did the british empire really do so much to shape the world of today? sathnam sanghera, welcome to hardtalk. it's nice to be back. it's great to have you back, and you are back with a new book, which i have here — empireworld. it's your take on just how massive the impact of the british empire was and still is on the world. you certainly don't undersell your idea, it's subtitled how british imperialism has shaped the globe.

i really do believe that. i think the british empire explains so much about people's daily lives around the world, tea drinking in india, in britain, patterns of tax avoidance, even the bbc world service used to be known as the bbc empire service. it explains so much about our daily news. you've just come back from guyana — there's a border dispute there that goes back to empire, israel—palestine, a dispute that has its roots in empire, but also, there's a gap between the way in which britain sees itself and the world sees britain through the prism of this history, and i think we need to remember what we did before we go around pontificating on things like democracy and the environment and human rights. we need to remember our distinctly patchy records on those things during the age of empire. but do you think your perspective is driven in part by your own background 7 you're of indian heritage, born and raised in the united kingdom, so britain and india matter particularly to you, you know them particularly well.

i'm just wondering if you're sitting, listening, watching this in tokyo, beijing, brasilia, are you really going to buy the concept that the british empire, as opposed to any other empire, has been this global force, which you say, apart from the internet, you can't think of anything else which influences the world so much? yeah, absolutely. i mean, it affects south america. i mean, something like 60% of the countries who ended up playing football got it indirectly or directly through the british empire. the english language. christianity. you know, these are things that we need to understand through the prism of this history. so, many historians who've spent decades looking at the british empire seem to feel an impulse to treat it as some sort of accounting exercise — they look at what was positive about it, they look at what was negative and then they try and sort of come to an overall conclusion, good or bad. were you tempted to do that too? i think initially, cos that's the only way we've talked about empire in britain until recently. but what i realise with the empire world,

travelling to mauritius and nigeria and barbados and india, is that the legacies are profoundly contradictory. so, the british empire resulted in quite a lot of democracy around the world — australia, singapore and so on. it also resulted in a huge amount of geopolitical chaos, it spread slavery, it also spread anti—slavery, it spread the free press, it spread press censorship, it destroyed the environment in massive ways, but it also led to the birth of modern environmentalism. so these legacies are much more contradictory than i expected when i started myjourney into this history. some of that is just happenstance and unintended consequences. surely you're trying to get to sort of core motivations for the british imperial experience? there weren't any core motivations in the sense that it was such a sprawling history, covered such a wide geographical area. it's very hard to generalise — whatever you say about the british empire, you can say the opposite to a certain degree. a man in india in the early

20th century might have had a really positive experience with colonialism in the morning — a police officer might have helped him sort out a dispute — but then in the evening, he might have had a horrible experience of imperial racism. both things can be true. opposite things can be true at the same time, and i think that's a really powerful way to understand this history. and what you seem to be telling us is that we shouldn't look at the empire and its legacies through prejudiced eyes, we shouldn't bring our own biases to it, we should just confront the truth as best we can discover it from the historical record, and goodness knows you spent a lot of time researching this. but it seems to me there's one telling quote at the beginning of your book, which does give you an overarching motivation and perhaps give you a sense of being on one side. you say, in an — i mean, you don't say it, you quote an african proverb at the very opening of the book, and the proverb goes like this, "until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always

glorify the hunter." i think what that is alluding to, for me anyway, is the fact that the british concealed a lot of the facts of what happened. i don't want to sound... covered stuff—up? yeah, absolutely. when they left india, there was said to be a pall of smoke over delhi cos of all the documents that were being burnt. if you look into the foundations of nigeria, the founders of nigeria went out of their way to destroy evidence of what they were doing. even now, the records, the personal records of lord mountbatten, the final viceroy of india, are still officially secret. so it's taken a lot of time for historians to catch up with what happened. we've only had one view of history, which has been the view of the colonisers, but now we're getting multiple perspectives finally. yeah. what you seem to be saying as well, though, and again, you've just told me, you know, i'm open to both the contradictions and the complications of empire, what you seem to be saying more than anything else — again, correct me if i'm wrong

