0:00:07 > 0:00:14If there was one thing 18th century British gentlemen thought they knew more about
0:00:14 > 0:00:17than port or racehorses,
0:00:17 > 0:00:19it was liberty.
0:00:19 > 0:00:21They basked in it.
0:00:21 > 0:00:26It was reward, they told themselves, for nearly a century of civil wars
0:00:26 > 0:00:31that had helped make Britain the freest country in the world -
0:00:31 > 0:00:36safe from Catholic tyranny, absolute monarchs and standing armies.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39Liberty was their religion.
0:00:39 > 0:00:46They built temples in their gardens devoted to it - they even wrote it a hymn.
0:00:48 > 0:00:53Pity the rest of the enslaved world, deprived of its manifold blessings.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57But the real payoff of liberty
0:00:57 > 0:01:02had been riches and power from around the globe.
0:01:02 > 0:01:07With liberty had come trade, and trade had wrought
0:01:07 > 0:01:13perhaps the most staggering transformation of national power
0:01:13 > 0:01:16in all British history.
0:01:16 > 0:01:23From a tiny outcrop of insignificant islands off the northwest coast of Europe,
0:01:23 > 0:01:27Britain had expanded into a global power -
0:01:27 > 0:01:34The shadow of Brittania now fell across America, the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent.
0:01:34 > 0:01:42Unlike the Roman Empire they so admired, they dreamt of a British Empire that would endure -
0:01:42 > 0:01:45one based on trade, not on conquest.
0:01:45 > 0:01:50It would be an empire of liberty, they thought.
0:01:50 > 0:01:54Britain writ large, sharing its bounty with the world.
0:01:56 > 0:02:01How was it that people who thought themselves the freest on earth,
0:02:01 > 0:02:06ended up subjugating much of the world's population?
0:02:06 > 0:02:11How was it that a nation with such a deep distrust of military power
0:02:11 > 0:02:15ended up the biggest military power of all?
0:02:15 > 0:02:19How did the empire of the free become an empire of slaves?
0:02:19 > 0:02:26And how was it that profit seemed to turn, not on freedom, but on raw coercion?
0:02:26 > 0:02:29How was it that we ended up with the wrong empire?
0:03:16 > 0:03:23Ask any British gentleman in the middle of the 18th century to draw you a map of the British Empire
0:03:23 > 0:03:27and it would have looked like this.
0:03:27 > 0:03:30To the east, there were trading posts in India -
0:03:30 > 0:03:37tiny enclaves that had been there for 100 years, shipping home printed cotton and silks -
0:03:37 > 0:03:43a commercial enterprise run by the East India Company, not the Government.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46There would be no colonies in Asia.
0:03:52 > 0:03:55But Britain could look west as well as east
0:03:55 > 0:03:59and west was a whole different story.
0:03:59 > 0:04:02The west was America - Britain-West.
0:04:02 > 0:04:10Two million people living between the Atlantic seaboard and the Appalachian Mountains.
0:04:10 > 0:04:14They came from York to New York, Hampshire to New Hampshire.
0:04:14 > 0:04:20They ate, slept and breathed the mantra, "Liberty and Britishness."
0:04:20 > 0:04:27They had first arrived in the early 17th century, seeking their fortune or religious tolerance -
0:04:27 > 0:04:32time enough to build farms, communities, towns and cities, even.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36Certainly time enough to deal with troublesome natives -
0:04:36 > 0:04:44to make alliances where possible and, if not, to wipe them out or drive them inland.
0:04:44 > 0:04:51Within the settlements and houses of the Virginia tobacco planters and Massachusetts merchants,
0:04:51 > 0:04:58the silverware was simpler, the furniture not as Hepplewhite as in England.
0:04:58 > 0:05:05The simplicity spoke to their origins - the quest for liberty and the drive for self-improvement.
0:05:05 > 0:05:11But it was rather "small potato" if what you had in mind was a palazzo in England
0:05:11 > 0:05:15rather than a picket fence in NEW England.
0:05:15 > 0:05:20Suppose you wanted to make a serious fortune - where could that happen?
0:05:22 > 0:05:27In the mid-seventeenth century, the Caribbean was where!
0:05:27 > 0:05:35Nobody settled in the West Indies to read the Bible unmolested - this was not Massachusetts.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39No, you braved the fevers and the swamps for one reason alone -
0:05:39 > 0:05:43to make yourself very rich, very fast.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46Serious profits were already being raked in,
0:05:46 > 0:05:53catering to Europe's little addictions - chocolate, coffee and, in England, tea.
0:05:53 > 0:05:56But as a money-spinner,
0:05:56 > 0:06:01nothing compared with the stuff you added to make them more palatable -
0:06:01 > 0:06:04sugar.
0:06:04 > 0:06:11Once seen as a luxurious drug, it was now a necessity - the cash-crop of the empire.
0:06:11 > 0:06:18Barbados provided the perfect habitat to grow sugar cane - tropical heat and saturating rains.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22So the British began to settle in the West Indies,
0:06:22 > 0:06:29transforming virgin forest into a patchwork quilt of sugar plantations.
0:06:36 > 0:06:39But Queen Sugar was a bitch,
0:06:39 > 0:06:45demanding absolute service before she'd spill her bounty.
0:06:45 > 0:06:49She took 14 months to get ripe - all eight feet of her.
0:06:49 > 0:06:53But when she was ready, she was ready.
0:06:53 > 0:06:57Cut the cane at once,
0:06:57 > 0:07:00get it to the crushers before it spoilt...
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Boil the juice before it degraded -
0:07:04 > 0:07:08all very messy and all very dangerous.
0:07:08 > 0:07:12By the side of the crushing mills hung a sharpened machete -
0:07:12 > 0:07:16ready to sever the limbs
0:07:16 > 0:07:19of anyone caught in the rollers.
0:07:19 > 0:07:24What she needed was a combination of strength
0:07:24 > 0:07:26and lightning speed.
