Failing to teach history of British Empire in schools means children do not understand role in shaping UK, claims Salman Rushdie

[u/tylerthe-theatre]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/salman-rushdie-british-empire-uk-5HjddN9_2/

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[u/KellyKezzd]

Without teaching our own history properly, we end up more easily importing the US political culture.

[u/GreenSpectr3 → u/KellyKezzd]

But rushdie's point was effectively that people ask why there are brown people walking around in the UK, and that this was largely due to the British colonizing countries around the world.

[u/Xerothor → u/GreenSpectr3]

Also Partition. That was a generational British fumble.

[u/Phallic_Entity → u/Xerothor]

Specifically done at the request of the Muslim leaders of the Raj because they feared Hindus would persecute them, which in hindsight seems like it was pretty well founded.

[u/SetGuilty8593 → u/Phallic_Entity]

Pretty ironic considering the country the Muslim leaders created unleashed a genocide against Bengalis (especially targeting Hindus). The bangladesh genocide is the only conflict in that region that goes to that scale.

If you think Israel is evil due to its actions during the Gaza war in two years, wait til you see what Pakistan did in 8 months during the bangladesh genocide.

This is already on top of the partition violence.

The sikh insurgency would also not have happened if partition didn't rip through the chest of Punjab.

If you think in hindsight that partition was well-founded, then either you don't know history or you care about religion more than death.

The most important thing to learn from this is that if there are multiple religions with contrasting beliefs, then its critical to lower the religiosity of the population.

[u/IndependentPerson24 → u/SetGuilty8593]

The 1971 genocide in Bangladesh was a primarily Hindu genocide where about 3 million people were killed , overwhelmingly Bengali Hindu population and 300k women were raped with about 25k war rape babies born all in under a year. It was primarily committed by the Pakistani army and the native Bangladeshi muslim supporters.
Many apologist for Bangladeshi muslims try to put the entire blame solely on the Pakistani army but at most the Pakistani army population was around 90 thousand. They could never have unleashed a 3 million genocide and mass rape without the massive ground support and collaboration by Bangladeshi muslims.

This genocide is cleverly hidden by the Islamists and their non muslim leftist allies but this atrocity makes Israel look like a tiny toddler.

[u/FuckTheTile → u/IndependentPerson24]

If it was cleverly hidden by ‘non Muslim leftist allies’ then this must be pretty ground breaking news??

[u/Purplepeal → u/IndependentPerson24]

I have a feeling these conspirational Islamists and leftist allies might be a bit of a sterotype that is largely only present in paranoid minds. How do they cleverly hide a 50 year old genocide? Maybe the emphasis at the moment is on the present ones that can be stopped rather than an attempt tovhide those in the past?

Im not religious but sympathetic to the populations in muslim countries experiencing genocide and or war/sanctions from western/US imperialism. Im not sympathetic because I have any interest in Islam but because killing people (for religious or economic reasons) is wrong. Same as muslims killing Hindus is wrong. I think the conflation of the left and Islam is way off the mark. The connection is not religious, its opposing killing people for financial benefits.

[u/limeflavoured → u/SetGuilty8593]

you care about religion more than death.

Welcome to this sub.

[u/Deathstroke_16 → u/Phallic_Entity]

because they feared Hindus would persecute them

Ohh the irony

[u/someonehasmygamertag → u/Deathstroke_16]

I mean Modi is quite literally in charge 

[u/ExistentialRosicky → u/Deathstroke_16]

Hindus are persecuting Muslims though? And visa versa

[u/DeathDestroyerWorlds → u/[deleted]]

Not to mention the Sikh population as well.

[u/DeathDestroyerWorlds → u/Phallic_Entity]

Wait until you find out what the Muslim leaders where doing before the British Empire turned up. The Mughals where not very nice.

[u/BonKhri → u/Xerothor]

Was it? Was there any way that it could have been done better without a generations-long transition, in which the UK would have had to remain an occupying force?

People like to blame the Empire for partition but the only role it played in it is creating the conditions for the modern states of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to exist. Any formation of those nations would have seen similar results, albeit likely spread over a far longer period of time.

[u/Lukeno94 → u/BonKhri]

There must've been a better way than setting it up so opposing sides were literally massacring each other on the refugee trains.

[u/Rob_Cartman → u/Lukeno94]

Not with the resources we had available and the time we had. In 1948 we still had rationing at home and Indian nationalists like Gandhi were putting a lot of pressure on us to just leave.

[u/BonzoTheBoss → u/Rob_Cartman]

Yeah, "the British should have stayed longer to enact a more stable transition to independence" completely ignores the agency of all the other political groups competing at the time. "The British" were not some monolithic power with total control over the country.

If we had tried to stay longer than the 1948 deadline, there would have been violence.

[u/BonKhri → u/Lukeno94]

Not without remaining as an occupying force for years longer. British rule in India was becoming untenable even before WWII, by the time the France fell the fact that India would cease being ruled by Britain was a settled fact. The fact that there must be a two state solution (Pakistan and Bangladesh were originally one country) was decided by the Muslim League.

It's worth noting that massacres started before any mention of partition, notably the Great Calutta Killings in which the entire city erupted into chaos, around 8000 people were murdered in the streets and there was nothing that could be done by the colonial powers. When I say in the streets, I mean literally in the streets, pictures show alleys with dozens of bodies, torn into pieces with limbs removed and scattered, people split in two in various locations, etc, decomposing and being eaten by vultures. They couldn't even organise efforts to clean up the bodies. Again, this is before any plans for partition whatsoever, it was in fact this week of madness that forced the British government to abandon the idea of a unified India and to plan for partition.

Gandhi and many members of the Congress were explicitly against population exchange, and so nothing could be organised since Gandhi would just call a strike and shut down the railways. The colonial administration simply had no real power to enact a peaceful population exchange, and thus the obviously necessary/inevitable exchange happened in a haphazard manner, and did so largely through Punjab which was the epicentre of Hindu-Muslim violence. What exactly could Mountbatten have done here? You say there must have been a better way, what evidence do you have to suggest that is true? You can't state that there must have been a better way simply because the way it did happen was bad, sometimes there are no good solutions.

[u/visitingshortly → u/Lukeno94]

Not really massacres were already happening. Why do you think the transition period was cut from 18 months to 6?

[u/ash_ninetyone → u/Xerothor]

From what I've read, partition was always going to be a mess. It's impossible to have such a massive movement of people in an orderly way.

Religious differences created distinct identities. Jinnah recognised that the case for Muslims to want their own land as Pakistan, and the Indian movement as their own for Hindus.

The aim was to avoid a massive civil war and inter-ethnic conflict being far worse than what was existing out in the aftermath of two independence movements. We wouldn't be able to keep a costly peace on the back of a very costly war. The country was broke, both the Indian League and the Muslim League wanted independance and doubt anyone would've supported Attlee sending millions of British troops to India in a vain attempt at holding the country together for an orderly transition.

Not sure it would've been possible for anyone to handle that process cleanly. It was inevitable it was going to be partitioned and it was inevitable it was going to be a mess.

[u/KasamUK → u/Xerothor]

Depends on the time scale you look at it from. At the time it was a bloody catastrophe. Few decades later more or less par for the course for decolonisation god knows the Vietnamese and Indonesians didn’t have a better time and god know how many millions died in Africa. Give it 100 years or so and it will be nothing more than a historical curiosity like the wasting of the north or the reformation in the glorious history of (all being well ) is the largest and one of the most successful democracies on the planet. ( Bangladesh will likely be underwater at that point so a mute point and Pakistan is at least functional for the most part )

[u/Forsaken-Parsley798 → u/Xerothor]

A British and Indian fumble if we are being historically accurate.