— is that there was a driver, a motivation behind british imperialism, and that was out and out racism. to quote you, before you begin your answer — this is an important quote — "the british empire was the single most significant incubator, refiner and propagator of white supremacy in the history of the planet." that is absolutely true for what empire was like at the height of empire, but at the same time, because obviously, things can be true at the same time, officially, british empire was nonracist. at the same time, imperialists in london were taking on the racism of australian colonists and saying "you should moderate yourself." but there's absolutely no question that the british empire was proudly... yeah, but as soon as you start to convolute the argument, i get a little confused. was a prime motivating force of british imperialism racism or not? absolutely, at the height of empire. and it's reflected in the fact that when racial science emerged in the 19th century, it had a distinctly british flavour. it became something else in germany and then it became

something else in america, but it was pretty much british racial science. and also, the british empire became a kind of beacon for white supremacists around the world. and you'll see it in the poem, white man's burden by rudyard kipling, written by famous imperialists, and that poem is about encouraging the americans to do in the philippines what the british did with brown people across the world. but those historians, and there are many of them — andrew roberts and nigel biggar and many others — who critique your history, for being far too negative and condemnatory about british imperialism, they point out that what you fail to do consistently is look at other forms of imperialism. for example, otherforms of european imperialism as practised by the belgians in the congo or the germans in southwest africa, namibia as it now is, which were more brutally, overtly racist than the british empire ever was. i don't know how you measure racism. there's not a unit of racism, but they've got a bit

of a point in that the country with the biggest problem with imperialism, nostalgia at the moment is not britain, it's russia. could say turkey's got a problem too. the dutch, in the recent survey, were found to be more nostalgic about their empire that we are. and you surely couldn't argue, in this argument about racism and the importance of the british empire, that somehow, british imperial racism was an incubator for russian racism, could you? absolutely not, they're separate. no, but the whole point of your book is that — to quote the subtitle again — how british imperialism shaped the globe. and i'm just wondering whether you're overreaching? no, because the british empire was the biggest empire in human history. that is the fact. that's why it matters perhaps more than, you know, the belgian history or the dutch history. the legacies are real and profound, notjust within that 25% of the world that we colonised, but beyond that, cos the world had to deal with us. so i don't think there's been any kind of process of truth

and reconciliation with that history. what about consideration of the worlds, the societies, the cultures that the british empire imposed itself upon? there isn't so much in the book about the way, for example, nigerian society worked in all of its complex — of course it wasn't nigeria then — but that part of west africa worked before the british imperialists arrived. you could say the same about other imperial projects, that you don't spend too much time looking at what came before and, indeed, you don't spend that much time looking at the 75 years of history that went after the british empire. it would say it's a big enough book already! it's 350,000 words long. if i started talking about what life was like... no, but isn't that important? because... yeah, it is. ..because by assuming that so much of what we see in those different territories is all about the british empire, you may be missing elements of culture, of society that were important before the british ever arrived. absolutely, but i do use the analogy in the middle

of the book about how british empire was not like a school. there's a temptation to that the british empire was like a school with the headmaster in london, the classrooms representing the colonies, but actually, because it took nine months to get a message between the headmaster in the classroom, often, the classroom behaved in its own way. the teacher did what they wanted. often they already had rules, which continued to be activated and were only corrected when there was a crisis. so i do think the book relentlessly acknowledges the complexity of the history. no, it does constantly reference the complexity. how would you explain the fact that your own grandfather, for example, had a great sort of admiration for the british and their empire, and you could look across the empire, from singapore where it's pretty obvious, to hong kong where, again, it's pretty obvious, to countries like nigeria where there's a substantial number of people inside nigeria today who look back with a degree of admiration, fondness on things that the british

empire gave them. how do you explain that? i think that's the way it always was. i mean, even gandhi, the most famous opponent of empire, at one stage of his life was quite into imperial values when he was a lawyer, you know, and like i was saying, empire was different things in different times of the day in india. it was different things in different parts of empire, it was definitely different things in different parts of people's lives. your dad arrived from india, a punjabi sikh, with actually very little education — i think he pretty much functionally illiterate — he's watched your rise as a writer and historian and i wonder what he makes of your take on both the country he came to and the country he life behind? well, sikhs have a very close relationship with empire. i didn't really... i don't think you could really understand sikhism without really understanding the british empire because the sikh identity was supercharged by the british. this idea that we're a martial race, something you might struggle when looking at my