0:07:26 > 0:07:33What she needed were human beasts of burden, strong, quick, durable and uncomplaining.
0:07:33 > 0:07:36One commodity would be reaped by another -
0:07:36 > 0:07:39by slaves.
0:07:42 > 0:07:49Sitting in the grand plantation house, next to the mills that turned sugar into liquid gold,
0:07:49 > 0:07:56what did you care if you had to go to West Africa and ship the slaves across the Atlantic?
0:07:57 > 0:08:00Oh, yes, the logistics were difficult,
0:08:00 > 0:08:06but nothing the greatest sea-faring nation in the world couldn't handle.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16The British were good at commodities.
0:08:21 > 0:08:26£2,000 bought you 200 acres of Barbadian cane fields,
0:08:26 > 0:08:30a mill and a hundred-odd slaves.
0:08:30 > 0:08:37And within a few years, it returned an equal amount every year for the rest of your life.
0:08:39 > 0:08:45You were now amongst the richest men anywhere in the British Empire.
0:08:45 > 0:08:52The slave economy in the Caribbean wasn't just a sideshow of empire - it WAS the empire.
0:08:52 > 0:08:57Three and a half million slaves were transported in British ships alone.
0:08:57 > 0:09:04They went to British plantations to make British profits and build British cities -
0:09:04 > 0:09:11Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow - with the cult of liberty on everyone's lips in smart coffee houses.
0:09:14 > 0:09:19Apart from the occasional visiting Quaker and exiled Puritan,
0:09:19 > 0:09:26there was a deafening silence in the land of liberty about turning fellow men into work animals.
0:09:26 > 0:09:31The scale of profits sealed the conspiracy of silence.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36Here's a little thing of devilish prettiness.
0:09:36 > 0:09:42It's silver - looks like jewellery - a hatpin or something, but it's not!
0:09:42 > 0:09:49This is an object which marked the passage of a human being to a thing - this is a branding iron.
0:09:49 > 0:09:54Once these initials were burnt into your flesh, you were not a person.
0:09:54 > 0:09:58You were an object - a beast of burden.
0:09:58 > 0:10:03Your journey into hell started months earlier, in Africa.
0:10:08 > 0:10:14It's described in one of the few surviving accounts by Olaudah Equiano,
0:10:14 > 0:10:19one of the millions to experience the nightmare.
0:10:19 > 0:10:24Captured as a small boy, he was separated from his sister,
0:10:24 > 0:10:29then dragged to the coast and the waiting slave ship.
0:10:32 > 0:10:35"When I looked around the ship
0:10:35 > 0:10:41"and saw a multitude of black people of every description chained together,
0:10:41 > 0:10:47"every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow,
0:10:47 > 0:10:49"I no longer doubted my fate.
0:10:49 > 0:10:56"Quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck."
0:11:03 > 0:11:06To make the venture profitable,
0:11:06 > 0:11:11the slaves were stacked in two layers in the hold,
0:11:11 > 0:11:16with only about two feet between the planks below and planks above them.
0:11:18 > 0:11:25"The air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells
0:11:25 > 0:11:30"and brought on a sickness among the slaves of which many died.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35"This deplorable situation was again aggravated by the galling of chains
0:11:35 > 0:11:43"and the filth of the necessary tubs into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated.
0:11:43 > 0:11:47"The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying
0:11:47 > 0:11:51"rendered it a scene of horror, almost inconceivable."
0:11:54 > 0:11:56You're a ship's surgeon -
0:11:56 > 0:12:00it's your job to go into the hold in the morning
0:12:00 > 0:12:04and examine the condition of the ship's cargo.
0:12:04 > 0:12:09What do you find? You find a lot of dead slaves, some manacled together,
0:12:09 > 0:12:13the living and dead still chained as one pair.
0:12:13 > 0:12:20You take the pair up on deck, strap them to the grating, sort out the living from the dead.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23Throw the dead overboard.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27There are always the sharks, waiting, grateful.
0:12:27 > 0:12:34If you were one of those who made it to land alive, your troubles had just begun.
0:12:35 > 0:12:40Naked, but for a loincloth, you were again paraded and poked at,
0:12:40 > 0:12:43your teeth inspected like horses.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53Violence - the threat or the application of it - ran the system.
0:12:53 > 0:12:57Women were the objects of particular terror.
0:12:57 > 0:13:03In one year, a Jamaican overseer of a plantation, aptly called Egypt,
0:13:03 > 0:13:07gave 21 floggings to women, each no less than 50 lashes.
0:13:07 > 0:13:12Equiano says it was common, at the end of the beating,
0:13:12 > 0:13:17to have the victims kneel and thank their masters for the treatment.
0:13:19 > 0:13:24The same overseer also recorded, with the same matter-of-fact manner,
0:13:24 > 0:13:31that he'd had sex with 23 slave women that year, not including his regular mistress.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37Only Sundays offered some moments of joy.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42The market and music allowed slaves to recreate some sense of community
0:13:42 > 0:13:46and the Africa they had left behind.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50At no time was there more joyous music than at a funeral -
0:13:50 > 0:13:53death, at last, was liberty.
0:13:53 > 0:13:56Death was the return home.
0:13:58 > 0:14:05It was very important for such a momentous journey, to have something like this,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08something African, although made in Barbados.
0:14:08 > 0:14:16A necklace of teeth, shells and bones, discarded trinkets, copper and bronze rings.
0:14:21 > 0:14:26# I wanna cross over. #
0:14:30 > 0:14:33A people with no possessions at all,
0:14:33 > 0:14:39reserved what they'd hidden away for this last important journey,
0:14:39 > 0:14:45so their spirits could return to Africa with dignity.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59For the British, it was the perfect setup.
0:14:59 > 0:15:06Their ships dominated the oceans, their slaves brought them profit, the world was their oyster.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11But someone else was eager to prise it open - the French!
0:15:11 > 0:15:17They'd fought for centuries and they would fight again.
0:15:17 > 0:15:24The Hundred Years War of the Middle Ages would become the Seven Years War of the 18th century.
