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Modern Britain is a nation of many cultural traditions. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:36 | |
British people are connected | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
to other parts of the world through many ties - | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
of family, | 0:00:44 | 0:00:46 | |
of business, | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
and of community. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:50 | |
Many of these connections have their roots in the British Empire. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
It was called "the empire on which the sun never set". | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
At its height, Britain ruled over a quarter of the world's population. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:07 | |
But how did Britain come to rule so much land | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
and so many people? | 0:01:11 | 0:01:12 | |
Many convinced themselves it was Britain's destiny to do so. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:18 | |
Much of the Empire was built on greed | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
and a lust for power. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:23 | |
But the British came to believe they had a moral mission, too - | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
a mission to civilise the world. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:32 | |
The sheer expanse of British rule was breathtaking. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
It stretched from the wilderness of the Arctic | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
to the sands of Arabia... | 0:01:43 | 0:01:45 | |
..and the islands of the Caribbean. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:49 | |
A century ago, the British Empire was the greatest power on Earth. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:02 | |
That imperial past has left Britain | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
with a sense of entitlement to a place at the top table | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
in current world affairs. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
For better or for worse, the Empire changed the world | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
and it changed Britain, too. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
The Empire coloured huge parts of the map of the world pink. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
But India was the grandest, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
richest and the most important territory it came to control. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
In the 18th century, this was the home of India's ruling dynasty. | 0:02:52 | 0:02:57 | |
The first British visitors were awestruck by what they found. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
It was clear that this was an advanced civilisation. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:10 | |
The Indians regarded the arriving British as barbarians, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:27 | |
but by the mid-18th-century, | 0:03:27 | 0:03:28 | |
the balance of power had shifted decisively in favour of the British. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:33 | |
How did this happen? | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
The earliest Britons in India, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
such as the men of the East India Company, weren't invaders | 0:03:40 | 0:03:45 | |
but traders who'd gone there for spices, cotton and indigo dye. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:49 | |
The company, which soon dominated trade, | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
raised its own army of local troops. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
In 1744, a young man arrived in India | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
to work as a clerk for the company. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
His name was Robert Clive. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
He was ambitious, short-tempered and impatient. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
He soon saw that wielding a sword | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
was a faster route to riches than pushing a pen. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
Clive taught himself to be a soldier. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:28 | |
He learned, for example, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
that the best way to repel troops mounted on elephants, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
should you ever need to know, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:35 | |
is to fire a volley of shots at the animals until they stampede. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:39 | |
But his greatest talent of all was, in his own words, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
"for politics, chicanery, intrigue | 0:04:43 | 0:04:47 | |
"and the Lord knows what." | 0:04:47 | 0:04:48 | |
At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
Clive outwitted the ruler of the State of Bengal, | 0:04:57 | 0:05:01 | |
a man who had dared to challenge the power of the East India Company. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
Clive then walked into the prince's treasury | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
and coolly helped himself to a fortune. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
He then shipped it in a fleet of 75 barges | 0:05:21 | 0:05:26 | |
to the company's headquarters in Calcutta. | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
Soon afterwards, a new word entered the English language. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:37 | |
It was a Hindi word, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:38 | |
"loot". | 0:05:38 | 0:05:40 | |
With wealth came power. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
The East India Company gradually took control | 0:05:49 | 0:05:52 | |
of huge swathes of the country. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:54 | |
The company men were the new princes of India. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
They built themselves great palaces in the British style | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
on Calcutta's main street. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:06 | |
Many of them still stand today. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
Clive himself became Governor of Bengal. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
So what had begun in plunder | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
had ended in government | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
and so it was to prove right across the world. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:26 | |
It was the greed of Robert Clive and men like him | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
which built Britain an empire. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
Today some people dismiss the Empire as a cause for nothing but shame. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:55 | |
But the story is more complex than that. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
British rule in India demonstrates it very clearly. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
The first British people in India came to trade rather than invade. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:23 | |
Their attitude to the peoples they encountered | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
would be very different from that of those who followed. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
These pioneers of Empire actively embraced an Indian way of life. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
One of these early traders was Charles Stuart. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
He worked for the East India Company, | 0:07:43 | 0:07:45 | |
which traded in cotton, silks and spices. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
Most mornings, Stuart could be seen joining the locals | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
as they bathed in Calcutta's Hugli river. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
Charles Stuart is the sort of person | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
who upends easy prejudices about the Empire. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