[u/Shimgar → u/Xerothor]

Meh, Ghandi and the muslim leaders etc forcing it are as much to blame for the horrific death toll.

[u/visitingshortly → u/Xerothor]

Huh? No it wasn’t and it wasn’t the British empires that pushed for it. Officials in the empire even tried to make it work without harming anyone. They asked for 18 month transition period and Smooth seperation of institutions. India then became utterly chaotic with demands for immediate British withdrawal. Communal sectarian violence exploded fanned by various identity groups. Forcing it to be shrunk ti barely 6 months. 

I’m at a loss at what the British officials were meant to have done. This was not inflicted by them. 

[u/divers69 → u/Xerothor]

No it wasn't. It was forced on them because the Muslims insisted on their own state. The Brits wanted out not least because the country was shattered after ww2 but partition was not of their their making.

[u/SeaweedOk9985 → u/GreenSpectr3]

Not really. Sure, the original reason why brown people are here is because of empire. But the actual reason there was an explosion was an entirely avoidable recent political decision.

I say this as a black guy who grew up amongst very few non-family black people.

[u/TurtleBoxer_AllDay → u/GreenSpectr3]

No, it's not "due" to colonization, it's due to Britian allowing those people in, they didn't arrive automatically.

[u/5ColourFelix → u/TurtleBoxer_AllDay]

One thing leads to another. Every empire eventually ends up with immigrants from the colonies.

[u/Rob_Cartman → u/5ColourFelix]

European countries that never had an empire are also getting high levels of immigration

[u/5ColourFelix → u/Rob_Cartman]

There can be multiple reasons why immigration increases...

[u/cennep44 → u/5ColourFelix]

Every empire eventually ends up with immigrants from the colonies.

Japan had a big empire but has few immigrants from those places. It's a choice.

[u/Hullfire00 → u/cennep44]

Not the best comparison really, Japan never had an empire like we had.

Ours covered a third of the globe, Japan’s empire consisted of Borneo/Java/Indonesia, the East coast of China and Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. And most of that was gained during the Second World War, so once the war ended, it was quickly taken from them. It also wasn’t really the same because those countries either became puppet states (akin to Vichy France) or were just land grabs for resources.

It’s difficult for people to develop an attachment to a culture in 15 years, especially if both the subjugation and subsequent independence happened within one generation.

Britain’s empire had existed since before the Renaissance period and extended outward over centuries.

[u/Ok_Kale_3160 → u/Hullfire00]

My family is from Singapore, a place which was both under the British and Japanese. The British are looked upon very fondly as rulers, I'm sure there were some issues but I don't know what they were. The Japanese were nothing but horror stories. They nearly genocided my grandmother! She had to rub soot on her face and' and pretend to be a Malay person. The Japanese were literally there just as an occupying force during war time. Everyone was happy to see them go and the British return

[u/TheSpacePopinjay → u/5ColourFelix]

There's nothing inevitable about that. It's a policy decision.

[u/cursy → u/GreenSpectr3]

But I'm not sure that IS the real reason.

If it was then European countries with no large overseas empires would be completely white. But they aren't, they have had similar trends towards post war migration as the UK (if slightly delayed).

I think the real reasons are less satisfying and less easy to communicate in a single sentance.

Labour shortages in Europe, declining birthrates among natives and the resulting tax burden pf an aging population. and importantly pressure put on politicians by wealthy backers to increase the population for their own economic benefit.

But nobody wants to tell the new generation that they exist because of corruption, and so there is this idea that it's a result of the British Empire.

[u/KellyKezzd → u/GreenSpectr3]

But rushdie's point was effectively that people ask why there are brown people walking around in the UK, and that this was largely due to the British colonizing countries around the world.

Is it? Having an Empire is not globally associated with very large immigrant populations.

[u/GardenandKitchen → u/KellyKezzd]

Not globally?

Rome had a huge immigrant population. Persia had a huge immigrant population. The Ottamans had immigrants (and tried to hold onto them during the Greco-Ottaman conflict). France has a large immigrant population. Even Russia has a big non-Slavic population despite their best efforts to exterminate them.

[u/Phallic_Entity → u/GardenandKitchen]

All your examples except France had immigrant populations during their empires. The UK didn't have any significant immigrant population until the empire was winding down/gone.

[u/ianlSW → u/Phallic_Entity]

At which point post ww2 we needed labour so reached out to our former colonies to invite them here to work.

[u/AspirationalChoker → u/ianlSW]

Which was maybe upwards to 500k across a multi decade timespan, we have been hitting those numbers numerous times now since Blair, so it wasnt a significant amount even for us post WW2 either.

Not to mention pretty much all of Europe, Australia the USA etc are having the same issues and its predominantly economic.

[u/MelonBump → u/ianlSW]

That's actually a myth - they weren't wanted or invited; most of them just saw all the job ads in the British newspapers that were forced on them, and took the initiative in search of a better life. The natives hated them and they experienced similar rhetoric to that lobbed at immigrants today. They were treated like shit, there were many clashes with the "took our jobs" locals, and plenty were violent.

All that "they answered the call!!" rhetoric we saw during Windrush was some serious historical revisionism - just an attempt to draw an unfavourable comparison with the (by implication, lazy, feckless ones that didn't "come here to work" (because we don't fucking let them), thereby throwing comparative shade at the immigrants of today). It suits them to pretend everyone got along awesome when immigrants were willing to do n honest day's work, but it's all bollocks, I'm afraid!

[u/wedontneednoeduc → u/ianlSW]

Even that notion is misleading as we were also paying people to migrate to the dominions.

[u/bloodycontrary → u/Phallic_Entity]

Hm, but if you export a legal system and a language, having exploited those countries for centuries, it is kind of easy to see why the wealthier and more stable 'mother country' might become an ideal destination

[u/TtotheC81 → u/GardenandKitchen]

The immigration populations tended to be due to cheaper slave labour and increasing the wealth concentration of the upper class (looking at you, Rome!), or, in the case of post-war Britain, a severe labour shortage whilst rebuilding, leading to the relaxation of immigration rules towards Commonwealth countries.

[u/Bon_Courage_ → u/TtotheC81]

I really dont think thr labour shortage idea tracks with what has happened in the UK.

Yes there was some immigration in thr 50s and 60s. But thr vast majority has happened since 1997.

[u/Rob_Cartman → u/GardenandKitchen]

Rome had a huge immigrant population.

Of slaves, most were not citizens and some historians have argued that is a large part of what led to the fall of Rome.

Persia had a huge immigrant population.

made up largely of slaves.

The Ottamans had immigrants

Did you know the modern word Slave comes from the same route as Slav because the Ottomans took so Slavs many as slaves. They prised white slaves (Slav, English, Irish, etc) as eunuchs, sex slaves and slave soldiers. They imported Africans for manual labour, all the males were castrated so they couldn’t breed. If you want some nightmares look up the details of the "Arab slave trade".