0:15:24 > 0:15:32Agincourt fought, not in a muddy field, but in battles around the globe.
0:15:32 > 0:15:38The combo the British most despised - Jesuits, professional soldiers and bureaucrats -
0:15:38 > 0:15:45were stealing the empire before their very eyes, starting with continental America.
0:15:45 > 0:15:51Singing patriotic anthems was not going to stop them. Only war would.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55And war, as the Romans discovered, changes everything.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59The first victim is liberty and the second is profit.
0:15:59 > 0:16:04The French had been in north America for as long as the British,
0:16:04 > 0:16:08based in Canada to the north and Louisiana to the south,
0:16:08 > 0:16:13exploring the Mississippi and the Ohio River Valley in between.
0:16:13 > 0:16:18It didn't take a genius to work out that a cordon of French forts,
0:16:18 > 0:16:23linking Canada to Louisiana, would box the British colonies in.
0:16:23 > 0:16:30It would be death by slow strangulation - the ad hoc empire was drawing to a close.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33Empires were not for sharing.
0:16:33 > 0:16:37The British would have to fight to keep theirs.
0:16:38 > 0:16:43It was commonly thought by politicians that war was coming
0:16:43 > 0:16:47but it wasn't a prospect anyone relished,
0:16:47 > 0:16:51except someone who made global victory his alpha and omega
0:16:51 > 0:16:54and that man was William Pitt.
0:16:54 > 0:16:59For better or worse, it was William Pitt -
0:16:59 > 0:17:02neurotic, gouty, irascible -
0:17:02 > 0:17:07either manically hyperactive or collapsed in paralysing gloom,
0:17:07 > 0:17:11who was the British Empire's true visionary.
0:17:11 > 0:17:18He believed that what was at stake in the life-or-death struggle between France and Britain,
0:17:18 > 0:17:22was not just the lion's share of wealth,
0:17:22 > 0:17:27but whether the world would be conquered by liberty or despotism.
0:17:27 > 0:17:32The first rounds went badly for the forces of liberty.
0:17:32 > 0:17:37British troops were wiped out in the backwoods of New York State
0:17:37 > 0:17:41by the French and their native allies.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49So Pitt unleashed his biggest weapon -
0:17:49 > 0:17:52his war-chest.
0:17:52 > 0:17:59He would fight the first World War with columns of figures as well as columns of soldiers.
0:17:59 > 0:18:02Pitt spent £18 million a year -
0:18:02 > 0:18:07twice the government's annual income.
0:18:09 > 0:18:16This flew right in the face of the empire's basic principle - that it shouldn't cost.
0:18:16 > 0:18:23But, as Pitt calculated, you can't make a profit from empire if it's not YOUR empire.
0:18:23 > 0:18:28After one more setback, there were nothing but glories.
0:18:32 > 0:18:361759 was the year of military miracles.
0:18:36 > 0:18:43The strongholds of the French Empire fell, one by one, to truly British forces,
0:18:43 > 0:18:47Highland regiments often leading the way,
0:18:47 > 0:18:53in India, the French sugar islands, West Africa and Nova Scotia.
0:18:53 > 0:18:59Horace Walpole boasted, "Our bells are worn threadbare with the ringing of victories."
0:18:59 > 0:19:04But there was no victory as sweet or as significant
0:19:04 > 0:19:11as the one that broke the back of French power in North America for good -
0:19:11 > 0:19:14General Wolfe's conquest of Quebec.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19It was exactly the kind of thing Pitt adored -
0:19:19 > 0:19:25an attack so improbable, even Wolfe himself assumed it couldn't work.
0:19:27 > 0:19:32He designed it more as a glorious death than a likely victory -
0:19:32 > 0:19:39climbing the sheer cliffs that protected the city and surprising the French.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42After a suicidal charge,
0:19:42 > 0:19:48the defenders were cut down in a monstrous volley.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51GUNFIRE
0:19:55 > 0:20:00True to his script, Wolfe took a shattering shot to the wrist,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03then bullets in the guts and chest.
0:20:03 > 0:20:10Bleeding into the arms of his brother officers, he died as the first imperial romantic martyr -
0:20:10 > 0:20:13duly set in marble in Westminster Abbey.
0:20:18 > 0:20:26Victory in Quebec and then, Montreal, totally transformed the British Empire in North America.
0:20:26 > 0:20:30Pitt had made America, as he supposed,
0:20:30 > 0:20:32British forever.
0:20:37 > 0:20:43And he must have felt he had made the world safe for liberty to triumph.
0:20:43 > 0:20:48The age of imperial Britain, as a world power, was about to dawn -
0:20:48 > 0:20:51was it not?
0:20:53 > 0:20:57There was reason for the new young king, George III,
0:20:57 > 0:21:01to be the first Hanoverian to admit out loud that,
0:21:01 > 0:21:05"I glory in the name of Briton."
0:21:05 > 0:21:12Even an American in London, like Benjamin Franklin, couldn't help but agree.
0:21:12 > 0:21:19He wrote that, "The foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British Empire lie in America."
0:21:19 > 0:21:26Just 17 years later, he was signing the American Declaration of Independence.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29So, what went wrong?
0:21:31 > 0:21:36How could it all have been thrown away in less than a generation?
0:21:36 > 0:21:41Pitt would learn that even victories come at a cost.
0:21:41 > 0:21:46And, in Britain's case, that cost would be America.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53Perhaps the resources of the empire were terminally over-stretched!
0:21:53 > 0:21:58Perhaps that young empire might turn out to be a 30-year wonder.
0:21:58 > 0:22:01To defend the status quo,
0:22:01 > 0:22:05they needed a huge transcontinental army and an even bigger navy.
0:22:05 > 0:22:13And if they were going to be funded, the burden of taxes had better not fall on just the British themselves.
0:22:13 > 0:22:18The colonists, who were supposed to be enjoying their protection,
0:22:18 > 0:22:23were going to have to cough up their share of the money.