The caricature is that it was all run by arrogant racists | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
oppressing downtrodden natives. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
And like all caricatures, there is a degree of truth in that. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
But Charles Stuart belongs to an early generation | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
of the British in India, who were seduced by the place. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
In this unfamiliar world, | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
Charles Stuart saw holiness, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
order and civilisation. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
So enchanted was he with India, | 0:08:53 | 0:08:55 | |
he soon became known as Hindu Stuart. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
He encouraged his fellow Europeans to adopt Indian customs. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:05 | |
He called on British women to abandon their corsets and dresses | 0:09:06 | 0:09:12 | |
and to wear colourful Indian saris. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
And on British men | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
to grow what would become that trademark of Empire, | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
a luxuriant moustache, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
Indian style. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:26 | |
The traders of the East India Company | 0:09:31 | 0:09:33 | |
liked to mix business with pleasure. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
Relaxing with the locals was an everyday affair. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:41 | |
To judge from their clothes, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:43 | |
you often couldn't tell one from the other. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
This was the Empire making up the rules | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
about the appropriate relations between the races as it went along. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
In fact, there weren't really any rules at all - yet. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
Many British traders took Indian mistresses, | 0:10:12 | 0:10:15 | |
known as Beebees. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:17 | |
But there were more serious and lasting relationships too, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
leading to marriage and families. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
Many men of the East India Company | 0:10:23 | 0:10:26 | |
left their possessions to Indian wives or children. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:30 | |
The offspring of these mixed-race marriages | 0:10:30 | 0:10:34 | |
became known as Anglo-Indians. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:37 | |
Today there are an estimated 150,000 of them in India. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:42 | |
MUSIC, CHEERING | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
Anglo-Indians tend to marry within the community | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
so the term now means having some British blood, | 0:10:52 | 0:10:57 | |
often several generations back. | 0:10:57 | 0:10:59 | |
I am proud to be who I am here. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
I have both worlds to enjoy, | 0:11:01 | 0:11:03 | |
I enjoy the West as well as I enjoy the East. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
You're all Christians? | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
-Yeah. -And you've all got some British blood somewhere. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
-Yeah. -But you can't... | 0:11:11 | 0:11:13 | |
I couldn't tell you from any other Indian. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
But my name says it, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:17 | |
and I know my roots. That is it. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
What does it mean to you? | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
It means something nice, because I feel proud to be Anglo-Indian. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:27 | |
But you are a visible reminder... | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
-Yeah. -..of the fact that this country was a colony. -Yeah. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
Well, a lot of people wouldn't like that. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
That's history, that's all. Just take it as a part of history. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
Many of the early colonists in India, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
men of the East India Company, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
were enthusiastic about Indian life and culture. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
Many married Indian woman | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
and it seemed there was a positive mix of two cultures. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
But in Victorian Britain, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:06 | |
these relationships were seen as subversive, even dangerous. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:10 | |
Britain was in the grip of a religious revival. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
The British were adopting a new, more puritanical Christianity, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:20 | |
and they wanted the rest of the world to do likewise. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:24 | |
That shift would soon be felt on the far fringes of Empire. | 0:12:26 | 0:12:31 | |
It wasn't long before Victorian values arrived in India. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
They were brought, not only by missionaries, | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
but by wives sent out from Britain | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
who were arriving in ever-increasing numbers. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
They were known as memsaabs. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
They hadn't the slightest interest in local culture. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
One memsaab wrote of Indian holy men | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
as "horrible objects, with their wildly rolling eyes, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
"long tangled hair, and every bone visible in their wretched bodies." | 0:13:10 | 0:13:16 | |
Another arrived in India and wrote home, | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
"There's such a lot of everything!" | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
No wonder the memsaabs ran for the hills. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
They had very different ideas | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
about how to make themselves at home in India. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
The days of easygoing tolerance were now over. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:03 | |
In their place came a culture war, | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
a never-ending battle to maintain the British way of life | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
in the face of foreign temptation. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
The British strongholds in this battle | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
were the places they came to escape the summer heat. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
Hill stations, like Ooty. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
The Indians called it Ootacamund, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
but that was too much of a mouthful for most of the British. | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
As soon as they discovered the place, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:36 | |
they began to turn it into a version of Surrey. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
In places like this, a particular idea of Britishness was forged. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
Tea on the lawn, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:54 | |
a certain reserve, order, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
formality, unbelievable stuffiness. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
It is an idea that some people still have a soft spot for | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