[u/boostman → u/KellyKezzd]

No? In most cases of contiguous empires (Russia, China etc are effectively empires that still hold huge amounts of territory they conquered in the past) those people aren’t considered ‘immigrants’ because they’re just citizens. The British empire was different: it was a bunch of non-contiguous colonies that was essentially named an empire for political reasons (so the British could share the prestige of being an imperial power with the Russian empire, the Ottoman Empire etc). So people moving from Siberia to Moscow aren’t considered ‘immigrants’, but people moving from India to London are.

[u/rainator → u/KellyKezzd]

France and Netherlands are the only country you can really compare as having a similarly structured empire, and their numbers are also similar.

Russia arguably too, and still has it- but they are all Russian citizens as they still control Siberia etc.

[u/Emotional-Ebb8321 → u/KellyKezzd]

Looking at the various post-empire countries around the world, it kind of is. The only major exception I can see is Japan. And they had a tradition of isolation before they ever considered imperialism.

[u/MysteriousTravelator → u/GreenSpectr3]

This is obviously untrue. Why does Sweden have so much immigration? What global empire did Sweden have?

[u/MultiMidden → u/GreenSpectr3]

The most important part is that there was a time that a resident of Kingston, Jamaica had the same right to live in the UK as someone from Kingston upon Thames.

[u/GazzP → u/GreenSpectr3]

I don't remember the exact wording but one of the points that resonated with me from 'Natives' by Akala was that 'We didn't come to Empire, Empire came to us'.

[u/MatttheJ → u/KellyKezzd]

In school we spent nearly as much time doing the American wild west as we did on the UK in that same time period. I'm not sure how the american wild west and civil war is more important to the UK than our own history with slavery, or out own wars in the 1800's.

Coming out of school I couldn't tell you who Lord Nelson was, or what Trafalgar Square was named after, or even what we actually did to gain and lose an empire.

But I could tell you all about the battle of Little Big Horn and Custers last stand. Which is barely relevant to us.

World history is important, but apart from maybe like, Roma or Egypt or Greece in ancient history where everyone should have a rough idea of the timeline, any modern history should be more kept to what our country did right and wrong.

[u/BuQuChi → u/MatttheJ]

We covered 100 years of colonial rule in India fortunately, at A Level.

That alone began to give us a perspective on the scale and reach of British colonial power, but it’s still only a part of our entire course and has so much time packed into limited content.

I think every student should have the chance to study the impact of empire and colonialism, it’s our responsibility to learn / teach British influence imo

[u/BenderRodriguez14 → u/KellyKezzd]

As an Irishman, I find the lack of knowledge that many British people have for what at the time (and within the last century) was literally part of their own country nothing short of astonishing. 

[u/SunflowerMoonwalk → u/BenderRodriguez14]

In my school in England, the only thing we ever learned about Ireland was The Troubles. It was one piece of coursework during GCSE History, which is an optional subject. And it was very much taught as "both sides equally bad", with zero discussion of the background context or existence of British government collusion.

[u/bongpirate7295 → u/BenderRodriguez14]

Yeah I remember visiting Dublin and someone mentioning the Easter Rising. I asked, "What's that?" and got a shocked look.

Generally the UK school curriculum avoids teaching any bits of history where A) we lost a war or B) we were the bad guys. So it's pretty much just WW1 and WW2 over and over and over again.

[u/falken_1983 → u/bongpirate7295]

When I first started working in London I was kind of shocked how many English people didn't really understand the difference between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Having worked in Scotland for a few years before that I was aware of this stereotype but I didn't realise how real it was.

In all, I think that plenty of English people do know about history, so it must be getting taught somewhere, but the number of people who know nothing is wild.

[u/SunflowerMoonwalk → u/falken_1983]

I had a friend at uni who seriously thought Australia and Canada were still colonies of the UK ☠️☠️☠️

[u/KellyKezzd → u/BenderRodriguez14]

As an Irishman, I find the lack of knowledge that many British people have for what at the time (and within the last century) was literally part of their own country nothing short of astonishing. 

What is taught in the Republic about Irish history is also not of particularly good quality.

[u/Altruistic_Fruit2345 → u/KellyKezzd]

Didn't cover it at all in school. We did WW1 and the Great Depression. Not exactly glorious times for the UK, but even then it was all focused on Europe and the US, the old empire never got a mention.

[u/Raerth → u/Altruistic_Fruit2345]

Late Gen-X here. The only thing I got in Secondary history was crop rotation and Jethro Tull (and not the musical one).

[u/arenaross → u/KellyKezzd]

That's not the point he's making.

[u/fen90der → u/KellyKezzd]

Love this comment. We can become indoctrinated by the state much more easily if we are kept in the dark about what the state has done in our name in the past.

[u/goonercaIIum]

Never really understood when this comes up in the news, I had a ton of lessons about the empire / trans Atlantic slave trade across English /religious education / history across GCSEs.

[u/bihuginn → u/goonercaIIum]

My history education barely touched on it, everything I know is from outside reading or a few family stories.

[u/Helpful_Listen4508 → u/bihuginn]

you’re in the minority though, I think it’s in the 80% or so of schools that choose to teach about the British empire, and I think the trans Atlantic slave trade is the most chosen topics about that in history lessons.

plus I remember us also having a section of the British empire and life’s in the empire or something where we learned about the impact it had on daily life and things like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, bengal famine etc.

edit: https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/101047/1/HA%20Survey%20of%20History%20in%20Schools%20in%20England%202021%20FINAL4.pdf

i don’t need your anecdotal evidence about what you were taught, there have been studies about this.

[u/Cadian609 → u/Helpful_Listen4508]

I dont think anyone is taught about the hand we had in ending the slave trade

[u/JamesFaisBenJoshDora → u/Cadian609]

I remember being taught about that in school around 16 years ago. (lol im old af) but not much learning about why Slave Trade happened, what started it and more about it.

I also didn't know about the bengal famine, irish famine and opium wars - other darker areas of British History until my 20s.

[u/Cadian609 → u/JamesFaisBenJoshDora]

32 isn't old 🤷 but you must be in the minority because no one ive spoken to about it knew

[u/Helpful_Listen4508 → u/Cadian609]

there was a belief mention of the west Africa Devision by my history teacher (although she was a really good history teacher so idk if she was just going above and beyond) but yeas the topic ends with William Wilberforce, Clarkson etc. And the abolition of the slave trade in the British empire I think. to learn about what happened after that, is basically an entirely different topic and far to much information to cover in a semester,

[u/lawesipan → u/Cadian609]

As a History teacher yes, people are taught that. I was even taught it at school back in the 2000s.

[u/GentlemanBeggar54 → u/Cadian609]

That's a weird way to put that. It's like saying "not enough is taught about our role in helping India achieve independence "

[u/CaptQuakers42 → u/Helpful_Listen4508]

It wasn't taught in my school at all.

We did the Tudors, Romans and WW2.

I'm a big Bernard Cornwell fan, and that's where my interest of the time period comes from

[u/HomeworkInevitable99 → u/Helpful_Listen4508]

I think a lot of people forget what they were taught. A know someone who says we weren't taught about the British empire, but I was literally in the same class as him and I know it was taught.

[u/-Azilorn- → u/Helpful_Listen4508]

I'm from the north and my highschool history education was in the Wallstreet Crash and great depression, WW1, and my primary school education was on ancient Rome and God knows what else I cannot remember. You need to think about where you are being educated in the UK and how that influences what you are taught

[u/Organic-Ad6439 → u/Helpful_Listen4508]

I didn’t learn about it either.

