Some could say that the US must look at its own violent past and leave Britain alone. But here's the problem. We're a part of their violent past, with the sanctioned institution of slavery, the conquest of a continent and the brutal genocide visited on the peoples who already lived here. We can't look at Britain's colonial past without looking at our own, and vice versa.
One word sticks out in the brief public statement that she made on her 21st birthday to serve her country for however long her life was. She referred to her “imperial” family. That’s the word.
Britain has lost two empires. We in the United States were much of the first. The second one began slipping away in the 40’s and is all but gone today.
As Elizabeth is remembered, her family is wrapped in traditional roles, probably somewhat comforting in its predictability. The pageantry is everywhere. The emphasis is on tradition and Britain’s heritage.
But which one? King Arthur, Henry VIII, Shakespeare and tea, or the excesses of empire?
Bear in mind that I have a great love for Britain and their people. If I had to live somewhere other than New England it would be Britain. But I have to be honest to myself about the colonial heritage.
England started to flex its colonial muscle during the reign of Elizabeth I in the second half of the 16th century. First to feel the might of the rumbles of empire was Ireland. Bear in mind that England was obsessed with Ireland for some time before Elizabeth, but under her reign the colonization of Ireland happened. The tensions in Northern Ireland between Catholic and Protestant are a direct result of this colonization. The Protestants were the wealthy landowners and the Catholics were their workers.
England next turned its collective eye to the newly discovered New World, although they were hardly alone in that. For a century and a half England dominated the eastern half of North America. After 1776 we know how that went. George III never got over it. BTW George was Elizabeth’s 4 gr. grandfather. She knew that. She seemed to have gotten over the loss of their first empire, having made numerous trips to the US. And why not? I was always glad to see her come.
The remnants of the first empire in the New World continued in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, which kept slave traders in business until the slave trade was abolished in 1807. The brutality of the sugar industry was beyond description. The average survival of an enslaved worker was no more than a year or two before they were burned to death.
After Britain lost their first empire they turned east. The East India Company had been formed a long time before and they ruled India like one big happy plantation. Once the bottom fell out in the 1850’s the British government (under Queen Victoria) took direct control of the government of India. By that time Britain had taken countries all over the world. By that point they had given up on getting us back.
Africa and Asia were a major focus as well as the Pacific Islands. Where they couldn’t control directly they controlled indirectly, such in the Opium Wars during Victoria’s reign. They forced the opium trade on China to finance the tea trade. Nice.
I could go on about atrocities, such as the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, also known as the Amritsar massacre, in 1919, when several hundred Indians were gunned down brutally during a protest. They couldn’t escape because they were in a closed courtyard. Books have been written about Britain’s racist, violent colonial occupation of many countries.
No, none of that was Elizabeth’s fault. She inherited the legacy, though. She reigned through the dismemberment of the empire and created the Commonwealth, sort of an empire lite, without the military presence.
But Elizabeth is dead, and her sometimes cranky son Charles has become King Charles III. He has a tall order. In the short term, being a steady presence as Britain navigates their self-imposed post-Brexit hangover. Long term, he needs to help create a new Britain based not on the tired old empire of the past but on an island nation with an international profile. He needs to publicly acknowledge the many sins of the imperial past and say that they aren’t going back there again. There was a hint of that in his first speech to the nation. Let’s hope he follows through.