while others have been laughing at it for decades. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
What tends to be forgotten, though, is that it was forged, initially, | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
as a defence against something. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:14 | |
In this case, as a defence against India. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:17 | |
Bungalows sprouted like little forts all over the hills. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:27 | |
Bungalow is originally an Indian word | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
meaning "a house in the Bengali style," | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
but the buildings it came to describe were very British indeed. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
The great Empire writer Rudyard Kipling | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
talked about them as "models of shut-up-ness." | 0:15:48 | 0:15:52 | |
Enclosed within their own little compound, rigidly ordered within, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
they really were about the separation of us from them. | 0:15:56 | 0:16:00 | |
Of course, the great shift in attitudes | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
was shared by men and memsaabs. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
But as mistresses of the house, | 0:16:14 | 0:16:16 | |
it was the women who were on the front line. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
For a young woman, arriving in this alien land | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
after weeks on a boat from England | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
must have been a truly daunting experience. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
Fortunately, though, help was at hand. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:41 | |
The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, | 0:16:45 | 0:16:50 | |
by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, | 0:16:50 | 0:16:52 | |
is an intriguing window into the mind of British India. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
It tells you absolutely everything, | 0:16:58 | 0:17:01 | |
from how much to pay the cook's assistant, | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
to the best way to divide up the family possessions | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
when you're moving house, by means of 11 camels, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
to how many coolies it takes to carry a piano. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
The answer to that one, if you're interested, is 16. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
The book is astonishingly rude about the Indians themselves. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
"The Indian servant," this bit here says, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
"is a child in all things save age, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
"and should be treated as a child. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:35 | |
"That is to say, kindly, but with the greatest firmness." | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
It was the memsaabs' duty | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
to introduce the native servants to the British way of doing things | 0:17:46 | 0:17:51 | |
and to teach them their place | 0:17:51 | 0:17:53 | |
as decent, dutiful inferiors. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
Yet for all their apparent self-confidence, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
these were women who lived in a state of fear - | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
fear that the climate and conditions in India might actually kill them. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:10 | |
St Stephen's Church was one of British Ooty's first buildings. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:22 | |
Its graveyard is full of British women and children | 0:18:23 | 0:18:27 | |
whose stay in the country didn't last long. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
Death and disease ravaged the British in India. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
Soldiers' wives and children | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
were three times more likely to suffer an early death | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
than if they'd stayed at home. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
"Sacred to the memory of Issabella Frances Etheldred, | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
"fourth daughter of the late Lieutenant Colonel Havelock, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
"14th Light Dragoons, | 0:18:58 | 0:18:59 | |
"who died June 18th 1851, aged 17 years, two months and three days." | 0:18:59 | 0:19:06 | |
How precisely they measured their loss. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
Along with the snobbery and self-righteousness | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
went a certain fortitude and courage, as well. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
Maybe they passed themselves off as the master race | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
because deep down, they knew that they were an endangered species. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
India was valuable to Britain, not only for its spices and cotton | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
but for another commodity... | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
People. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
A small island like Britain couldn't, by itself, find the manpower | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
to hold onto this vast territory. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
So the British came up with a system | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
that would become a cornerstone of Empire. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
They paid local soldiers to fight for them. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:38 | |
British officers would now lead Indian troops. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
SHOUTS IN OWN LANGUAGE | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
The colonised would provide the fighting force of colonialism | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
for centuries to come. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:52 | |
The Madras Regiment, founded in 1758, | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
is the oldest in the Indian Army. | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
It's spent most of its existence | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
fighting not for independent India, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
but for Britain. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:06 | |
It doesn't bother Captain Dilip Shekhar | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
that his regiment helped to build the Empire. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:16 | |
Three quarters of your battle honours are when you were part of the British Army. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
-Yes. -What do you think about that? -That's great. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
You were on the wrong side, from an Indian nationalist point of view - | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
you fought for the British. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:30 | |
We were soldiers, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:32 | |
and a soldier does not know whose region it is for he's fighting. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:36 | |
Tomorrow, I have a fight with any other country, | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
I'm told to fight with that country. I don't have any personal grievance. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:43 | |
Do you think the British being here was a good thing or a bad thing? | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
What happened in history is history. Still, we should not go into that | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
but, yes, they have done good for us, and even bad to us. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:53 | |
But you're... It's a good thing they're not here, isn't it? | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
Indian troops helped the British control their empire | 0:22:05 | 0:22:09 | |