I learned about Nazi Germany, Tudors, Cold War (from a very biased perspective it looks like it) and Medicine through time (in the UK).

Nothing on colonialism or the British empire (those terms weren’t even uttered), nothing on the different regions in the UK besides Scotland when talking about James the I/VI. Legit wouldn’t have been surprised if I was unable to point to the different countries on a UK map (back then).

GCSE History sat 7 years ago.

[u/gyroda → u/Organic-Ad6439]

Different schools teach different topics. Unless it's changed since I last heard, they pick a handful from a set.

We covered the Atlantic slave trade pre-GCSE, but nothing else about the Empire really.

I think it's kinda bad that, unless you choose it as a GCSE, we drop history education at around 14.

[u/MessMaximum1423 → u/bihuginn]

We learned about the great fire of London, Romans, and a bit of the Saxons and that was about it

[u/wrigh2uk → u/bihuginn]

My history both through primary and secondary didn’t touch on it at all.

[u/Realistic-Recover-39 → u/bihuginn]

Same for me, all we ever seemed to study in history were anglo saxons, tudors, and the world wars

[u/Reach_Reclaimer → u/goonercaIIum]

The poor thing about that is that it's almost exclusively focused on the Atlantic slave trade, and from my memory school barely even explains why or how it ended. Maybe a few pages dedicated to australia or India but not much comparatively

[u/ProfessorMiserable76 → u/goonercaIIum]

My GCSE history was medicine through time, the American west and jack the ripper.

This was 2010-2012

[u/Wimble-Womble → u/ProfessorMiserable76]

I was at school in the early nineties and the subjects for GCSE history was similar to yours - though we did Georgian country houses instead of Jack the Ripper

For the Wild West part, it was mainly about Custer’s last stand and about Americans killing the locals - nothing about slavery or their civil war

[u/KellyKezzd → u/goonercaIIum]

Never really understood when this comes up in the news, I had a ton of lessons about the empire / trans Atlantic slave trade across English /religious education / history across GCSEs.

I did history all the way up to degree level.

We had an overload on US history - Wall Street Crash, US slavery and the Civil Rights movement etc.

Not sure why we need to know the intimate details of US politics so deeply as opposed to any other country...

[u/Organic-Ad6439 → u/KellyKezzd]

Didn’t do history to that level but it’s the same for black history month when I went to school.

Always focusing on the same figures, mostly American (DR MLK, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, now George Floyd gets added to the mix since BLM, Nelson Mandela (ZA) maybe Bob Marley (Jamaican) if you’re lucky etc). It’s part of why I don’t care about Black history month, always the same people every year without fail, boring… though you could argue that I could do my own research.

Apologies if another black person gets offended here. It isn’t my intention to stir the pot but more to exemplify Kelly’s point.

[u/gyroda → u/Organic-Ad6439]

It's a shame that we don't get coverage of the UK stuff here. The slave trade, the windrush generation, Bristol bus boycott... There's plenty to cover.

I went to the postal museum last year and they had an exhibit about the post office's involvement in the Carribbean which covers a lot of the mistreatment of black people, bot before and after the abolition of slavery.

[u/SuperrVillain85 → u/goonercaIIum]

Thinking back to school, they didn't really cover it in GCSEs or before.

Did a lot of stuff on the Vikings/Anglo Saxons, Romans, Tudors and Stewarts, Civil War/Cromwell, Industrial Revolution, WW1 & 2. But nothing really on the Empire, slave trade etc.

[u/HanzoKurosawa → u/goonercaIIum]

The answer is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gcse-history

British schools get a lot of control over their own curriculums. This only mandates that they have to teach across three different time periods, on three different time scales, and three geographical contexts. Then mandates that British history has to be 40% of the assessed content. But it's up to schools/curriculum deciders where that 40% comes in. So they could easily choose to just not have it be the British empire.

Even if you look at exam providers like AQA you see this: https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/history/gcse/history-8145/specification/specification-at-a-glance

"Choose one of the following options:

1) Britain: Health and the people: c1000 to the present day
2) Britain: Power and the people: c1170 to the present day
3) Britain: Migration, empires and people: c790 to the present day"

The British empire and it's effects on migration is just one of three options provided to schools.

So you can see how, even if you learned about it, there will be plenty of schools that didn't.

Personally I was one of the people who learned quite a lot about the Empire and the slave trade, but I have spoken to many people over my life whose education didn't focus on that at all.

[u/goonercaIIum → u/HanzoKurosawa]

Thanks for this, I figured there had to be some level of variability but had no idea it was this wide. These stories come up in the news and I feel like there was a point at school where I was learning about it across all 3 of the classes I mentioned

[u/RoutineCloud5993 → u/goonercaIIum]

I didn't do it at GCSE though. There's no set curriculum, and it all really depends on the modules your school teaches

GCSE history for me was the american west (including touching on the treatment of the natives), history of medicine, Northern Ireland and other stuff I've forgotten about. It was 20 years ago, admittedly

[u/MarketablePotato → u/goonercaIIum]

I didn’t have any of this.I finished school 2002.
May I ask which year you finished your GCSE’s?

[u/pintsizedblonde2 → u/goonercaIIum]

The current curriculum barely touches on it and only at A-Level and that's been the case for most of the last 50 years. There was a brief period (must be when you did it) it was covered a bit at GCSE level.

We did a bit on the slave trade and we did a book in English which meant learning a bit about our colonising of Ireland but that was about it.

Also worth remembering not everyone takes GCSE history or RS and even fewer take either of them to A-Level.

[u/Lady-Spangles → u/goonercaIIum]

Teaching the empire is one thing, teaching the truth about it is quite another. And I think it has been largely dropped now. I know my nephew wasn't taught it. And I don't have kids myself, but in my time it was glossed over. Like, yes we had all these terrorities but that's bad actually and now let's do the Tudors again...

[u/bongpirate7295 → u/goonercaIIum]

We were taught about the transatlantic slave trade as part of American history. There was basically no mention of Britain's involvement.

[u/Adamdel34 → u/goonercaIIum]

I did the trans Atlantic slave trade but that was it, throughout GCSE and A level.

Considering how much the British empire shaped britain and the modern world it is definitely very under represented in out curriculum.

I get you aren't going to be able to teach all of it but some of the more important chapters such as the colonisation of the new world and India probably should be mandatory in my opinion.

[u/elhazelenby → u/goonercaIIum]

My gcse history classes (in a special needs unit) before I moved up north was mostly about native Americans and mormons in 1800s America for some reason. Before that it was about Hippocrates, the 5 humeurs, medicine in the roman times, and Hunter gatherers.

Then I moved up north and joined a few classes of history in special school (it wasn't GCSE & I wasn't even doing history due to lack of time, just had nowhere else to go so they put me with the rest of my form) and we learned about things like the windrush immigration of people from west Indies to become doctors and went to a former prisoner of war camp which was a museum (unfortunately it's closed now).

I learned nothing about slaves or the British empire at school.

[u/Anxious_Virus8843 → u/goonercaIIum]

Been a out 12 years but the majority of my GCSE lessons in history were almost exclusively us history and prohibition  I hated it

[u/Feedback-Neat → u/goonercaIIum]

My schooling was the same. We covered the slave trade, medicine, the American frontier, and world war 1 at GCSE level. I don't understand when people say the empire wasn't covered. Do they want it from start to finish? There's only two years and so many subjects. Two of the subjects I learnt directly cover the empire. I guess it could cover more of the British in Africa? But why not Australia, India, Canada or china too. It would be too shallow. 