0:22:23 > 0:22:26And they would do it through taxes.
0:22:26 > 0:22:31Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British Civil Wars,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33would do so again -
0:22:33 > 0:22:36this time in America.
0:22:39 > 0:22:45The taxes may have been different but the result, once again, would be disaster.
0:22:49 > 0:22:53What happened in America was really Round Two of those wars -
0:22:53 > 0:22:56the civil war of the British Empire.
0:22:56 > 0:23:04The Hanoverians played the part of the Stuarts and the Americans, the heirs of the Revolutionaries -
0:23:04 > 0:23:11of Cromwell and William III - inheritors of true British liberty, lost in its own motherland.
0:23:11 > 0:23:19One such American was John Adams, a Boston lawyer and politician, deeply read in history and philosophy,
0:23:19 > 0:23:23and one of the most eloquent patriot leaders in the colonies.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27He believed fervently in those hard-won liberties -
0:23:27 > 0:23:33no taxation without consent, no standing armies, no martial law.
0:23:33 > 0:23:36When he looked at what Britain had become,
0:23:36 > 0:23:43he no longer recognised that pristine Temple of Liberty, and no wonder!
0:23:43 > 0:23:46Thanks to the unrelenting wars with France,
0:23:46 > 0:23:50Britain had become a huge military state -
0:23:50 > 0:23:57supporting a massive army, navy and an insatiable tax-collecting machine.
0:23:57 > 0:24:04Adams' Britain, the shrine of freedom, was, of course, a fantasy - a dream Britannia.
0:24:04 > 0:24:09But this was a dream that John Adams woke up with every morning.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12And from such nagging visions comes action.
0:24:15 > 0:24:20He would not pay the taxes and he was not alone in this struggle.
0:24:20 > 0:24:23Angry, wealthy Boston in the 1760s,
0:24:23 > 0:24:28was exactly the kind of place that might breed a revolution.
0:24:30 > 0:24:38Adams, his friends and neighbours argued about everything - they attended public meetings in droves.
0:24:38 > 0:24:44Gossip flew around cobbled streets and roused the citizens to use their muscle -
0:24:44 > 0:24:51fast and fierce in opposition to British taxes and those who tried to enforce them.
0:24:51 > 0:24:56Stunned by this strength of feeling, the British hit on a tax by stealth,
0:24:56 > 0:25:03one only of interest to bureaucrats, something the mob couldn't possibly notice -
0:25:03 > 0:25:06or so they thought.
0:25:08 > 0:25:15When the British put a stamp on the paper on which official documents and newspapers were printed on,
0:25:15 > 0:25:22what, in London, looked harmless enough, in Boston, seemed like a tax on knowledge.
0:25:22 > 0:25:28In that dangerously over-informed city, it really lit a fire.
0:25:28 > 0:25:33After all, who uses official documents and who reads newspapers?
0:25:33 > 0:25:41Only every single lawyer, merchant, minister, publisher, printer and pamphleteer across the 13 colonies.
0:25:44 > 0:25:51Anyone who deals with official documents now hates you. And who are they?
0:25:51 > 0:25:57The best educated and loudest of the colonial population.
0:25:57 > 0:26:03Their leadership was prepared to mobilise anger on the Boston streets.
0:26:03 > 0:26:09The mob tore down the house of the Governor of Massachusetts.
0:26:09 > 0:26:15Back in Britain, this violent opposition divided parliament almost as strongly.
0:26:15 > 0:26:22They were outraged at the insolence of colonials who were "protected by our care"
0:26:22 > 0:26:26and demanded that they should yield obedience.
0:26:26 > 0:26:31Up got William Pitt, the man who had done most to make America British,
0:26:31 > 0:26:36to demand the repeal of the Stamp Act and save HIS empire.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39"I rejoice that America has resisted.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44"I would argue that even under former arbitrary reigns,
0:26:44 > 0:26:49"parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent.
0:26:49 > 0:26:53"The gentleman asks, when were the colonies emancipated?
0:26:53 > 0:26:58"But I desire to know, when were they made slaves?"
0:26:58 > 0:27:03As the war for public opinion escalated,
0:27:03 > 0:27:07the American politician and publisher, Benjamin Franklin,
0:27:07 > 0:27:12produced an image that quickly seized public imagination -
0:27:12 > 0:27:18a nightmare vision of a dismembered Britannia, ruined by alienating her colonies.
0:27:18 > 0:27:21Tensions rose in London and Boston.
0:27:21 > 0:27:28Parliament did eventually repeal the stamp duty but still the Americans boycotted British goods.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33Parliament put troops on the Boston streets to keep order.
0:27:33 > 0:27:37The Americans assaulted and abused them.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43Then, in one notorious incident,
0:27:43 > 0:27:48the tormented Redcoats opened fire before the State House.
0:27:48 > 0:27:52Five Bostonians were left dead on the street.
0:27:52 > 0:28:00Shocked by the killings, over the next three years, both sides let things calm down.
0:28:04 > 0:28:10Eventually, the British dropped ALL their taxes, except one - that on tea.
0:28:18 > 0:28:22The import duty had even been lowered to sweeten the cup -
0:28:22 > 0:28:26the government supposed no-one would notice the tax.
0:28:26 > 0:28:28They noticed.
0:28:30 > 0:28:37Ships carrying the tea arrived in Boston - unloading them meant paying the import duty.
0:28:37 > 0:28:40On the night of December 16th 1773,
0:28:40 > 0:28:45Boston's largest hall was filled with people listening to orators,
0:28:45 > 0:28:50warning that, to bring the tea ashore, much less to brew it,
0:28:50 > 0:28:54was to swallow slavery along with the cuppa.
0:28:54 > 0:28:59At a pre-arranged signal, the doors burst open,
0:28:59 > 0:29:06and a group of patriots dressed up in blankets as Mohawk Indians, urged the crowds to storm the ships.
0:29:06 > 0:29:13About 30 to 60 of our Mohawks with blackened faces and blankets still in place,
0:29:13 > 0:29:16climbed aboard with lanterns.