and they played a key role fighting for Britain | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
through the 18th and 19th centuries, | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
right up to the 20th century and two world wars. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:19 | |
The British Empire wasn't just about conquests and government | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
and chaps in shorts telling foreigners what to do. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
It was also about money and profit. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
It began with a few unscrupulous adventurers | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
and it grew into a vast network that spanned the globe, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:57 | |
from Britain to Australia, | 0:22:57 | 0:22:58 | |
from Calcutta to Jamaica, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
from Australia to Hong Kong. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
Off the coast of China, | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
British traders made fortunes | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
from ships freighted with addictive drugs. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
And they helped themselves to the riches of Ancient India. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
They planted new crops in their expanding colonies, | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
like rubber in Malaysia... | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
..and transformed the economies of those countries. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
Empire trade and empire theft | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
helped make Britain a world capital of money. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
It may be surprising, | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
but a key factor in the development of the Empire | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
was a British sweet tooth. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:02 | |
Those at home had developed a taste for sugar | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
to sweeten the novelties arriving from the tropics - | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
coffee, | 0:24:11 | 0:24:12 | |
chocolate and tea. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:15 | |
The British were already becoming a nation of sugar addicts. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
Sugar from plantations in the British colony of Jamaica | 0:24:32 | 0:24:36 | |
could satisfy their craving. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:38 | |
But the island's population was tiny | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
and the plantations needed vast amounts of labour. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
The answer to the problem | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
lay in the trafficking of human beings from Africa. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
The slave trade. | 0:24:58 | 0:24:59 | |
The British didn't introduce slavery to the Caribbean | 0:25:13 | 0:25:16 | |
but they took to it with enthusiasm. | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
Traders bought slaves in Africa | 0:25:20 | 0:25:22 | |
and then shipped them thousands of miles across the world. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
Many died in the packed, filthy, airless cargo decks. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:34 | |
Sugar was a back-breaking crop to harvest. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
The cane had to be cut down and then stripped of its foliage | 0:25:39 | 0:25:43 | |
and then transported to the mill, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
often in intense, blazing heat. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
Within three years of their arriving here, | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
a third of them would be dead. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
By 1775, 1.5 million men, women and children | 0:26:03 | 0:26:08 | |
had been forcibly transported from Africa to the British West Indies. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:13 | |
Their descendants now people these islands. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
Treating human beings as beasts of burden | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
made the owners of sugar plantations rich. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
This is the planter's house on the Good Hope Estate, built in 1755. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:33 | |
Its owner was 23 when he bought it. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
He became the wealthiest man in Jamaica, | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
owning over 10,000 acres of land | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
and over 3,000 slaves. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
The luxury of this home | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
is an indication of the vast sums of money | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
which could be made in the colonies. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
Some of that wealth was spent on good living, | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
some on gaining power and influence back home. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
But much of it was invested in new opportunities to get rich | 0:27:06 | 0:27:11 | |
through international trade. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
For more than three centuries, | 0:27:15 | 0:27:17 | |
it was trade rather than conquest | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
which brought new colonies into the Empire. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
Though it was often trade at the end of a gun or a sword. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
Canada was opened up by the Hudson's Bay Company, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
which traded in skins and furs. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:34 | |
And the African Lakes Corporation | 0:27:35 | 0:27:37 | |
bought and sold the bounty of swathes of Africa. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:42 | |
Many of these companies | 0:27:43 | 0:27:45 | |
were run by men sitting in offices thousands of miles away | 0:27:45 | 0:27:50 | |
in the City of London. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:52 | |
On floors like this, traders speculated | 0:27:56 | 0:27:58 | |
on commodities from across the globe - | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
cotton from India... | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
..wool from Australia... | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
..and cocoa from West Africa. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
By the end of the 19th century, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:15 | |
more than half the world's trade was financed in British pounds. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:20 | |
Victorian Britain, in effect, had two empires - | 0:28:24 | 0:28:29 | |
one run by politicians, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:31 | |
the other by moneymen. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:33 | |
In South America, British banks supplied governments with credit. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:38 | |
British companies built railways across Argentina. | 0:28:38 | 0:28:43 | |
British settlers bought huge ranches and raised cattle. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:48 | |
Victorian investors grew rich | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
trading in things right across the globe. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
The former British island colony of Hong Kong | 0:29:20 | 0:29:23 | |
is so densely packed with banking and trading firms, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
it's known as the world's most vertical city. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
The place lives, eats and breathes money. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
The story of how Hong Kong came to be British | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
reflects the Empire's often ruthless pursuit of profit. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
It's an extraordinary story, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