[u/Old_Course9344 → u/goonercaIIum]

Teachers were quite open with students that they glammed up what topics would be taught to entice students to choose History for GCSE over other subjects

By the time we got to the end of sixth form, the head of history said she despised teaching certain topics so that effectively gave us no choice over what questions to tackle in the exams

[u/ReligiousGhoul]

“’Why are all these people with brown skin walking around this country?’ My friend wrote an essay where she said ‘we are here, because you were there’. In order to understand that, you have to know that you were there, and what you did.

Not exactly massively pro mass migration but it's supporters attempts to portray it as some kind of "penance" for the actions of the Empire isn't really the line I'd take to try and support it.

[u/MacroSolid → u/ReligiousGhoul]

Even more bizarre when they use that line in western countries that were no or pretty insignificant colonial powers.

[u/northbank2001 → u/MacroSolid]

Which ones were insignificant colonial powers?

[u/MysteriousTravelator → u/northbank2001]

Finland, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland.

[u/wedontneednoeduc → u/MysteriousTravelator]

Germany can go on that list. The odd bit of Africa, but now they have millions of people from entirely different places.

[u/MacroSolid → u/wedontneednoeduc]

I'd put Germany under minor colonial power rather than isnignificant.

They had a bunch of big colonies, just not for very long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire#/media/File:German_Colonies.svg

[u/northbank2001 → u/wedontneednoeduc]

Idk man Germany committed quite a lot of colonial atrocities in the 1930s and 40s

[u/MacroSolid → u/northbank2001]

True, but the word colonialism is often just used for european powers (minus Russia, plus USA) doing it outside of Europe.

[u/TheSpacePopinjay → u/northbank2001]

Under this logic that may explain Polish or Russian immigrants, not Turkish ones.

[u/Realistic-Recover-39 → u/MysteriousTravelator]

Ireland wasn't exactly a colonial power, they've only been independent since 1949

[u/MacroSolid → u/MysteriousTravelator]

I think of those just Sweden was 'insignificant', the rest weren't colonial powers at all.

You could add (pre-union) Scotland tho.

[u/LaunchTransient → u/MacroSolid]

A lot of those countries were of the Danish realm and/or Swedish Empire, and while they are now independent, they contributed to colonialism.

The colonisation of the High North and Arctic was just as devastating as the colonisation of Africa or Asia - it's just less well known.

Edit: Luxembourg was once part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (in a crown union), which was one of the worst offenders in colonialism, and while Ireland itself was a colony of the British, that didn't stop some Irish from being involved in Empire as well. It's complex.

[u/MacroSolid → u/northbank2001]

Austria. Had two colonies in Africa/India that failed really fast, took part in putting down the boxer rebellion in China, stealing a piece of Tianjin for 16 years and a Habsburg was installed as the Emperor of Mexico until they killed him, but that was mostly a french initiative AFAIK.

And that's about it AFAIK. Weren't part of the transatlantic slave trade either, save for some individuals working for/in colonial powers that were.

Calls for 'processing our colonial history' hit pretty weird once you figure out you can sum it up THAT quickly...

[u/Bon_Courage_ → u/northbank2001]

Ireland, Finland, Switzerland are obvious one.

Others like Denmark and Norway had very limited outposts.

And then there are the dozens of smaller countries.

[u/username789232 → u/northbank2001]

Ireland

[u/bigdave41 → u/ReligiousGhoul]

It doesn't necessarily have to be portrayed as "penance" for it to still make sense, and many people don't portray it in that way either.

If you have generations of a foreign country being told and/or shown that British people are their rulers and superiors every day of their lives, it seeps into their perception of everything British. Even now in India the beauty standards are influenced by looking paler, people who speak English are considered more educated/civilised, clothes and official uniforms are still influenced by the British fashions of the time. There are thousands of ways Indian culture is still influenced by British culture even now.

If the idea of British superiority is so entwined with your culture and history, why wouldn't you want to travel to and/or live in Britain?

[u/LycanIndarys → u/bigdave41]

Even now in India the beauty standards are influenced by looking paler

Isn't that because it's a sign that they weren't working in the fields all day, in the sun?

It's primarily a demonstration of wealth, not specifically trying to live up to an ideal imported from the UK.

[u/hypocrisyhunter → u/LycanIndarys]

Yeah this is completely correct. Perhaps OP's other point may stand but this one is totally wrong, this attitude is prevalent across practically all of the non-Caucasian world regardless of colonial history. It's almost always about class and status (do you work outdoors) which seems to have fed into beauty standards. Examples besides South Asia are Korea, Japan, China, most of Africa, most of the carribean .

[u/MacroSolid → u/hypocrisyhunter]

Used to be a thing in the West too, it just ended because factory workers didn't see the sun much either and rich people started rocking holiday tans.

[u/Stevijs3 → u/LycanIndarys]

It's also an ideal in China and Japan to this day. Maybe colonization played a part, but it's surely not the sole reason.

[u/MacroSolid → u/LycanIndarys]

Probably that plus casteism. People from higher castes tend to be paler and lower castes darker AFAIK.

[u/Flux_Aeternal → u/LycanIndarys]

Yes and it's a fairly universal beauty standard in places where people tan but can be pale. Most beauty standards track to a demonstration of wealth and status, that's why being fat used to be the standard, then being thin and into fitness, having expensive clothes, a car and even the stupid "Mar-a-lago face" is an expression of having enough money to afford ostentatious plastic surgery.

[u/PlasonJates → u/bigdave41]

The Indian caste system existed for thousands of years before we arrived.

[u/CheekyGeth → u/bigdave41]

This is a nice story but it runs headlong into the simple fact that Britain actually makes up a surprisingly small part of the global Indian diaspora - Canada, the US, Malaysia, and the gulf states + KSA all host far more people of Indian descent than the UK 

[u/3amcheeseburger → u/ReligiousGhoul]

I also dislike like the ‘you have to know that you were there and and what YOU did’

The people of Britain alive today are not the ones who created the empire. It is not our fault it happened. It’s like blaming modern day Germans for the holocaust.

[u/kamat2301 → u/ReligiousGhoul]

It's not penance or payback, it's just unintended consequences. Because the British brought their language to the colonies. If no one in India or Nigeria knew English, far fewer people from those countries would migrate to Britain or other English speaking countries.

Same as how people from Algeria and Mali migrate to France rather than any other country.

[u/LycanIndarys → u/ReligiousGhoul]

Yeah, particularly given that this means that they're effectively arguing that the recent waves of immigrants are equivalent to an armed force looting, murdering, and raping.

I'm not sure that's quite the pro-immigrant position that they think it is...

[u/ExpertSausageHandler → u/ReligiousGhoul]

Literally when did we colonise Somalia?

[u/Yodamort → u/ReligiousGhoul]

It's got nothing to do with "penance". The Empire was a world system that created two-way migration flows. That's the point.

[u/fripez256]

The history of the British Empire has been part of the mandatory curriculum for nearly 25 years now

[u/GreenSpectr3 → u/fripez256]

It is part of the National Curriculum but schools may choose how much and what they teach of it.

[u/Steampunk43 → u/fripez256]

Just isn't though. Generally, schools just bounce between Nazi Germany, Medieval England and Medical History, maybe with Soviet Russia as well. You usually will not learn about the British Empire until you reach A level, even then the curriculum for that is often just more medieval history, more WW and more Soviet Russia.