physique, but that was created by the british! right? yeah. the sikh demographics were hugely shaped by the british empire because the british fetishised us, so there were a lot of conversions to sikhism in the 19th century. so i might not be here if it wasn't for the british empire. i might not exist. i definitely wouldn't be living in a multicultural country if it wasn't for british empire, because we are a multicultural country because we had a multicultural empire. do you think there is a danger that some leaders — i'm thinking of politicians with power — in some post—british colonial countries would find something rather helpful in your book? cos in a way, you're saying there are deep—rooted impacts, and many of them malign that are the result of the british empire that are very difficult to root out of these societies. and take an example, take zimbabwe — we know that robert mugabe, an authoritarian, a tyrant, let's be honest — he blamed the white man and he blamed the imperial legacy for many

things, which, frankly, many people would put at his own door as just a result of corruption and mismanagement. yeah, and it's been — decolonisation has been weaponised in india by modi who's trying to get rid of all remnants of british colonialism, but also, it's including the mughal emperors, so he's using it as a way to be islamophobic. but doesn't your whole take on empire and its legacy, doesn't it rob these nationstates, which have, after all, been independent for 70, 80 years, it robs them of agency and of a sense of responsibility. to a degree, but i think there's been hugely inspiring work being done in the name of decolonisation recently. i mean, the renaming of places in tasmania, for example, suicide bay, the site of an aboriginal massacre, now has an indigenous name — that's a hugely dignifying thing to do. the return of ghanaian loot — the v&a and the british museum have returned some loot to ghana — that's hugely important to their national psyche. these are powerful symbols. do they really make any difference to the people... i think they make a huge

difference, like learning medicine, like...it�*s happening in india — to teach medicine in indigenous languages can be a really important part of your rising self—confidence as a nation. but there's a limit to what you can do with decolonisation because it's baked into the world. you can't stop cricket being played in india, you can't get rid of christianity in africa, you can't undo entire nations made by the british, like niger and australia and pakistan, can you? like nigeria and australia and pakistan, can you? ——nigeria no. but i want to come back to the point about agency and responsibility, cos you make a point, for example, just one specific point — you make a point of talking about the anti—gay laws — much tougher and draconian in recent years in some parts of africa, and you tie it explicitly to the british empire

and the way in which british rulers in these countries ensured that laws were toughened up against homosexuality, for example. you're sort of piling on the blame on the british, but surely, if you look at a country like uganda today, or ghana, which hasjust toughened up its anti—gay laws, the responsibility, the agency lies with the governments, which have been in power for many years, which are truly utterly independent. absolutely, and i've met some lgbt workers who put the blame purely on their current governments. but what you've got there is a very paradoxical situation because, you know, the majority of anti—gay legislation that existed in the world in 2018 came directly or indirectly from the british empire. but, equally, the western governments and britain are doing quite a lot to help lgbt people in the modern age. yeah, and isn't the point, you know, you're saying, look, here was britain, and through the sort of 18th, 19th century, it posed its will and its values upon the world in, as you say, in an overtly racist form in many ways. but the point surely is that britain, over the last 70 years, has changed massively, the sort of social morays

and attitudes and legislation for those things in britain has changed in all sorts of ways. that's about agency and these countries, which we left long ago, also have that same agency. but you don't seem to pinpoint that? no, i do, iagree with you to a degree. i mean, someone like shashi tharoor who wrote a very negative book about the affect of british empire upon india — i think that robs agency from indians who didn'tjust take it all, you know, they responded to imperialism in all sorts of ways, some of them did well out of it. it's a deeply paradoxical situation, hence my point that opposite things can be true at the same time. yeah. 0pposite things can be true, it can all be complex, nuanced and contradictory, and yet, you know, again, i come back to the point you've written something of a sort of polemical book. it's that mismatch in a way that you're saying much of the previous history of empire has lacked nuance. it's either been empire good or empire bed,

it's been binary. you want the nuance, and yet there's one fundamental way in which you're not nuanced. you say definitely for good or ill the british empire mattered more than anything else. i don't think that's polemical. but, equally, i get told all the time i've been too negative about empire or too positive about empire. it depends on... who tells you you've been too positive? oh, the left! the hard left who — i did an interview with novara media on the far left, and they definitely feel like i've been too positive to say, you know, like i've said, britain resulted in — the british empire resulted in a disproportionate amount of democracy. so it depends rather on what you thought about empire before you picked my book up. yeah. it hasn't been easy for you, the aftermath of writing first empireland and now empireworld, because you've stirred controversy. as you say, some people have been very upset because they feel you've been far too negative about the british imperial