even if it is one of the most shameful in British history. | 0:29:57 | 0:30:00 | |
And yet, this dark episode began innocently enough. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:09 | |
It was born from the English passion for a cup of tea. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
-Hello! -Hello. Hello. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:23 | |
Oh, it smells lovely, doesn't it? | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
Would you like to have a cup of tea? | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
-I'd love to have one, yes. -This way, please. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
In the early 19th century, | 0:30:34 | 0:30:36 | |
China was virtually the only place tea was grown. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:40 | |
But there was a problem. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
For three centuries, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
China had severely restricted trade with the West. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:51 | |
The British were desperate and had even sent a delegation to China. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:57 | |
They begged the Emperor to open up his country | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
and take some British products in exchange for tea. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
They presented him with all sorts of trinkets - | 0:31:06 | 0:31:10 | |
games and curiosities, | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
scientific instruments and toys. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
But he remained resolutely unimpressed. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
"We possess all things," said the Emperor. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
"I set no value upon things strange or ingenious | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
"and I have no use for your country's manufactures." | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
But to get the tea they craved, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:42 | |
the British had one thing to trade | 0:31:42 | 0:31:45 | |
that many Chinese craved even more. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
Opium. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:52 | |
The drug was illegal in China, | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
though the ban was widely ignored. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:00 | |
There were an estimated 12 million peasants addicted to opium. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:06 | |
The authorities there called it "a deadly poison, | 0:32:09 | 0:32:12 | |
"ruining the minds and morals of our people." | 0:32:12 | 0:32:16 | |
The British grew opium poppies in India. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
There they processed it in factories | 0:32:23 | 0:32:25 | |
on a colossal scale. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:27 | |
Finally, it was shipped to China | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
and sold to smugglers. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
With the profits, British traders bought Chinese tea. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:38 | |
In 1839, the Chinese Emperor decided he'd had enough. | 0:32:42 | 0:32:47 | |
He ordered more than 1,000 tonnes of British-supplied opium | 0:32:47 | 0:32:52 | |
to be seized and destroyed. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:54 | |
The British government was outraged. | 0:32:56 | 0:33:00 | |
It invoked a sacred and very convenient principle - | 0:33:00 | 0:33:05 | |
the principle of free trade. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
Britain HAD to be allowed to trade what and where she liked, | 0:33:08 | 0:33:12 | |
especially in the case of opium. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
Opium was making Britain rich. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
It soon accounted for over a fifth | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
of the income of the government of India. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
Two mighty empires, each convinced of their own superiority, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
were now set on collision course. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:30 | |
The Opium Wars were about to begin. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:34 | |
Britain's first ocean-going iron warship, The Nemesis, | 0:33:38 | 0:33:43 | |
built in Liverpool, was sent out to take on the Emperor's navy. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:47 | |
It helped destroy much of it in a single afternoon. | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
This was the modern world confronting an ancient one. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:57 | |
Sailing junks against steam-driven gun boats. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:01 | |
The Chinese had no choice but to surrender | 0:34:01 | 0:34:04 | |
and to open five ports to British trade. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
China had been forced to enter the modern global economy. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:12 | |
Hong Kong was one of Britain's prizes from the Opium Wars | 0:34:15 | 0:34:20 | |
and it remained in British hands until the end of the 20th century. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:25 | |
It would become one of the Empire's most important centres | 0:34:27 | 0:34:31 | |
for banking and trade. | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
FANFARE | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
When the British finally quit Hong Kong in 1997, | 0:34:40 | 0:34:43 | |
they did so boasting they were handing on a territory | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
"intimately wired into the world economy," | 0:34:47 | 0:34:50 | |
the shameful origins of British colonial presence here | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
conveniently forgotten. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
But China has never entirely forgotten | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
how a foreign power forced it at gunpoint | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
to allow millions of its citizens | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
to be turned into drug addicts. | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
In the second half of the 19th century, | 0:35:20 | 0:35:23 | |
the British Empire reached from Canada in the west | 0:35:23 | 0:35:26 | |
to Australia in the east. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:28 | |
The last phase of the expansion, | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
the conquest of much of Africa, was about to begin, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
and many of these empire builders | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
believed their work was ordained by God. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:38 | |
In the summer of 1861, a small party of white men | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
found themselves travelling up the River Shire | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
in what is now Malawi. | 0:35:50 | 0:35:52 | |
ELEPHANT TRUMPETS | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
BIRDS CALL | 0:35:57 | 0:35:59 | |
To Europeans at that time, Africa was simply "The Dark Continent", | 0:35:59 | 0:36:04 | |
a place of ignorance and superstition. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:08 | |
They had come here to change that. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
The men sang hymns as they travelled. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
Lead Kindly Light was a particular favourite. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
Their leader was already a legend in Britain, | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
a man who had come to embody the Victorian purpose in Africa. | 0:36:24 | 0:36:29 | |
His name was David Livingstone, | 0:36:32 | 0:36:35 | |
a deeply religious, fanatically determined Scot. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:38 | |
He was the first white man to have crossed the continent of Africa. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:45 | |
He'd come here as a missionary to save African souls for Christ | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
but what he found appalled him. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:51 | |
Britain had abolished slavery in the Empire decades before, | 0:36:55 | 0:37:00 | |