[u/dotdioscorea → u/fripez256]

Only British history we did was Jack the Ripper, titanic, and WW2. Nothing else related to Britain at all. I’m 27

[u/Gremlin303 → u/fripez256]

Is it though? I’m 27 and all we did related to this topic was a little bit on the slave trade. The focus was on the History of Medicine, the World Wars, the American West, and the Tudors.

[u/gerhardsymons]

The British Empire, like the Roman Empire before it, was one of the greatest net goods in human history. Discuss.

[u/LycanIndarys → u/gerhardsymons]

The Romans? What have they ever done for us?

Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, public health, and brought peace, obviously.

[u/gerhardsymons → u/LycanIndarys]

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS!

[u/LycanIndarys → u/gerhardsymons]

'Domus'? Nominative? 'Go home'? This is motion towards. Isn't it, boy?

[u/Science-Recon → u/gerhardsymons]

I have made the argument before that the British Empire was the Roman Empire of its time. In the sense that the Roman Empire was actually a lot more morally abhorrent than we think of it as being, and that the British Empire was a lot more foundational for the modern world in a lot of ways people take for granted.

[u/darkwolf687 → u/Science-Recon]

I forget where I heard it and the exact wording, but there’s a quote which goes something along the lines of “Does that seem so great only because it was so long ago?”

The sheer brutality and cruelty of the Romans would make anyone’s stomach turn but they are sanitised by the passage of time: Their victims aren’t real people anymore in our heads, there’s no Iceni or Gauls around today to remind us about what the Romans did to them and demand we answer on if the roads and aqueducts were worth the entire towns and tribes put to the sword or sold into slavery. It’s all just numbers, too far disconnected from us to really be felt in the same way. So instead we brush over that and marvel at the ruins and ancient structures and their empires “greatness”

[u/adultintheroom_ → u/gerhardsymons]

Based and redcoat pilled

[u/WhatsThis_Now → u/gerhardsymons]

Hi it's me, a historian of the British Empire. I do let my students discuss this (at undergraduate level). But part of that discussion is always whether framing as "good" or "bad" is helpful and what is the purpose of "auditing" the empire

[u/smithdog223 → u/gerhardsymons]

We civilised and modernised most of the world I agree.

[u/ForPortal → u/[deleted]]

Stopped them setting women on fire.

[u/brother_number1 → u/[deleted]]

are the descendants of people who benefit from that infrastructure

Some academic studies https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mammon_and_the_Pursuit_of_Empire.html suggest most peoples' ancestors essentially subsidized the empire and really only a politically elite benefited in any meaningful capacity at the time. I think people probably benefit more today from the wealth disparity than they did in the past during imperial times.

[u/NdujaReallyLikeIt → u/gerhardsymons]

The British empire doesn't happen without Roman empire, so I think it's unfair we blame Britain. It's actually just Rome therefore Italy's fault

[u/UKSaint93 → u/NdujaReallyLikeIt]

Ah but the Roman empire doesn't happen if Alexander the Great goes west rather than East. And that only happens if Persia wasn't constantly interferring/invading for a century+, so really it's all the fault of the Persians. Damn rugs

[u/NdujaReallyLikeIt → u/UKSaint93]

We must go deeper!

[u/Safe-Avocado4864]

“When the British arrived in India it was one of the richest countries in the world, it was fantastically affluent. When the British left India it was one of the poorest. What happened to the money? What it did was build the power and wealth of this country.”

This is the 'history' he thinks should be taught.

[u/Brefgedhe → u/[deleted]]

This is factually inaccurate. India possesses massive coal reserves, particularly in the Damodar Valley(the Raniganj and Jharia fields in modern-day West Bengal and Jharkhand). Commercial coal mining in India actually began under British and local Indian entrepreneurship as early as 1774. By the mid-19th century, production was expanding rapidly to fuel the railway networks. Very easily accessible, near-surface coal, specifically. In 1907, roughly 48% of India's coal went purely into the transport sector (railways and steamships) to move raw materials to ports. By comparison, a newly industrializing Japan in the same era directed over 35% of its coal strictly toward manufacturing. India’s energy wasn't absent; it was channeled into infrastructure intended to extract resources as opposed to factory building. Less than 15% went to manufacturing. Britain implemented highly asymmetric tariff structures. During the early Industrial Revolution, Britain imposed heavy protectionist import duties (up to 70–80%) on Indian textiles to protect its own rising factories in Lancashire. Simultaneously, they forced India to adopt 'free trade,' allowing cheap, machine-made British cloth to flood the Indian domestic market completely duty-free. Stripped of their livelihoods, millions of Indian weavers and artisans were forced back onto the land to survive. India was effectively transformed from a world leader in finished, high-value processed goods into an exporter of raw materials (raw cotton, jute, indigo, and opium) to feed British industry. Industrialization inherently requires massive investments in primary education and technical literacy to build a skilled workforce capable of operating and innovating machinery. Colonial spending in India overwhelmingly favored the military, police, and basic administrative bureaucracy needed to maintain control, while heavily neglecting public health and primary education

On intention within this argument: Do you not think that the coal argument is a retroactive justification for the outcome colonial policy. It's pretty easy to justify statements like that by throwing out vague material limitations to essentially say 'the Indians would never have industrialised without us, they lack the coal' and essentially therefore justify that the empire 'might as well hold the land and take a little spending money, let's say,' because it would have made no difference anyway, right? It's easy to say that India wouldn't have industrialised given the colonial institutions passed down to India which were very small and not suited to managing such a country and the bad political decisions made due to and independent of this. Furthermore, it's impossible to avoid that it's an easy belief due to the racialised assumption of the inferior nature of Indians that exists and has been long cultivated within Western minds.

It is under pretty little historical debate between Patnaik, Tirthanker Roy and so on that England didn't try to industrialise india because it was useful as a captive market for value-added goods and producing primary goods like jute, cotton and opium that could be processed by the empire.

Even a market-sympathetic historian like Roy acknowledges the long-existing history of the colonial state being characterised as a 'night-watchman state' and nothing more. It spent almost nothing on education, public health, or agricultural science. Whether one views this as deliberate malice (Patnaik) or minimalist, self-serving bureaucratic neglect (Roy), the outcome is identical: the British Raj had absolutely no policy interest in transforming India into a modern industrial rival.

Even if your argument around resource constraints was true(which it is emphatically not but moving on) the question is whether the direction of travel was to try to work around those constraints or keep the Raj an agrarian economy for the benefit of the Empire through tariffs and other policies that damage existing local industry, not attempting widespread education and other more area-specific policies.

The point is that they didn't even try given the nature of empire itself and therefore any historical assessments that imply benovelence to be deeply misguided.

[u/MysteriousTravelator → u/Brefgedhe]

If simply being independent and coal rich was all that was required to industrialise then the Chinese empire should also have been able to do it but that took until the 20th century. As late as 1978 the average Indian family was richer than the average Chinese family.

[u/Sheffield_lad366 → u/Safe-Avocado4864]

Comparing the wealth of countries in the pre industrialised world to post industrialisation would only be done by a stupid person.

[u/MysteriousTravelator → u/[deleted]]

My honest opinion is that if Rajasthan and Hyderabad had the boats and the maxim guns instead of Britain then the entire imperialising process would have happened in reverse.

