, and I do very passionately believe that history is vital to how we live today. I would say, well, what we learned from the people that I write about, who are all, you know, very very interesting thinkers. One is that the same forces that oppressed within societies are also the forces that are imperial

outside countries or that are militarizing outside the country. And I think that it's very important for people across the world to understand that quite often we are oppressed or exploited by the same forces across the globe. You do also learn from a history of anti colonialism that although it's very complicated and difficult and often impossible project to resist, not everybody is in a position to resist. People do

share a tendency to push against tyranny. Uh. And you know, when slaves could rebel, they did even in very very dangerous conditions. Um. And when workers or colonized people's resisted, they also did what they could in very difficult conditions. And that tendency that we share as human beings. And it was very clear to me doing this study that people across the globe, if there is a universal value, it is that tendency to push against tyranny and exploitation.

And if we can foster that tendency in ourselves in our societies, then this is a historical moment where we absolutely need to capture and foster that. You also understand that you can learn from the resistances of other people, so you can be inspired by resistance is taking place elsewhere. I'm very struck by the number of British dissidents who said, hey, you know what, not only is resistance happening in the West, Indies are happening in India, but my god, we should

be learning from this resistance. We should learn how to organize ourselves by looking at the West Indian workers or the Indian uh Sibyl disobedience people. And this leads us, I think to my kind of final insight from having

written the book is that building solidarities is vital. What is really striking, particularly in the twentieth century, is how people were able to build solidarities across racial and national lines, and not just between black and white or Asian and black and white, but across you know, Asian people, Black people, Muslims and Hindus, across religious boundaries, so you know, finding a way to learn from each other's as resistance and

building solidarities. I mean, I think that is not just desirable, but probably from this point on, is going to have to be a survival skill. M thanks for listening to this interview. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you want to give us a shout and let us know what you thought about today's interview, you can do that by email at Unpopular at I heart media dot com, or you can hit us up on social media. We're on Twitter at underscore Unpopular Show, We're on Instagram at Unpopular Show,

and we're on Facebook at this is unpopular. Producer Andrew and I are so excited for season two. We're really excited to share it with you too, so keep your eyes on the feed and we'll be back soon