but Livingstone found Africans still being captured and sold | 0:37:00 | 0:37:05 | |
to Arab and Portuguese slavers all over East Africa. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
Now he and his companions | 0:37:12 | 0:37:14 | |
dreamed of sowing the seeds of a new world here. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
One based not on African superstition and slavery, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:25 | |
but on two Victorian obsessions - | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
Christianity | 0:37:28 | 0:37:29 | |
and free trade. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:31 | |
This river would become God's highway into the heart of Africa. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
Down it would come African cotton | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
and wheat and ivory and ostrich feathers, | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
and up it, in exchange, would go clothes and tools and machinery | 0:37:48 | 0:37:53 | |
made in Glasgow or Manchester. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
BIRDS CALL | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
Livingstone had a slogan for it - | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
Christianity and Commerce. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:06 | |
AFRICAN SINGING | 0:38:06 | 0:38:10 | |
This would be the Empire's new civilising mission. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:13 | |
But the place chosen by Livingstone for his mission | 0:38:16 | 0:38:19 | |
turned out to be hostile and dangerous... | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
..a malarial death trap. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:24 | |
Then, in 1865, after years of exploring the interior, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:32 | |
the most famous missionary in the world vanished. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:36 | |
Nothing was heard from him for an entire three years. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:44 | |
It was a worldwide mystery. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:50 | |
The New York Herald sent a journalist, | 0:38:50 | 0:38:52 | |
Henry Morton Stanley, to Africa. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
"Find Livingstone", were his orders, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
"by any means necessary." | 0:38:58 | 0:39:00 | |
FOLK MUSIC, DRUMS | 0:39:03 | 0:39:06 | |
And find him he did, in what would become | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
one of the most celebrated encounters of the Victorian age. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:26 | |
Stanley was a chancer, | 0:39:28 | 0:39:30 | |
so we must take his account of the meeting with a pinch of salt, | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
but here's what he says happened. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
"As I approached, I noticed he was pale. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
"He looked weary. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:42 | |
"I would have embraced him, but he being an Englishman, | 0:39:42 | 0:39:45 | |
"I wasn't sure how he would receive me. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
"So I walked up to him deliberately, took off my hat and said, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:53 | |
"Dr Livingstone, I presume." | 0:39:53 | 0:39:56 | |
But Livingstone didn't want to give up. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
For nearly two years, he continued with his mission | 0:40:01 | 0:40:03 | |
to abolish the slave trade of Central Africa. | 0:40:03 | 0:40:07 | |
He drove himself on, sick with cholera and dysentery. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:11 | |
He'd even extracted his own teeth. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:13 | |
Livingstone, it is said, made only one convert to Christianity, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
nor did trade with the British | 0:40:23 | 0:40:26 | |
transform the lives of African villagers. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:28 | |
But he did help to persuade the British government | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
to fight slavery worldwide, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:39 | |
and the work of fanatical anti-slavers like Livingstone | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
persuaded the British that there was something noble about their empire. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:47 | |
He died in Africa. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:52 | |
He was alone, thousands of miles from home. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
They found him in his hut, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
kneeling, it was said, in prayer. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
Two faithful servants, | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
one of them a former slave freed by Livingstone, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:10 | |
gathered up his body and carried it all the way to the coast. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:14 | |
There, they loaded it onto a ship bound for London. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
His heart, though, was buried in Africa. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:27 | |
David Livingstone had become more than an explorer, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
more than a missionary, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:53 | |
he had become a myth. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:56 | |
His brave life and lonely death | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
reassured a people busy conquering the world | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
that the Empire was about more than greed and domination. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:07 | |
It was about sacrifice and justice | 0:42:07 | 0:42:10 | |
and doing good. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
The story of the British Empire | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
involved trade and conquest, of course, | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
but it also involved the movement of huge numbers of ordinary people. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:40 | |
Today, we sometimes find it hard to believe just how many people | 0:42:43 | 0:42:47 | |
migrated, willingly or unwillingly, | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
across huge distances to carve out the Empire and make it work. | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
And the consequences are still with us. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:01 | |
This is Nairobi in Kenya. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
No-one planned Nairobi as a capital city. It just happened. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:12 | |
It happened because it was a railway stop | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
on one of the most ambitious lines in the entire British Empire, | 0:43:14 | 0:43:18 | |
the Lunatic Line. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:20 | |
For the Empire in 1900, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:38 | |
making yourself at home meant building a railway. | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
The line ran 600 miles | 0:43:51 | 0:43:54 | |
from the coast, through Nairobi | 0:43:54 | 0:43:56 | |
all the way to Lake Victoria. | 0:43:56 | 0:43:58 | |
It was built to bring British goods to the interior | 0:44:00 | 0:44:04 | |
and raw materials out to ports on the coast. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:08 | |
It would encourage British farmers to come out here and settle. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:16 | |
There was plenty to merit the title "The Lunatic Line." | 0:44:18 | 0:44:23 | |
There was the cost, £534 million in today's money. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:28 | |
There was the engineering required | 0:44:28 | 0:44:30 | |
to allow a train to climb from sea level into the mountains | 0:44:30 | 0:44:34 | |
and then to plunge down into the great rift valley, | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
and to construct 1,200 bridges along the way. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:43 | |
But it wasn't the British who built the railway. | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
