A ‘gigantic confidence trick’ — that is how Jeremy Paxman describes the British Empire. The first episode of the TV series which accompanies his book, Empire: What ruling the World Did to the British, aired last night.
Paxman’s thesis can be reduced into a string of his trademark soundbites. British imperialism was a ‘protection racket’, based on the conceit that a handful of well-equipped soldiers and well-educated officials could provide stable government for the feckless potentates of India, Africa and the Middle East. Any challenge to British interests was ‘met with savage retaliation’, which invariably resulted in expansion.
The answer, then, to the problem of imperial security was deeper and further subjugation. (This was indiscriminate of race or creed. The Boer War and the concentration camps into which non-combatant Boers were interned is the most compelling riposte to those who say that British conquest was a racist endeavour.)
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