experience, that, in a sense, you've been talking down britain and its values and its reputation. how seriously have you had to take the abuse, the threats... what has happened? it has been pretty horrible. you know, i've had kind of stalking situations and occasionally had to worry about my personal security. 0nline or actual physical? in real life. i started doing adult events at one point because of all i stopped doing adult events at one point because of all ——stopped the shouting and the screaming. but i haven't had it the worst. i mean, david 0lusoga, it's a matter for record, has a personal bodyguard at some live events. he's a great black historian in the uk. yeah. and corinne fowler who was a historian who wrote a report for the national trust about colonialism. she's talked about having to call the police, about becoming too scared to walk down the street. and this shouldn't happen,

and because all we are doing is trying to promote knowledge, but it has happened. but i also feel at the same time that the culture war that has led to all this behaviour is kind of over. ——stopped. really? i feel like it hasn't really been tested in an election, i feel like the politicians who were engaged in it have lost heart, we even had keir starmer... did you really think... imean, i'mjust... as you're saying that, i'm actually eyeing a quote from rishi sunak, of course, the prime minister of britain with indian heritage, who said just a few days ago that "extremists are spreading a poison, they want us to doubt our country's history and achievements. "they want us to accept a moral equivalence between britain and some despicable regimes in the world." i mean, i'mjust thinking to myself — when sunak talks about extremists who want us to doubt our country's history and achievements — i'm not saying you're an extremist, but... yeah! ..you're certainly somebody inviting us to be a little bit sceptical about the received wisdom of britain's achievements? yeah, he said all sorts of silly things. he also recently said that historians should stop rewriting history, which is literally what they do. but he's on his way out. if you look at the surveys, something like two—thirds of british people think it's

a good idea to teach kids about colonialism and slavery. a survey last year found that 44% of people think the royal family should pay reparations for slavery, which i thought was really high given i don't think most people even know that the royal family were involved in slavery. so i feel quite optimistic the population that the population are over this culture war way before the politicians. do you want british people to feel a sense of guilt, shame, responsibility? absolutely not. it's got nothing to do with pride, shame, your feelings are irrelevant. history is an intellectual exercise. for me, what this is about is about having therapy as a nation and it's about carrying yourself in the world in a more grown—up way, at a time, because of brexit, where we're having to re—establish our international relationships. right, but therapy... i mean, taking it from the personal to the political — therapy is about taking responsibility often. you want... you know, whether it be political rulers or the general public, to sort of have a sense

of responsibility, do you, for this past? but therapy�*s also not about pride or shame, is it? i mean, i've had therapy. i've also written a memoir about my family and discovered very dark things about my family. did it make me love them any less? no. actually, it made me love them even more, because looking into the history, taking the time to find out can be an act of patriotism. but there are specific things... there are things like apologies coming from the very top, for example, from the royal family orfrom the prime minister of the country and, you know, it's been complicated, we've sort of said sorry but not quite a full apology to nations for slavery, for example, and then there's the very practical issue of reparations. are you, having been historian who's dug deep into the history of empire and of slavery, are you an advocate now of absolutely paying up reparations to those countries which suffered so much as a result of slavery? i think when you use the word �*reparations�* in britain, people clutch their pearls, and i get it. i mean, there was a judge at the international court

ofjustice who recently said, "we owe £18 trillion" and that's an unrealistic amount of money, that's not going to happen. but i also think, at the same time, we've started the process. 0ur relationship with ireland has been completely reimagined, i think, in recent decades through post—colonial truth and reconciliation, through the good friday agreement. there was money paid out, there were apologies. same with kenya — we were forced by court to pay £20 million — i would say those were reparations — we made an apology, our relationship with kenya is better as a result. the church of england has set aside £100 million, possibly even more. that may go further now. may go further. individualfamilies are paying reparations — the gladstones, the trevelyans, your colleague, alex renton. and i feel like we've embarked upon the process of reparations without really thinking about it. we just need to do it for more countries. a final thought — your books, including one that you've written specifically for children, are now read at british schools.