0:29:16 > 0:29:21They used hatchets, which they called tomahawks,
0:29:21 > 0:29:26to break open the chests and poured the stuff straight into the water.
0:29:32 > 0:29:40Those who knew, and, of course, the leaders of the patriot campaign were very shrewd about this,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44understood that it was an incredibly fateful moment.
0:29:44 > 0:29:51John Adams said, "This was the most magnificent moment of all. I cannot but call it, an epoch in history."
0:29:51 > 0:29:54How right he was!
0:30:00 > 0:30:04To punish Boston, the British closed its port,
0:30:04 > 0:30:10galvanising all American colonies to come to the distressed city's aid.
0:30:10 > 0:30:14Cart loads of food came from colonies north and south.
0:30:14 > 0:30:21- George Washington declared, - "The cause of Boston now is, and ever will be, the cause of America."
0:30:26 > 0:30:31And yet, still, there was hesitation on the brink of catastrophe.
0:30:31 > 0:30:35Few wanted irrevocable divorce from the motherland.
0:30:36 > 0:30:43In London, King George III and his government believed that rebellion had already started
0:30:43 > 0:30:46and had to be nipped in the bud.
0:30:46 > 0:30:53In parliament, William Pitt made a last-ditch plea for sanity and reason.
0:30:53 > 0:30:58Did their lordships not understand that in fighting the Americans,
0:30:58 > 0:31:01they were fighting their own ghosts -
0:31:01 > 0:31:06the ghosts of "English Liberty" past?
0:31:09 > 0:31:14"What, though you march from town to town and from province to province,
0:31:14 > 0:31:19"though you should be able to enforce a temporary submission,
0:31:19 > 0:31:25"how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind -
0:31:25 > 0:31:30"to grasp the dominion of 1,800 miles of continent, populous in numbers,
0:31:30 > 0:31:34"possessing valour, liberty and resistance?
0:31:34 > 0:31:38"The spirit which resists your taxation
0:31:38 > 0:31:42"is the same spirit which called all England on its legs
0:31:42 > 0:31:47"and by the Bill of Rights, vindicated the English constitution.
0:31:47 > 0:31:52"This glorious spirit animates three million in America
0:31:52 > 0:31:58"who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence,
0:31:58 > 0:32:03"and who will die in defence of their rights as free men..."
0:32:11 > 0:32:15George III's ministers were having none of it.
0:32:15 > 0:32:22Parliament's authority, as the supreme government of the empire, was at stake
0:32:22 > 0:32:26and, if necessary, it had to be backed up with bullets.
0:32:26 > 0:32:34So, few were surprised when the first blood was shed at Lexington, outside Boston, on April 19th, 1775.
0:32:34 > 0:32:38Redcoats had been sent to seize militia arms.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41They arrived just before dawn.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45Nobody knows who, but, inevitably, someone fired...
0:32:48 > 0:32:52..and in response, the British shot their muskets
0:32:52 > 0:32:58straight into the ragtag group of colonial militiamen gathered before them.
0:32:58 > 0:33:05The Redcoats stormed nearby Concord but were then forced back to Boston in bloody shock -
0:33:05 > 0:33:08peppered with fire all the way.
0:33:13 > 0:33:17The dream of somehow remaining British and still being free,
0:33:17 > 0:33:22had died along with the militiamen at Lexington and Concord.
0:33:22 > 0:33:29Now there was a different dream, a dream of a new country - an American dream.
0:33:33 > 0:33:36Once those shots had been fired,
0:33:36 > 0:33:41many more bodies would be laid beside those in Concord.
0:33:41 > 0:33:49It would be a war fought, not just with muskets, but with words and ideals.
0:33:49 > 0:33:56Adams and fellow colonial leaders - including Benjamin Franklin - meeting in Philadelphia,
0:33:56 > 0:34:00would publish their Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776.
0:34:00 > 0:34:07When the Declaration accused a king - in this case, George III - of being a tyrant,
0:34:07 > 0:34:12it did sound remarkably like a chapter from a British history book.
0:34:12 > 0:34:16But that is not what everyone remembers.
0:34:16 > 0:34:21What we remember is something fresh, something profoundly American.
0:34:22 > 0:34:26"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
0:34:26 > 0:34:29"that all men are created equal,
0:34:29 > 0:34:35"that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
0:34:35 > 0:34:40"that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
0:34:43 > 0:34:47In April 1778, faced with the undoing of his life's work,
0:34:47 > 0:34:54an alliance between the old enemy, France, and the new dominion of liberty, America,
0:34:54 > 0:34:58Pitt attempted one last parliamentary speech
0:34:58 > 0:35:03to put some gumption into his demoralised compatriots.
0:35:03 > 0:35:10He struggled to his feet, but before he could pronounce, collapsed into the arms of his fellow peers.
0:35:10 > 0:35:17When he died a month later, the right empire - the empire of liberty - died with him.
0:35:19 > 0:35:24It would take George Washington, Commander of the American forces,
0:35:24 > 0:35:29seven years of fighting before independence became reality.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33The Americans had as many defeats as victories,
0:35:33 > 0:35:38but gained the crucial support of France, Spain and Holland,
0:35:38 > 0:35:45eventually forcing the British to surrender at Orkney in Virginia, in 1781.
0:35:50 > 0:35:55It may have been the end of one kind of British empire,
0:35:55 > 0:35:58but another one was waiting to be born.
0:36:05 > 0:36:0820 years after defeat in America,
0:36:08 > 0:36:13the British found themselves ruling millions in Asia.
0:36:13 > 0:36:18They hadn't planned it - they hadn't even dreamed it was possible.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21Why would they?
0:36:23 > 0:36:28Ever since the British had come to India, early in the 17th century,
0:36:28 > 0:36:32they thought of nothing but trade.