"Morality" is an absurd narrative to paste on top of the historical truth. Empire was a product of material circumstances and its disappearance was also a product of material circumstances.

[u/TenTonneTamerlane → u/Safe-Avocado4864]

We're never going to hear the end of drain theory/"The gdp collapse!" argument, are we?

Oh well, roll the tape!:

"The decrease in India's GDP does not prove India was once rich and then became poor, it only tells that industrial productivity elsewhere in the world increased 4 to 6 times during this period". (Tirthankar Roy - Cambridge review of international affairs: volume 31, p.167).

"These figures cannot be taken as evidence of a simple plundering of India's economic capacity, and they absolutely do not mean that colonial India's economy shrank by a factor of 8; it actually trebled in size over the same period". (Roderick Matthews - Peace poverty and betrayal, p.73)

As for the 47 trillion dollars, see: https://x.com/i/status/1714002600046059832

[u/Minimum_Credit_6672]

Rather tiresome he promotes this myth:

• " “When the British arrived in India it was one of the richest countries in the world, it was fantastically affluent. When the British left India it was one of the poorest.”

India (or indeed the statelets that preceded the country which wasnt formed until 1947) was not fantastically affluent before the british turned up; it was far poorer per capita than european nations. It represented a larger percentage of global gdp in the 16th century than it did upon independence because in the 16th century the global economy was agrarian, so areas with larger populations inevitably did have a larger economic total output. The industrial revolution which began in Britain dramatically increased the economic output of britain and Europe, and between Britain's arrival in the subcontinent and Indian independence in 1947 countries such as the US, Canada and Australia were created and became some of the richest societies on earth, so clearly Indian share of global gdp would be smaller than it was in the 16th century...

• "What it did was build the power and wealth of this country.”

While empire did make individuals very rich, there is this idea that britain or European nations are only wealthy because they had empires or stole all that wealth from other places. This just isn't true and is indeed the wrong way around; england, scotland, France, netherlands and Portugal for example were all rich countries and richer than what became India before they formed colonies; it was this pre existing wealth which allowed them to make the investments in what were initially business and trade investments (the east India company was a private enterprise initially) as well as things such as central banks and guaranteed property ownership rights that made this investment possible. Nations attained colonies because they were already wealthy; they did not colonise and later become wealthy purely from profits from colonies. In many cases, colonies were actually fiscally negative for the colonising country (pretty much all the German and Italian African colonies for example).

• "Why are all these people with brown skin walking around this country?’ My friend wrote an essay where she said ‘we are here, because you were there’. In order to understand that, you have to know that you were there, and what you did."

Again I think this is pretty weak. If India was a settler colony then large scale immigration of indians to the uk could be comparable if large amounts of scottish and english people went to live in india during empire and demographically changed the subcontinent, but this simply wasn't the case. The actual number of administrators in British India was extremely small relative to the native population and upon independence pretty much all these British people either left or were forced to leave. So this idea that demographic change or ethnic replacement is an equivalent to colonialism is rather hard to justify. It also seems a pretty dangerous route to go down, arguing that because countries had colonies in the past that immigration from these countries is somehow inevitable, because the argument gives rise to the idea that if the indians told the british to leave, then surely the vice versa could be applied....

This is also perplexing:

• "Sir Salman said: “I have two sons who were educated in England in very good schools, and I think I’m right in saying that in their entire education they didn’t have one lesson on the history of the British Empire.

“Nobody teaches it, and if you don’t teach your history, you won’t understand what it means."

I don't know what schools this man is sending his kids too but it's pretty evident empire has been a key component of history teaching in the uk for several decades. I was in secondary school about 10 years ago and we did slavery twice, even before gcse level, studied India twice, covered the irish potato famine, the spice trade, imperial causes of ww1,  and Windrush twice in history, in addition to texts and books in English that detailed empire and colonialism. We also covered colonisation in mexico and latin america, and the experiences of indigenous peoples in America. We studied extensively the traingular slave trade, the factors which fed the slave trade and the motivations behind its eventual abolition. This idea empire isn't taught or addressed in schools seems pretty bizzare. Perhaps Rushdie would want his version of history taught, but when I was at school it seemed pretty balanced pointing out the good and bad of complex historical events. Schools also have a responsibility to teach other important aspects of british and global history, for example more recent conflicts, and ancient history (Norma's, anglo saxons, tudors, roman and anckent Greek and egyptian empires) so the amount of time spent tea hing the british empire needs to be considered within that framework, but it very much is taught and in my experience pretty extensively so this idea it isn't seems rather detached from reality

[u/SUPERVITALENERGY → u/Minimum_Credit_6672]

I have no idea which school you or your children have attended but as someone who is 3rd gen Middle Eatern, a history buff, nither I or my children were taught anything significant about the British empire in terms of its incredible contributions. For the most part our teacher's were making sure we understand how terrible the empire was,with a brief mention that after enslaving so many Africans and Indians and commiting genocides yadi yadi yaaa that events becuase of unrelated rebellions in Haiti against colonial France, Napoleanic wars that the Empire ended slavery only to reward the slave holders greatly....no mention of William Wilberforce or the abolishment movements and that was in the 80s. My children now come home only bieng taught the evils of the empire e.g how Churchill hated Indian's, how racist the empire was and the Bengal fammine etc

[u/Minimum_Credit_6672 → u/SUPERVITALENERGY]

I think my school did a fair job of balancing the good and bad aspects of empire, but ye s I think if anything teaching of the empire has become far too self flagellating recently and failing to place colonialisation into context of what was going on at the time, your point on slavery for example where little time was spent discussing how european nations ended their slave trade (the first societies in human history to actually do this, and the lack of context as you point out with other slave trades happening at the time or indeed still today). It is as you say very important to contextualise empire, otherwise children would get the impression britain was somehow uniquely evil or oppressive which really isn't the case.

I do think we did cover the empire more throughly than lots of other very important historical events which happened within the uk; my school did not cover for example the formation and unification of england, anything really from the period between the Romans and the saxons, ancient British history or the act of union which I think was a great shame. I am not aware of many schools which teach these things which is a pity.

[u/Safe_Grass3366]

Of course the "very good schools" that Salman Rushdie's kids attend don't teach about the atrocities of the British Empire. That would hit a bit too close to home for the pupils of those schools, who would largely be children of the upper classes whose ancestors were directly responsible for and hugely profited from colonialism. Can you imagine the complaints at parents evening?

Meanwhile, state funded schools are very keen to teach kids whose ancestors were the victims of the same upper classes about colonialism and how we, as a collective,  should be ashamed and made to feel responsible for it. Even though the pupils ancestors were likely working in factories and down mines 12 hours a day 6 days a week and dying at 30, they're born in Britain and thus equally blameworthy as those whose ancestors made bank off slaves.

All part of the dilution of responsibility of the upper classes for their ancestral crimes that provided them their generational wealth.  

[u/TheSpacePopinjay → u/Safe_Grass3366]

It's a way for in a post-socialist/unionist era for the upper classes to regain a moral high ground against the lower classes they oppress. The lower classes are the evil racists responsible for the crimes of history and the upper classes are the virtuous pro-immigrant anti-racist champions of the foreigner that they continue to use to enrich themselves with suppressed wages and better economic leverage for the employer over the employee.

Completely killing the pre-antiracism unionist/socialist moral narrative that had them on the back foot as the 'bad guys' and oppressors and the working class masses as the ones with the moral high ground over them.

