Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [0]
Empire
What Ruling the World Did to the British
VIKING
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
By the same author
Friends in High Places
Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life (editor)
The English
The Political Animal
On Royalty
The Victorians
For Elizabeth, Jessie, Jack and Vita, for whom the imperial project meant long periods of either mental or physical separation. Independence is at hand
List of Illustrations
p. viii Map of the British Empire in 1815, from Historical Atlas, published by W. & A. K. Johnston Limited, 1911 (Reprinted by permission of Ken Welsh/The Bridgeman Art Library)
p. 1 Photograph of royal lunch in the jungle, Nepal, c. 1911 (Reprinted by permission of Getty Images)
p. 15 East India Company Ship (oil on canvas) by Isaac Sailmaker, 1685 (Reprinted by permission of the National Maritime Museum, London)
p. 38 Captain James Cook (Reprinted by permission of Getty Images)
p. 54 Reception of the Diplomatique and his Suite at the Court of Pekin (colour etching) by James Gillray, 1793 (Reprinted by permission of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)
p. 70 Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey, Governor of Bengal (oil on canvas) by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1773 (Reprinted by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
p. 98 Photograph of Obaysch the Hippopotamus, by Don Juan, Comte de Montizón, 1852 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
p. 113 David Livingstone reading the Bible, Africa, nineteenth century (Reprinted by permission of the Stapleton Historical Collection/Heritage Images)
p. 127 Photograph of Mrs Hugh Raynor at the Algiers Golf Club with a four-year-old caddie (Reprinted by permission of the Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
p. 148 Publicity poster for the Uganda Railway (Taken from Out in the Noonday Sun by Valerie Pakenham)
p. 167 General Gordon’s Last Stand (oil on canvas) by George William Joy, 1885 (Reprinted by permission of the Leeds Museums and Galleries, City Art Gallery UK /The Bridgeman Art Library)
p. 191 Indian princes and British army officers in the Hyderabad contingent polo team, c. 1880 (Reprinted by permission of Getty Images)
p. 214 ‘The Empire Needs Men’ advertisement, 1915 (Reprinted by permission of the Museum of London)
p. 241 Postcard of the Burmese Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, London, 1924
p. 274 The Remnants of an Army (oil on canvas) by Elizabeth Butler, 1879 (Reprinted by permission of the Tate, London, 2011)
MAP
The British Empire Throughout the World 1905
Introduction
‘It seems such a shame when the English claim the Earth That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth’
Noël Coward, ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’, 1931
‘You’re a Brit, aren’t you?’ It was an accusation. His face was twisted, angry and only about six inches away from mine. His breath was beery. I was backed against a wall outside a drinking club in west Belfast, and two of his friends stood on either side – there was no chance of running for it. This is how it begins, I thought, starting to panic. It ends with a beating in a lock-up garage or the back of a pub somewhere. Or worse.
It didn’t, of course. Within less than a minute an older man had said something and the three youths laid off, sauntering away without a word: next time it really might be an undercover British soldier. I knew what a ‘Brit’ was, all right. But I had never been called one until I arrived in Northern Ireland to cover the war there in the 1970s. Belfast was a dark place – and not just because its street lights had been knocked out in the many battle-zones across the city. It was a conflict murky with injustice, bigotry, exploitation, long memories and short fuses. The terminology reflected