0:36:32 > 0:36:40Their only presence was the East India Company - a commercial body - there to make a profit.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46From toeholds on the south-east and western coasts,
0:36:46 > 0:36:53they bought brilliantly printed silks and cottons and shipped them home,
0:36:53 > 0:36:57where the parlours and bodies of the polite classes
0:36:57 > 0:37:04were transformed by splashes of Indian colour - a nice little business.
0:37:04 > 0:37:12Anything more was out of the question for there already was an empire in India -
0:37:12 > 0:37:17one of the most spectacular in the world - the Mughals...
0:37:23 > 0:37:27The Muslim descendants of the Mongol conquerors of Asia.
0:37:30 > 0:37:33At their head was the emperor in Delhi.
0:37:33 > 0:37:39Across the land, a network of local governors, loyal to him, the Nawabs.
0:37:39 > 0:37:46They had to give their permission for the East India Company to be there at all.
0:37:46 > 0:37:52To the Mughals, the British merchants were just extra pocket-money -
0:37:52 > 0:37:57supplying silver to take Indian goods home.
0:37:57 > 0:38:04No more than a gnat on the elephants rump - specks of bothersome dust on the Emperor's peacock throne.
0:38:09 > 0:38:15But in 1739 that throne disappeared in the plunder by Persian invaders,
0:38:15 > 0:38:19when they sacked Delhi and slaughtered its inhabitants.
0:38:23 > 0:38:30In the decades that followed, other invaders - Afghans from the northwest -
0:38:30 > 0:38:37rode deep into the Indian heartland, waging war and fighting battles on an unimaginable scale.
0:38:41 > 0:38:46The gorgeous fabric of the Mughal empire frayed and tore.
0:38:50 > 0:38:57Left to their own devices, the Nawabs started taking advantage of Delhi's weakness,
0:38:57 > 0:39:02raising their own armies, creating their own mini-states.
0:39:05 > 0:39:1318th-century Mughal India was not some howling anarchy begging for the British to step in and stop the rot.
0:39:13 > 0:39:19It was a patchwork of successor states, busy, elegant, robust and vigorous.
0:39:19 > 0:39:23Many used Persian law and court style.
0:39:23 > 0:39:26It was these up-and-coming states,
0:39:26 > 0:39:32not the decadent and corrupt petty kingdoms the British always complain about,
0:39:32 > 0:39:36into which the East India Company smashed its way
0:39:36 > 0:39:41with ferocious arrogance, ignorance and political cunning.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47No-one in Delhi saw it coming.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49No-one in London wanted it.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53But then, enter the French - enter trouble.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59It was the 1740s.
0:39:59 > 0:40:03Anglo-French rivalry was going global.
0:40:03 > 0:40:09What the French had been doing with native North American tribes -
0:40:09 > 0:40:16getting mixed up in their wars and alliances to steal a march on their rivals -
0:40:16 > 0:40:20they would now do in the Asian subcontinent.
0:40:20 > 0:40:27From Pondicherry, their base in the south, the French jumped into Indian politics,
0:40:27 > 0:40:34learning that a well-engineered coup could replace a neutral local governor with a tame Nawab -
0:40:34 > 0:40:39one who would not just help business prospects but shut out the British.
0:40:39 > 0:40:46The British had little choice but to join in this game of "Trump the Nawab".
0:40:46 > 0:40:48To act was risky
0:40:48 > 0:40:51but failure to act was commercial suicide.
0:40:51 > 0:40:56Not everyone in the little Company settlements, like nearby Madras,
0:40:56 > 0:41:01were biting their nails at the idea of an Indian war.
0:41:03 > 0:41:08There was one young man who had been sweating it out as a company clerk,
0:41:08 > 0:41:13for whom the drum-roll of battle was an irresistible serenade.
0:41:15 > 0:41:20Robert Clive, like the East India Company itself, you might say,
0:41:20 > 0:41:24was never cut out for business, at least, not legit business.
0:41:24 > 0:41:29In Market Drayton, where he'd grown up, he'd ran an extortion racket,
0:41:29 > 0:41:36threatening local shopkeepers with his gang of toughs unless they coughed up.
0:41:36 > 0:41:41Exported to Madras, Clive lived the life of a bachelor clerk -
0:41:41 > 0:41:45scribbling, sweating, drinking, fornicating
0:41:45 > 0:41:50and making the whole thing bearable only with pipes of opium.
0:41:50 > 0:41:56Scenting that powerful old aroma of money and fame, Clive made a career change
0:41:56 > 0:42:00and he took British India with him.
0:42:02 > 0:42:09In the war that erupted between rival French and British supported Nawabs,
0:42:09 > 0:42:13Clive turned a diversion into the main event.
0:42:13 > 0:42:18While both armies were on a siege of the mountain city of Trichinopoly,
0:42:18 > 0:42:25Clive took a handful of men and stormed the capital of the pro-French prince.
0:42:25 > 0:42:28He then held out for six long weeks.
0:42:28 > 0:42:35The effort fatally weakened the enemy and the British Nawab took power.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39The French gamble in south India was a busted flush.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42Clive had just broke the bank.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45Suddenly, the rest of India
0:42:45 > 0:42:52woke up to the fact that it was no longer dealing with a feeble little merchant fledgeling.
0:42:52 > 0:42:56It had got a cuckoo in the nest.
0:42:56 > 0:43:02Up the coast to the north, the young impulsive Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daullah
0:43:02 > 0:43:06decided to do something about this threat.
0:43:06 > 0:43:09In 1756, he attacked the British settlement
0:43:09 > 0:43:16that had been established at the mouth of the Hughli river since 1690 -
0:43:16 > 0:43:18Calcutta.
0:43:21 > 0:43:26Most of its residents made it out of the town in time.
0:43:26 > 0:43:33The rest - a hundred or so - found themselves imprisoned in a 20-foot square cell,
0:43:33 > 0:43:37with no food or water and virtually no air,
0:43:37 > 0:43:40in the height of the Indian summer.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48Few came out alive
0:43:48 > 0:43:54and the Black Hole of Calcutta now entered British history's lexicon of infamy.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00One of the survivors, John Zephaniah Holwell,
0:44:00 > 0:44:04wrote a book about the Black Hole on his way back to England.