It wasn't even the Africans. This remarkable feat | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
was the work of 32,000 labourers, craftsmen and engineers | 0:44:53 | 0:44:58 | |
brought in by the British from India. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:02 | |
They knew how to build railways there. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:04 | |
HORN BLOWS | 0:45:10 | 0:45:12 | |
Soon, the Lunatic Line | 0:45:14 | 0:45:15 | |
was carrying coffee and tea, sisal and wheat | 0:45:15 | 0:45:19 | |
from the settler's farms to the coast. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
The building of the railway was a staggering feat | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
but it came at a staggering cost in human life. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
2,500 workers were killed during its construction | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
by malaria, accidents, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
or man-eating lions. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:42 | |
What was the attraction for someone like your great-grandfather | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
and his brother when they came here? | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
Well, I mean, to be honest, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:54 | |
I don't think you were very well off back at home, OK? | 0:45:54 | 0:45:59 | |
Cos, I mean, why would you want to leave the comfort of your home | 0:45:59 | 0:46:03 | |
to come to this wilderness? | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
Harsh African conditions, vegetation, | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
a strange land to them. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:10 | |
It wasn't very easy cos water was scarce, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
especially when they were going | 0:46:14 | 0:46:16 | |
across the Tara desert, towards Salvo. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:19 | |
They didn't have water for showering for weeks. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:22 | |
They would just get enough water just to drink. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:24 | |
And what my great-grandfather told me is, | 0:46:24 | 0:46:28 | |
when the carriage would come for drinking water, | 0:46:28 | 0:46:31 | |
they would pretend to be clumsy drinking their water, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
basically, they'd go, scoop it out and pretend to be clumsy about it | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
and in the process have a little shower, you know, | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
literally throw the water on them. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:42 | |
-And dangerous, dangerous. -Yes. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:44 | |
Wilderness, wild animals, out in Salvo. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
Salvo's a place? | 0:46:48 | 0:46:49 | |
Yes, that's man-eaters. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:51 | |
I've read accounts of these attacks by the man-eating lions | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
and they talk about men being dragged from their tents, | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
and their colleagues being able to hear them | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
-as they're eaten alive by the lions. -Yes, yes. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
Horrifying, isn't it? | 0:47:02 | 0:47:03 | |
Let me ask you a political question. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
The fact that your, you and your community | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
are now a very, very long way | 0:47:11 | 0:47:14 | |
from where naturally you came from, and you're in this alien culture, | 0:47:14 | 0:47:18 | |
was what the British did in bringing you here | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
a good thing or a bad thing? | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
Um... | 0:47:23 | 0:47:25 | |
That's a good question. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
To be honest, I have no regrets for being here | 0:47:28 | 0:47:30 | |
and when people ask me, you know, "Who are you? | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
"Where are you from?" You know? | 0:47:33 | 0:47:35 | |
I say Kenya's my home, and I have no regrets for coming here. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:39 | |
The Indian workers who built the Kenyan railway | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
were part of a bigger Empire story, | 0:47:51 | 0:47:53 | |
the shifting of populations around the globe | 0:47:53 | 0:47:57 | |
to meet the Empire's need for labour. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
In the 18th century, Africans were taken as slaves | 0:48:01 | 0:48:06 | |
to the sugar plantations of the West Indies. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
Their descendants now inhabit those islands. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
In the 19th century, Tamils from South India were sent | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
to pick tea on estates in Sri Lanka | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
or to tap rubber in Malaya. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:25 | |
All had to make new homes in Britain's ever-growing Empire. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:31 | |
The world still lives with the consequences | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
of these great population shifts. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
But what happened to these people | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
as the Empire began to recede? | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
In the 20th century, | 0:48:56 | 0:48:57 | |
Indians came to play a vital part in the Kenyan economy | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
as shopkeepers and professionals. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:05 | |
CHEERING | 0:49:05 | 0:49:07 | |
Then, on the 12th of December 1963, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
Kenya gained independence from Britain. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
Now, Indians in Kenya were seen as unwelcome relics | 0:49:18 | 0:49:22 | |
from the days of British rule. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
Many of them feared for their future | 0:49:25 | 0:49:28 | |
and turned to their former colonial masters to provide a new home. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:32 | |
NEWSREEL PRESENTER: The Asian community prepare to leave. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
Britain was their destination. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:37 | |
The Kenya government did not pull its punches in telling the British-passport-holding Asians | 0:49:37 | 0:49:42 | |
they were not wanted. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:44 | |
Asian shopkeepers had little alternative | 0:49:44 | 0:49:46 | |
but to wind up their businesses and seek new roots. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
Many Kenyan Asians chose to settle in the Midlands, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
in cities like Leicester. | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
In the process, they transformed the face of urban Britain. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
The Empire was coming home. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
The legacy of the British Empire | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
still affects millions of people across the globe, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
in sometimes surprising ways. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
The British introduced many parts of the world | 0:50:27 | 0:50:30 | |
to their favourite obsession... | 0:50:30 | 0:50:33 | |
Sport. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:37 | |
For the British, sport was part of the civilising mission of Empire, | 0:50:41 | 0:50:46 | |
the gift of the mother country to her colonies. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
Whether it involved chasing a ball, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:54 | |
smashing it with a racket... | 0:50:54 | 0:50:56 | |
..or whacking it with a club. | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
The sporting gospel was carried | 0:51:02 | 0:51:04 | |
