This Lady Margaret lecture will take the form of a conversation between Sathnam Sanghera (m.1995) and Christ's Fellow Duncan Bell.
When we studied history at school, how much of the curriculum was devoted to learning about the British Empire? In Christ's-educated journalist Sathnam Sanghera’s case, very little. Having grown up as part of the Sikh community in Wolverhampton, he learned almost nothing about an aspect of his country’s history which, he argues, has had a powerful impact on attitudes today.
The bestselling Empireland is Sanghera’s response – a book which was named a Book of the Year at the recent Nibbie awards, and which seeks to face up to Britain’s imperial history. What he discovers is ‘a toxic mixture of nostalgia and amnesia’ which underpins an attitude of exceptionalism, a distrust of experts and a blindness to its enduring racism. Perhaps the most complex discovery for Sanghera was the extent to which some colonised people (Sikhs among them) collaborated with their colonisers.
Professor Duncan Bell, Fellow of Christ's College and historian of British imperial ideology, talks to Sanghera about how Britain’s educational, social and political systems could better reflect the realities of its imperialist past.