0:44:04 > 0:44:09When it was published in 1758, it became an instant best seller.
0:44:09 > 0:44:16Holwell exaggerated the number who had been suffocated on that hot night,
0:44:16 > 0:44:19multiplying it by three from 40 to 120.
0:44:19 > 0:44:24He wasn't kicking up the number for the sake of sensationalism.
0:44:24 > 0:44:31He was making a point - that a regime that could be so cruel, so inhuman,
0:44:31 > 0:44:37scarcely deserved to be called a government, scarcely deserved to survive.
0:44:37 > 0:44:41Clive sailed north in Royal Navy ships, recaptured Calcutta
0:44:41 > 0:44:45and then pursued Siraj Ud Daullah up river.
0:44:50 > 0:44:57In June 1757, he took on an Indian army that outnumbered his, ten to one.
0:44:57 > 0:45:04But Clive had been in India long enough to know there was more than one way to fight a battle here.
0:45:09 > 0:45:14The Battle of Plassey has gone down in imperial textbooks
0:45:14 > 0:45:19as one of those stellar victories - with a handful of European soldiers
0:45:19 > 0:45:24pulling off a long-shot victory against massed elephant cavalry.
0:45:24 > 0:45:31What actually happened is that Clive cut a deal with Siraj Ud Daullah's second in command,
0:45:31 > 0:45:35"If your soldiers disappear, you can be the next Nawab."
0:45:35 > 0:45:38He went for it and that was that.
0:45:38 > 0:45:41Courtesy of his tame new Nawab,
0:45:41 > 0:45:45Clive helped himself to a £250,000 reward.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49It made the delinquent from Market Drayton
0:45:49 > 0:45:53one of the wealthiest men in Britain
0:45:53 > 0:45:56and Baron Clive of Plassey.
0:45:59 > 0:46:04When challenged later at the scale of his plunder, Clive would reply,
0:46:04 > 0:46:09"An opulent city lay at my mercy, vaults were thrown open to me alone,
0:46:09 > 0:46:14"piled on either hand with gold and jewels!
0:46:14 > 0:46:20"At this moment, I stand astonished at my own moderation."
0:46:23 > 0:46:26The new Nawab would have disagreed.
0:46:26 > 0:46:31Clive cost him his independence as well as his jewels.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35The British could and would replace him at their whim.
0:46:39 > 0:46:46As Clive turned from general into power-broker - an Indian Caesar - suspicions began to mount in London.
0:46:46 > 0:46:53Was this an economic exercise in damage containment or empire-building?
0:46:53 > 0:46:57For empires notoriously came with long bills.
0:47:01 > 0:47:05But Clive was one step ahead of them.
0:47:05 > 0:47:12He would solve all their problems by turning Bengal into a money-making machine.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15Not by trade but by collecting land taxes.
0:47:19 > 0:47:25The temptation was not just for Company men to build private mega-fortunes,
0:47:25 > 0:47:29but for the Company itself to grow rich, fast.
0:47:29 > 0:47:32This was much easier than business.
0:47:32 > 0:47:40Increasingly, the stock in trade of British India was not spices or cloth but taxes.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43Taxes would pull down one empire in America.
0:47:43 > 0:47:46But now they would set one up in India.
0:47:46 > 0:47:54In 1765, the company was granted the right to collect the land tax across all of Bengal.
0:47:54 > 0:48:01For the British, it marked the irrevocable shift from trading to ruling.
0:48:01 > 0:48:05The theory of empire was turned on its head.
0:48:05 > 0:48:12Trade can only thrive, the theory had said, when it's not lumbered with government or an army.
0:48:12 > 0:48:17"Trade can only thrive in India," whispered Clive,
0:48:17 > 0:48:22"when it joins with government, runs a tax system and supports an army."
0:48:22 > 0:48:30And it happened in stark contrast to what was occurring in America at exactly the same time.
0:48:32 > 0:48:37In Boston, they were sending protesting mobs into the streets,
0:48:37 > 0:48:44but, in Bengal, money-men were falling over themselves to bankroll the British.
0:48:44 > 0:48:51The local tax-collectors, or zemindars, would happily carry on harvesting the rupees,
0:48:51 > 0:48:54as they had for the Mughals.
0:48:54 > 0:48:58The British imagined that under their supervision
0:48:58 > 0:49:06Bengal would change from a place of grinding toil into a model of progress - everyone would be happy.
0:49:06 > 0:49:12If the zemindars knew exactly how much tax they would owe the government,
0:49:12 > 0:49:20they could go easy on peasants who would be thrifty and industrious, producing a surplus for the market,
0:49:20 > 0:49:23and ploughing profits into self-improvement.
0:49:27 > 0:49:33The only problem with this, of course, was that it was a total fantasy.
0:49:33 > 0:49:38The zemindars' main interest was, and always had been,
0:49:38 > 0:49:44in shaking as much as possible from their peasants, which they continued to do.
0:49:44 > 0:49:51Instead of a chain reaction of benevolence, it started a pyramid of extortion.
0:49:51 > 0:49:55The government screwed zemindars, zemindars screwed peasants.
0:49:55 > 0:50:02Zemindars went broke, peasants were evicted and died in hundreds of thousands.
0:50:02 > 0:50:04So much for good intentions.
0:50:04 > 0:50:08And, in short order, famine arrived in Bengal -
0:50:08 > 0:50:14walking ribcages on the trunk roads, saucer-eyed children dying in baked mud holes,
0:50:14 > 0:50:19flocks of kites landing on the carcasses of cattle.
0:50:23 > 0:50:29Perhaps a quarter of the population of Bengal perished - millions of people.
0:50:29 > 0:50:34Perhaps the British didn't cause it but they certainly didn't help.
0:50:34 > 0:50:38Guilty or innocent, one fact was indisputable.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41Bengal now belonged to the British.
0:50:43 > 0:50:48Over the next 50 years, most of the rest of India would follow.