to the farthest-flung corners of the Empire. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
Wherever in the Empire sport was played, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:18 | |
it was supposed to bind subject peoples to their colonial masters. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:22 | |
But the spirit of fair play and the interests of Empire | 0:51:26 | 0:51:30 | |
would eventually clash head-on. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:32 | |
The West Indian island of Jamaica | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
had been a British colony since 1655. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:50 | |
The British introduced cricket to Jamaica in the 1830s. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:57 | |
It soon seemed to enter the bloodstream of the island. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
He's got a good eye, that boy in the yellow shirt, hasn't he? | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
Who's the best cricketer here? | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
You are? | 0:52:09 | 0:52:11 | |
You're the two champs? | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
But there was a problem here. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:19 | |
How could a game which prided itself on fairness | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
work in an empire divided between rulers and ruled, | 0:52:23 | 0:52:29 | |
and therefore very obviously unfair? | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
Cricket in the West Indies would become not a unifying force | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
but a symbol of oppression. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:39 | |
In 19th-century Jamaica, white people owned the land, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
black people worked on it. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:47 | |
While cricket was supposed to be good for subject races, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
at that time, black and white rarely played together. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
It's a practise day at Sabina Park, | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
the home of Jamaica's Kingston Cricket Club. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
When it was formed in 1863, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
it was a place for white men to play the game. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
Even when black and white began to play on the same side, | 0:53:13 | 0:53:17 | |
racial tensions in the game remained. | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
No black player was ever selected to captain the national team. | 0:53:22 | 0:53:28 | |
Whites were chosen to bat, | 0:53:28 | 0:53:29 | |
while blacks were relegated to bowling or fielding. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:34 | |
It wasn't quite the done thing | 0:53:37 | 0:53:39 | |
for white men to do a lot of running around in the tropics, | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
besides which there was a distinction | 0:53:42 | 0:53:44 | |
between brawn - bowling, | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
and brains - batting. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:48 | |
Batting was for white men. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:50 | |
Change had to come. | 0:53:53 | 0:53:54 | |
It arrived in the person of Frank Worrall, who in 1960 | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
became the first black player | 0:54:03 | 0:54:04 | |
to captain a West Indies team for an entire series. | 0:54:04 | 0:54:08 | |
When Worrall brought his team to England, | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 | |
they showed they could play the game rather better than their hosts. | 0:54:13 | 0:54:17 | |
'The Oval can never have known a scene like this. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
'Victory in the series by three matches to one | 0:54:21 | 0:54:23 | |
'confirms the West Indies as the most powerful side in the world.' | 0:54:23 | 0:54:28 | |
It was generally inferred that here is the right person at last | 0:54:32 | 0:54:35 | |
to lead a West Indies team | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
because I think, before, there wasn't that unity | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
based on who was appointed captain, who was appointed vice captain. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:44 | |
Now it was felt that the players have a captain they can fight for. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:48 | |
So I think it was greeted with cheers throughout the Caribbean | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
and I think many people were saying, | 0:54:51 | 0:54:53 | |
"At last, we have the right man to lead." | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
-Like a Mandela moment! -It certainly was, that's why I said that. | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
-Free at last, free at last. -Free at last, at last, at last! | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
England taught the West Indies cricket | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
and there was a grand opportunity | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
for the students now to reverse that process | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
and in the mind of many of the West Indian players, | 0:55:11 | 0:55:14 | |
this was, you know, the turning point, I think, for everyone. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:18 | |
Sort of like sweet revenge. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
CROWD CHEERS | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
In the end, the British idea of fair play | 0:55:24 | 0:55:28 | |
undermined the very notion of empire itself. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:32 | |
If a black cricket captain, why not a black prime minister? | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
In 1962, Jamaica became the first Caribbean island | 0:55:38 | 0:55:43 | |
to gain independence, | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
and through the 1960s, all over the Empire, | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
from the West Indies to Fiji, | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
the Union Jack came down. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
The Empire brought blood and tears | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
and dispossession to millions of people, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
but it also brought roads and railways and education. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:14 | |
There is no simple judgement | 0:56:19 | 0:56:21 | |
to be made on three turbulent centuries of history. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:25 | |
The Empire was certainly cruel, unjust, and unjustifiable | 0:56:27 | 0:56:32 | |
if you were a slave on a plantation in the 18th century. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:37 | |
But it was benign, if you were rescued from a slave ship | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
by the Royal Navy in the 19th century. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:46 | |
For good or ill, | 0:56:53 | 0:56:54 | |
much of the world is as it is today because of the Empire. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:59 | |
From the way it looks... | 0:57:00 | 0:57:01 | |
..to the sports people play. | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
From the religion they practise | 0:57:13 | 0:57:17 | |
to the language they speak. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:19 | |
It has changed the very genetic make-up of Britain. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
If only we can look at it clear-eyed, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
it can tell us a lot about who we are. | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
It's a story that belongs to all of us. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
We've been through pride, | 0:58:06 | 0:58:08 | |
we've been through shame, | 0:58:08 | 0:58:10 | |
mostly nowadays we seem to be in denial, | 0:58:10 | 0:58:12 | |
but if we really want to understand who we are, | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
it's time we stopped pretending the Empire was nothing to do with us. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:21 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:52 | 0:58:55 |