Stolen History: The truth about the British Empire and how it shaped us

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In the fifth century BC, Euripides released his tragedy The Trojan Women in a crowded theatre. The work recreated the end of the Trojan war – the Greeks’ great patriotic victory. What the proud Athenians heard on that tumultuous afternoon was the rage and despair of the mothers and wives of the enemy, accusing their heroes of cruelty. They came face to face with their own barbarity. It does that. I learned about the meaning of the Scouts 'dyb dyb dyb', about persons in history I'd never heard of (Charles Sancho), a life size statues of a Prince of Wales on a horse - made out of butter! The Lorax by Dr Seuss. “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” Written in 1971, it’s still relevant and revolutionary, and is one of the best books about the environment ever written. I remember feeling spellbound by it as a child: the lyricism and rhythm flow magnificently, carrying you inexorably through the story. It’s almost like an incantation. It achieves meaning and message with humour, heart and genius simplicity: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, / Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” It’s made me cry, but it’s also joyful. The Lorax is a call to action I heard as a child that’s echoed into adulthood. This book will answer all the important questions about Britain’s imperial history. It will explore how Britain’s empire once made it the most powerful nation on earth, and how it still affects our lives in many ways today – from the words we use, to the food we eat, the sports we play and even to every grown-up’s fixation with a good cup of tea.

Stolen History - Penguin Books UK

I thought the discussion on lasting legacies of the British Empire and how they can be dealt with was super fascinating. Especially because I explored these legacies in the form of statues and what should be done with them, for my Master’s dissertation and I’m still keeping up-to-date with these debates, even now.The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton. [12] Published by Penguin, 2008, ISBN 978-0-14-102859-0. As Scanlan points out towards the end of this rich and thought-provoking book, 19th-century British capitalists continued to invest heavily in slaveholding enterprises overseas. They funded and insured many of the banks, railroads, steamships, and plantations of the American south. Britain’s cotton industry grew into its largest and most valuable industrial sector by processing much of the raw material produced by America’s slaves. At one point, the livelihood of nearly one in five Britons depended on it. In almost every respect, the free trade empire was less a repudiation than a continuation of the empire of slavery. It’s time to embrace a more honest understanding of its manifold legacies.

Stolen History | BookTrust

So does Padraic Scanlan’s engrossing and powerful Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain, a detailed exposition of how Britain profited from slavery for 200 years, and then used its abolition to justify another century or more of imperial violence and capitalist exploitation. Scanlan's study is propelled by a similar frustration with the myths of Britain’s supposedly glorious imperial heritage

This is a thrilling tale, with the expertly described Tudor world brought to hideous, harsh life with the same verve as Patrice Lawrence’s award winning teen books Indigo Donutand Orangeboy. Interrogating the role of Empire in everything from the artefacts in museum collections to the origins of our nation’s multiculturalism and racism, this clear-sighted book also manages to be empathetic and witty – testament to Sanghera’s extraordinary skill in telling this complex story. It should be on every school’s reading list.”

Sathnam Sanghera - Penguin Books UK Sathnam Sanghera - Penguin Books UK

Empireland is clever, extremely thoughtful and surprisingly understanding even towards the kind of people whose attitudes Sanghera condemns. His explanation of British racism is full of insight and pretty much unanswerable. This book should be on the compulsory reading list of every secondary school in the country, because it explains modern Britain in ways that no other writer can. I think it is an essential element in the essential effort to come to terms, finally, with Britain’s colonial past — and move on. It was also very enjoyable to read. I can’t praise it highly enough.” But to make too much of such qualifications would be to miss the essential point. Both deliberately and unconsciously, the empire was “one of the biggest white supremacist enterprises in the history of humanity”, and it still corrupts British society in countless ways. Sanghera’s unflinching attempt to understand this process, and to counter the cognitive dissonance and denial of Britain’s modern imperial amnesia, makes for a moving and stimulating book that deserves to be widely read. I've resisted suggestions that I write a kids' book on empire on the grounds that I didn't want to sanitise the history. But I think I've found a tone that allows me to be both honest and entertaining. I'm really excited that kids might soon have access to knowledge about the British Empire that I only stumbled across at the age of 45. Becoming at ease with this history is essential to Britain becoming a saner country." - Sathnam Sanghera Ece Temelkuran, author of Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now, has pointed out that the west has been used to thinking they’re more advanced than the rest of the world. But the recent slide towards populism shows that we’re actually behind countries like her native Turkey, and are being offered a glimpse of our near-future. In Together, she shows how resisting this rise of polarisation and hatred means adopting a new mindset – reacquainting ourselves with community, finding better strategies than anger, and learning to have faith rather than easily undermined hope. Temelkuran’s work cuts through easy reactions like cynicism and rage, and shows us how to engage again.He has won numerous prizes for his journalism, including Article of the Year in the 2005 Management Today Writing Awards, Newspaper Feature of the Year in the 2005 Workworld Media Awards, HR Journalist of the Year in the 2006 and 2009 Watson Wyatt Awards for Excellence and the accolade of Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2002.

Extract | Stolen History by Sathnam Sanghera - Penguin Books UK

On 23 April, a day in which Sant Jordi is celebrated in Catalonia (the day of the book and the rose), I recommended the following book to a person during a conversation: The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Miguel Ruiz. It is a book that I read more than 15 years ago. It helped me a lot because it made me aware of things that were not working quite well in my life and allowed me to change and my perspective. For me, it was and still is a very powerful book. It is easy to understand, although not easy to apply. The good thing is that it has no age and that it goes directly to its essence with clarity. We know that there are no miracle recipes, but at least for me, trying to put some of these agreements into practice helped me transform things at an individual level. In some way, each of us is seeking our own path, and I believe that it is through the sum of individual changes and shared efforts that we can achieve a more global collective change. If you thought an empire was something to do with the Romans and Star Wars you’d be right but the British once had an empire that was the biggest and most powerful in the world. Perhaps you knew that already but how much do you know?The book takes questions and runs with them - what was the British Empire, why we don't know more about it, are things in our museums stolen, how did the Empire shape our towns and countryside, why are British families from so many different places. Children are not talked down to when it comes to terms and ways of thinking that may be uncomfortable: jingoism, exceptionalism. And the author uses contemporary and comparable examples that today's young people will be able to picture and use to help them understand such terms.