0:50:48 > 0:50:53New British armies would complete the job that Clive had started.
0:50:57 > 0:51:05But for some who came after him, India was more than an invitation just to smash and grab.
0:51:05 > 0:51:10Warren Hastings, the first to hold the title of Governor General,
0:51:10 > 0:51:17was committed to the possibility of repairing the broken body of India, the Indian way.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23He learned Persian and four Indian languages.
0:51:23 > 0:51:29He founded the Asiatic Society, dedicated to understanding Indian culture.
0:51:29 > 0:51:34He commissioned the first Anglo-Hindustani dictionaries,
0:51:34 > 0:51:38translations of Indian law codes and the Bhagavad Gita.
0:51:44 > 0:51:47Under Hastings' administration,
0:51:47 > 0:51:51there was a tantalisingly brief moment,
0:51:51 > 0:51:56when the two cultures actually converged rather than collided.
0:51:59 > 0:52:04British men had Indian mistresses, even wives - sometimes two -
0:52:04 > 0:52:07one in Delhi and one in Lucknow.
0:52:09 > 0:52:15They went to cock fights, smoked hookah pipes with Indian princes.
0:52:20 > 0:52:24They made deals with Hindu money-men.
0:52:34 > 0:52:41But for many of the British who came to India, there would be no home, just a cenotaph,
0:52:41 > 0:52:44their presence immortalised only in stone.
0:52:50 > 0:52:55Acres in central Calcutta are still occupied by Park Street Cemetery.
0:52:59 > 0:53:05In the early days, one in three wouldn't make it through the first monsoon.
0:53:05 > 0:53:12In all, it is said that over two million Europeans are buried in India.
0:53:12 > 0:53:19And the imperial size of their graveyard monuments says something about a wish to be remembered -
0:53:19 > 0:53:23to leave an imposing mark on the subcontinent.
0:53:37 > 0:53:42But neither translations of Hindu epics nor Mughal-sized tombstones
0:53:42 > 0:53:47persuaded everyone that the British really were Indianising themselves.
0:53:47 > 0:53:52Many still saw them as conquerors to be resisted to the death.
0:54:00 > 0:54:03They were rulers like Tipu Sultan,
0:54:03 > 0:54:10who had built up his Southern Indian state of Mysore into a dynamic Muslim power.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15For 20 years, he bitterly and effectively opposed British rule -
0:54:15 > 0:54:20bloodying their armies and fighting their soldiers to a standstill.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28But it couldn't last.
0:54:32 > 0:54:40Tipu Sultan - the Tiger - would learn that a new kind of British Governor General had arrived
0:54:40 > 0:54:43at the end of the 18th century,
0:54:43 > 0:54:48resolved to squash the least sign of local insurrection.
0:54:48 > 0:54:52The most uncompromising of all was Richard Wellesley -
0:54:52 > 0:54:56the older brother of the future Duke of Wellington.
0:54:56 > 0:55:00Again, France provided the impetus for action.
0:55:00 > 0:55:08With the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, came the excuse to stamp on anyone who might be his Indian ally.
0:55:10 > 0:55:15Wellesley dispatched an overwhelming Company army -
0:55:15 > 0:55:19the vast majority of its manpower, Indian sepoys - to Mysore.
0:55:22 > 0:55:29They stormed Tipu's island fortress, Seringapatam, and overwhelmed the sultan's army.
0:55:29 > 0:55:33Tipu was as good as his word and fought to the death -
0:55:33 > 0:55:41his body discovered where the fighting had been fiercest - shot in the head and stripped of his jewels.
0:55:42 > 0:55:48For the next two decades, Wellesley and his successors moved across the subcontinent,
0:55:48 > 0:55:52picking off Indian states, one by one.
0:55:52 > 0:56:00In one of his letters to his wife, you can hear the authentic voice of the future of British India.
0:56:00 > 0:56:06"Farewell, dear soul. I am about to arrange the affairs of a conquered country."
0:56:10 > 0:56:17The foundation stones of a true Raj were laid by Richard Wellesley, literally, in 1799.
0:56:17 > 0:56:25He decided that British India had to have the kind of building that was fit for an emperor.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30So he built a classical palace in Calcutta,
0:56:30 > 0:56:35complete with busts of the Roman Caesars and grand colonnades.
0:56:35 > 0:56:40From it, Wellesley surveyed with triumphal satisfaction
0:56:40 > 0:56:44the stupefying immensity of what had been done.
0:56:46 > 0:56:48It might be pricey.
0:56:49 > 0:56:54But Wellesley wasn't thinking about double entry book-keeping -
0:56:54 > 0:56:59he was too busy measuring his hat size for the victory garland.
0:56:59 > 0:57:03What he had wrought - the empire he had carved out -
0:57:03 > 0:57:10was the ultimate riposte to Napoleon's gibe, calling the English a nation of shopkeepers.
0:57:10 > 0:57:15They were builders of empires - an empire of arms, law and engineering.
0:57:15 > 0:57:20These men no longer cared about an "Empire of Liberty."
0:57:20 > 0:57:25That now sounded dangerously French, suspiciously revolutionary.
0:57:25 > 0:57:30Let the Americans play with the tomfoolery of democracy.
0:57:30 > 0:57:35As for the Empire of Liberty's twin, the "Empire of Trade",
0:57:35 > 0:57:43surely it was understood now that something grander was in the offing than money-grubbing business!
0:57:43 > 0:57:50The Almighty had led them, by crooked steps to be sure, toward their destiny as the modern Rome,
0:57:50 > 0:57:58instructor to the benighted, guardians of an empire which would make war to provide peace.
0:58:00 > 0:58:05And just think, Roman culture might have reached Spain and Jerusalem,
0:58:05 > 0:58:09but British civilisation would span the world -
0:58:09 > 0:58:12or so we told ourselves.
0:58:24 > 0:58:29Subtitles by Carla Rossi BBC Scotland, 2001
0:58:29 > 0:58:33E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk