Ellie Cawthorne: You write in the introduction to your book that you want it “to set out why people in Britain today should care about their nation’s imperial past”. Why do you think that this is so important?
Charlotte Lydia Riley: Beyond the fact that I’m a historian, and I think that trying to know more about history is always worthwhile, I believe there are many reasons why we should care about our imperial past, specifically in Britain.
There’s been a peak and a trough in knowledge about empire. For a long time, it was a very obvious and explicit part of our popular culture. Schoolchildren would study under a map on the wall that had the imperial territories marked out in pink, and people were often very celebratory about Britain’s imperial conquests. Then, after decolonisation, a silence gradually fell over the empire, and discussions of how it had shaped British society, culture and politics ebbed.
The reason I think that British people need to think more closely and carefully about the nation’s imperial past is because both empire and decolonisation have shaped so much in Britain today. A lot of the ways we still organise British society are rooted in imperialism, and many of our organisations – universities, schools and museums – have imperial roots. The story of migration to Britain is also rooted in empire: there are people living here now whose families have connections to the colonies in all sorts of ways. It’s very difficult to look backwards at empire and say that it’s over and done with – you can see it all around you today.