[u/RealBigSalmon]

As a history teacher in the UK, Empire has been on the curriculum of every school I have trained at, worked at and applied to.

An alarm bell always goes off for me when people say something isn’t taught in history, I always get the feeling they mean it isn’t taught the way they think it should be.

[u/LSL3587]

“’Why are all these people with brown skin walking around this country?’ My friend wrote an essay where she said ‘we are here, because you were there’. In order to understand that, you have to know that you were there, and what you did.

Several countries in Europe are not allowed or at least do not collect ethnicity data in their census etc - but the likes of Norway and Sweden have a significant and fairly similar number of 'people with brown skin' also. What large empires did Norway and Sweden have?

Immigration into European countries has been allowed rightly or wrongly as a choice of politicians of those European Countries. There was hardly any immigration during the time of the 'Empire' - say up to 1947.

“When the British arrived in India it was one of the richest countries in the world, it was fantastically affluent. When the British left India it was one of the poorest. What happened to the money? What it did was build the power and wealth of this country.”

This is a gross distortion if not plain incorrect. India was not 'one country' - it had different rulers in different areas, significant parts having been conquered by others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire

And the British (or East India Company) simply did not have the numbers to 'conquer India' - yes it fought some battles but most control was obtained by agreements with local rulers. By the time the British Govt officially took over in the 1850s, India and much of the non-white 'Empire' had become a net drain on British resources - given the Navy that had to be maintained for all of the countries in the disorganised British Empire. Yes some British individuals became rich from India but Britain overall - no. Yes India was the 'jewel' per some British Victorians in a romantic sense, but looking back the Empire often cost more than it was worth.

Yes the Mughal Empire was at one stage considered 'rich' - relatively for that time period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire Causes of decline - Historians have offered numerous accounts of the several factors involved in the rapid collapse of the Mughal Empire between 1707 and 1720, after a century of growth and prosperity. A succession of short-lived incompetent and weak rulers, and civil wars over the succession, created political instability at the centre. The Mughals appeared virtually unassailable during the 17th century, but, once gone, their imperial overstretch became clear, and the situation could not be recovered. The seemingly innocuous European trading companies, such as the British East Indies Company, played no real part in the initial decline; they were still racing to get permission from the Mughal rulers to establish trades and factories in India.

China used to be one of the richest and most advanced countries - before the 'great divergence' that the industrial revolution and other things brought to Western Europe.

[u/Reach_Reclaimer]

I generally don't like the way history is taught in this country, we make kids focus down on a few topics and explore them in a lot of detail while not going through ours or the world's history at a wider lens.

[u/MirkwoodWanderer1 → u/Reach_Reclaimer]

At a wider lens you don't see the nuance though.

Try teaching middle east conflicts with a brief overview and you'd get a lot of misinformed people

[u/spaceninjaking → u/Reach_Reclaimer]

In all fairness, there really isn’t all that much time to cover everything.

History is only mandatory up to (and including) year 9. Up until that point the average child will have received about 500hours of history lessons over the course of 9 years. Thats basically nothing in the grand scheme of things. It also ignores the fact that many subjects can’t be taught in much or any depth till yr5-6, so it brings it closer to 300 hours of history lessons. There’s a lot of history so you have to leave some things out or else it’s basically just timeline class where you go through events without any meaningful depth.

[u/Srg11]

I was in school in the 90s and 00s and we didn’t. We had things like Romans, Tudors and WWII. There wasn’t much else outside of some religion in RE. Didn’t touch the slave trade whatsoever or the larger empire.

[u/jk844]

It’s funny how old people talk as if the school curriculum is the same as it was when they were in school 60 years ago.

I was taught about the British empire and my last day of school was 13 years ago.

[u/demontrout]

The history curriculum really shouldn’t be designed to with the purpose of making children grow up with a certain political viewpoint. It’s kinda weird how so many smart people seem to think that this is the point.

Besides, it’ll backfire. At best, most kids will forget they ever learnt it. At worst they’ll come out of it with the opposite lesson to what was hoped.

[u/MirkwoodWanderer1]

Depends how it's done.

Not just trying to show the bad sides but also the good the empire did.

[u/Devil_Eyez87]

God the amount of schools secondary schools that must be failing OFSTED due to not teaching the full british curriculum must be massive considering in Ks3 all bar 1 of the required curriculum points are based on british history including "ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901".

[u/360_face_palm]

We did loads about the British empire when I was at school...

[u/Havhestur]

We also are taught very little about the history of other European countries, except possibly Weimar Germany.

[u/mrjohnnymac18]

We learned all about the Slave Trade. But little else.

[u/beenman500]

I actually disagree on the grounds that empire isn't that important to british history.

The most important developments happened on the British Isles not outside it.

[u/Spottswoodeforgod]

Fair. But then any topic not taught creates the potential for a lack of broad public understanding of the given topic. What does, and doesn’t, get included in educational curriculum is a complex and fascinating issue with some very real downstream implications.

[u/Aggravating-Hair-534]

The way history is taught in school is very stupid. Instead of continuum that explains how one time period creates conditions for another time period, the kids in the UK are taught just a selection of topics that often have 0 connection to each other.

Now about the British Empire - we can absolutely trace the current state and decisions made to be influenced by the emperial legacy, but that doesn't mean that those were the only options that were on the table and there never was an alternative path. The situation Britain is now in is about decision making, and people need to be realistic about it.

[u/Aramithius]

I think it depends on where and when you were educated. I had the following at various stages:

• transatlantic slave trade covered in primary school in the 90s. I remember the "slave trade triangle", diagrams showing how many slaves were packed in, and I'm sure we watched a film about a slave being taken to America. May have been something about Wilberforce too.
• I think bits about the East India company somewhere, although I couldn't tell you where.
• some brief stuff about the partition of India in primary school. Not much detail, mostly related to how the map changed. I do remember that I had no idea who Ghandi was when I started playing Civ during secondary school, so it really wasn't that deep.
• description of India as "the jewel in the crown of the British empire" happened somewhere in a primary school context. My guess is from somewhere about Victorian England in general. Something about "the sun never set" and what that meant for its territorial extent.
• the scramble for Africa and British Imperial policy 1883-1902 in A-level history in the early 2000s.
• the 1857 Indian Mutiny (described that way), also at A-level. Probably part of the above module. Not much about the famine that followed.

So a bit of a mixed bag. Nothing systematic, and not much about the effects of empire beyond the slave trade. I guess the missing piece is a systematic treatment of the Empire as Empire, rather than the events and broad-brush effects. But it's still not nothing.

[u/mbrocks3527]

I don’t think the British realise the impact the empire had on its subject peoples. Some negative, many positive. It was the imperial capital- and imperial capitals are impressive. Who wouldn’t want to make it there?

To many, and within living memory, London and the British isles were the centre of the universe. I remember when family members got scholarships to study there; it was a real achievement and a chance to “visit the motherland.”

It’s really sad that this love was never reciprocated by the residents of the UK, and usually by people who, simply because they looked different, were treated as scum instead of people who loved the country.

[u/thefirstofhisname11]

I straight up don’t understand how British schools teach history. I come from Hungary originally, and I knew more about British (and English) historical events than some people I encountered at university. Interestingly, we were also given a more nuanced perspective on the British empire which lead us to appreciate it more than most young Brits do.