i think you personally have made sure that thousands of them have been sent to schools across the uk. do you think the next generation of british kids will have a very different view of what the british empire was and what it meant? i haven't personally sent them, my publisher did — i couldn't afford it. but i feel that young people have got no time for the culture war. they deal with this history in a frank and honest way. they feel the way about museums that, you know, we used to feel about zoos as kids, and they haven't got any time for the backlash, they'rejust interested in having a grown—up relationship with the world. sathnam sanghera, thank you very much for coming back on hardtalk. thank you.

hello there. we started the day with mist and fog. we started the day with mist and fou. , we started the day with mist and fo. _ , , . we started the day with mist and fou. , , . , ., , ., fog. this picture shows the low cloud, fog. this picture shows the low cloud. fog _ fog. this picture shows the low cloud, fog trapped _ fog. this picture shows the low cloud, fog trapped under - fog. this picture shows the low cloud, fog trapped under low i fog. this picture shows the low - cloud, fog trapped under low levels. west was best for sunshine, it was a beautiful day in the isle of arran. we have a similar kind of weather set up for thursday. now, during this evening and overnight, we are, i think, going to see fog patches reform. some of that will become dense, visibility down to 100 metres, so it might be worth allowing a little bit of extra time for any morning travel you might have into thursday morning.

there could be one or two showers popping up across england and wales, but hardly any of these and for the vast majority of you, the day should work out as being a dry day with the best of the sunshine, likely once again to be across the western side of the uk. temperatures close to average. a little on the cool side though for east scotland and parts of north east england. that takes it into thursday night time. with the wind strengthening across the north sea, we may well start to see some areas of cloud drifting in across east scotland and northeast england because it's breezier there'll be less of that mist and fog to worry about and temperatures won't be quite as low. well, for friday, these two areas of pressure, the high pressure to our northeast and low pressure to our southwest, get a bit closer together. the isobars squeeze together as a result. and it's that that makes the wind blow. and so friday is going to be a windier day, overall gusts coming in from an east or south easterly direction. those winds will funnel across the tops of the pennines. indeed, we've got a local wind that's named, the only one in the uk, the helm wind that will be blowing on friday across great crossville and over into cumbria, quite gusty. then over into the west of high ground gusts reaching around a0 or 50 odd miles an hour.

the weekend will be dominated by this area of low pressure to our south. it will throw weather fronts northwards across the uk, bringing outbreaks of rain at times. now on saturday, we'll see one area of rain extending northwards across england and wales, probably reaching northern ireland late in the day. scotland, eastern areas will have frequent showers. so here it's also looking like it will be quite wet on saturday. the best of the dry and bright weather is likely across western scotland. 0ur temperatures still quite close to average for most areas, but a bit cool for scotland and north—east england once again. more of the same really for sunday. same area of low pressure is with us. again, we'll still have weather fronts bringing the threat of some rain at times may be turning a bit brighter at times across the south. temperatures again for most of us, about 10 to 13 degrees. but still on the cool side, given those onshore winds across the chilly north sea for east scotland, north—east england. now heading into next week, that area of low pressure finally clears out of the way and we'll start to get our winds coming in from a south westerly direction. and ultimately the weather should turn drier and a bit sunnier. however, before we get there, we've still got the dregs of that

area of low pressure over the uk on monday, bringing extensive cloud, the cloud thick enough to give us a few spots of light rain or drizzle at times, more especially across the eastern coast of scotland and eastern areas of england. it's here where we'll see some of the lowest temperatures, the highest temperatures generally towards the south and the west. beyond that, although the outlook looks quite pessimistic, i think we'll see something of an east—west split. western areas, yes, you could see some rain at times, but still quite a lot of dry weather, whereas across north eastern areas of the uk it should be mostly fine with sunny spells. bye for now.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... the armourer on the film rust has been found guilty of manslaughter. the uk cuts national insurance and extends child benefits as the government sets out spending plans before a general election likely to be held this year. nikki haley pulls out of the republican race for the white house, but stops short of endorsing donald trump. three crew members of a cargo ship have been killed in a houthi strike — the first deaths to be caused by the group's attacks on merchant vessels.

and scandal in the k—pop world — aespa frontwoman apologises to fans over having a boyfriend. live from her studio in singapore, this is bbc news. we a big story from the world of hollywood — after only a few hours of deliberation, the jury in the criminal trial against rust movie armorer hannah gutierrez reed has found her guilty of manslaughter. she has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. this over the death of the film's cinematographer, halyna hutchins. the case was centred around how a live round made it into the prop gun used by actor alec baldwin and how it had

found its way onto set.