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Last broadcast on Mon, 10 Oct 2011, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Andrew Marr looks at the lasting impact of the British Empire with Jeremy Paxman and Richard Gott. Paxman reflects on how our imperial past still has the power to influence everything from Prime Ministers' decisions to send troops to war, to the way we view adventurers of the past. While Gott argues against any residual belief that the Empire was an imaginative and civilising enterprise, and reveals the brutality at its heart. The social entrepreneur Mariéme Jamme believes it's time for Africa to leave behind its colonised past, and with Africa's share of global trade on the rise, she asks whether this is her continent's decade. China's Empire once ruled over a third of the world's population, and the film-maker Suyun Sun is embarking on a major history series on China which she hopes will cast new light on the country.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
JEREMY PAXMAN
“We think we know what the British Empire did to the world. But what did it do to us?” This is the starting point of Jeremy Paxman’s foray into the world of Empire. It’s a history of the extraordinary characters that left home to try their hand abroad, and the complex mix of motivation, “ruthless opportunism and earnest idealism, courage and smugness, confidence and anxiety.” Paxman argues that the influence of Britain’s imperial past reverberates today from everything, from Prime Ministers’ decisions to send troops to war and the adventurers we admire, to the food we eat and the sports we play.
Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British is published by Viking.
RICHARD GOTT
The British Empire was a brutal and violent enterprise which should be likened more to the exploits of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan than Alexander the Great, argues Richard Gott. Any residual belief that Britain was a civilising or benign ruler is overturned in his new book, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt. As Gott charts the struggles of indigenous people in the colonies, he highlights how repression, slavery, famine and genocide were all tools of Britannia’s rule.
Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt is published by Verso.
MARIEME JAMME
Commonly thought of in the West as a war-torn continent ravaged by famine, poverty, disease and corruption, Mariéme Jamme believes the time has finally come for Africa to fight back against this distorted “single story”. In a forthcoming debate, Jamme, a social activist and businesswoman, will argue that this is Africa’s decade. The economies of certain African countries are growing fast, albeit from a small base, and over the next five years they’re predicted to outperform their Asian counterparts. Jamme is enthusiastic about a new breed of entrepreneurs, bloggers, inventors and policymakers, the so called “Cheetah Generation”.
Mariéme Jamme is taking part in a discussion entitled “Is This Africa’s Decade?” at the Battle of Ideas festival on Saturday 29 October at the Royal College of Art in London.
SUN SHUYUN
China is one of the oldest civilisations in the world and its history veers between periods of political unity and expansion and disunity and civil war. But it’s a history dominated by the last century. The film maker Sun Shuyun is about to embark on an ambitious television series on the history of China, which will go back two and a half thousand years. Sun grew up in China in the 1960s on a diet of text books that pilloried the West for the inhumanity of the Opium Wars and glorified the heroism of The Great March. She believes China’s history must become more than a propaganda tool, reflecting the predominant party ideology of the time. She points to China’s long imperial rule, its great explorers from the 15th century, and to periods like the 7th century when attitudes to foreigners were markedly different and the country had an almost cosmopolitan feel.
Broadcasts
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Mon 10 Oct 201109:00
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Mon 10 Oct 201121:30
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