I sat down to watch Paxman’s ‘Empire’ with a mix of trepidation and resignation. After all, this was the BBC, lately the purveyor of a torrent of fairly transparent lefty and NWO propaganda – even within its drama series where tokenism and morality playing of the most trite kind is practiced. But I had read Paxman’s ‘The English’ and rather enjoyed it, so it probably wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
The first programme in the series was titled “A Taste of Power” but it was unclear what exactly was being presented or how it manifested that. It felt more like a rushed travelog than any kind of analysis or even perceptive personal interpretation. Paxo wandered about India, looking sweaty, and asking questions clearly intended to reinforce his own prejudices. How India came to be British in the first place and the complexities of early Anglo-Indian relationships were glossed over in indecent haste and a few self-hating soundbites. There was no mention of Clive or the French. It was predictable, derivative trash of the worst kind with not a single unexpected or counter-intuitive insight. The Indian Army Captain proud of his regiment’s history during the days of the Raj was embarrassed and discomforted by Paxo’s aggressive demand that he shouldn’t be. Superficial coverage of the Indian Mutiny or “India’s First War of Independence” made absolutely no concessions to Victorian notions of loyalty and betrayal, however misplaced they might seem in modern Britain. There was nothing about the Anglo-Indian integration that had preceded the Mutiny or the stark social division that followed it. As expected, Paxo focussed on the British atrocities of retribution rather than the acts which had provoked them. The forced licking of blood from the “slaughterhouse floor” was mentioned vaguely enough and amidst the ruins of Lucknow to create the impression that the “slaughterhouse” was a British atrocity rather than the site of the horrific murder of 210 captive women and children in Cawnpore, perpetrated by butchers on the orders of Nana Sahib because the sepoy mutineers refused to shoot them. There was no mention of Nana Sahib or even the fact that the victims of the slaughterhouse had been captive women and children. The thrust of the programme seemed wholly contrived to create an impression of arrogant Evil Empire and to reinforce a presumed prejudice on the part of a viewer well schooled to feel nothing but shame for the colonial past. Even the Durbar was merely “terror in fancy dress” – an unattributed quote magnified and then relished as images of arrogant looking Victorian colonials passed on the screen. The history of British India was impoverished from any point of view by this contemptible, superficial and subjectively selective treatment.
By the time attention turned to Egypt, of all places, my contempt for the programme was as marked as Paxo’s sweatiness. The litany of British arrogance, perfidy and outrage together with the unidentified images of complacent Victorians continued. But then at the croquet club, even Paxo seemed for a brief moment disconcerted by the assertion of the remarkably British looking elderly Egyptian that the British had done nothing positive there, as though a faint whisper of national pride had carried through the bleak wind of his contrived, received, bien pensant scorn and self-flagellation. There was no mention of what had preceded British intervention, the role of the French, the Egyptian economy or the Orabi Revolt and the programme’s coverage of the Controller-General Baring was far from balanced. It was fantastic that no parallels were drawn with EU intervention in Greece, that those who believe so fervently in its imperial and interventionist tenets can dismiss so easily those of the British Empire. Presumably this is because intervention is invited and welcomed by the willing members of the Union (!). But any hypocrisy and double standards should not surprise us. At no stage of the programme did there appear to be the slightest understanding that the events being characterised with such post-modern, left-liberal subjectivity had occurred well before the creation of the United Nations let alone the European Union or that Britain’s actions were conducted in the context of the competing territorial and colonial aspirations of many other unfriendly nations.
And then we were suddenly in Palestine, following a brief nod towards Lawrence, to roll in the ignominy of Britain’s role in creating the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was powerfully predictable stuff, culminating in a weird interview in the King David Hotel with one of the Jewish former terrorists who had bombed it. She was completely unrepentant and I wondered for a moment if this was a deliberate BBC contrivance to stoke their fire against Israel and the Jews. Surely not?
The conclusion to the programme was an unanswered question about how much our Imperial past had contributed to our willingness to participate in recent wars – to replay foreign intervention. Since most of them were either forced upon us by foreign aggression (the Falklands War in 1982) or embarked upon by New Labour to whom the memory of Empire was nothing but a profound source of shame and self-hatred the answer is probably not much. But again it highlighted the deep vein of hypocrisy and double standards that run through the left-liberal mindset. It made me consider whether it is even possible for those with that mindset to judge objectively, dispassionately, with balance, in the context of the time they study and, if not, why so many of them are involved in teaching our children?
A subject of such vast scale had to be compressed but this programme suffered from being very badly compressed and very badly presented. It should have been sub-titled “Just in case you think you need not be quite so ashamed about Empire” because Paxo went about reminding us, selectively and subjectively, why we should be.
The show was posing as Jeremy Paxman’s unique take on this subject, but it was just another repeat of the BBC mantra against Empire and whites.
Same message. Different presenter.
We’ve heard it all before. And compare this to the reverence with which Rageh Omaar treated Mohammed in his three-part hagiography of the One We Must Not Draw last year.
Mohammed not white, you see. Mohammed get to do what he want. He misunderstood, innit?
What Paxman might have argued was that, someone will always have the upper hand, so it may as well be the lesser of the evils. So how does the British Empire compare with the Roman or Napoleonic?
It was a lot less brutal. In fact, it brought education and healthcare.
We now see China colonising Africa. And are they bringing civilising influences? Or just screwing it for every penny of its minerals? If it wasn’t Britain, it was going to be someone else. That was the way the world worked back then.
In fact, I think I’m right in saying India preferred the British over the French at the time.
The other thing Paxman might have said were he not a shill was why is everybody in Britain still being held responsible for this? This was the work of a handful of British gentry. Most of our ancestors had nothing to do with it.
The BBC is quite happy to punish whites as a collective. A country with a big head is what Paxman called Britain. But can you ever imagine them broadcasting someone saying Islam is responsible for something as a collective?
No. We’ve all got a big head. No-one else has any negative national stereotype though (unless it’s America).
One final thing he might have told us all is, if we are all collectively responsible for this thing he considers so evil, when does the guilt expire? It must do some time. When are poor white working class people going to be released from guilt for something not even their ancestors had a hand in?
It can’t go on forever. Just tell us all when we can safely object to immigration again and don’t have to listen to any more of this spin about us all being responsible for the past.
You’ve wetted my appetite to watch it on i-player; wasn’t going to bother, but you’ve captured Paxo to a ‘t’ in this excellent critique. Tell me, before I do, are his bandy legs are obvious in this ‘pension series’ as his last two documentary series? Both he and Dimblebore seem to have sorted out their retirement plan, any chance they’ll stop boring us to death on their other sinecures now – and give way to the next generation of Agitprop. But I’m jumping the gun here, must reserve judgement until I’ve watched it.
The BBC and Jeremy really got their baggy knickers in a twist. As a speaker of Ivrit (Modern Hebrew) I was in fits of laughter as the Beduin Arab, who Paxo said was speaking Arabic, with a twinkle in his eye, made sophisticated jokes in Ivrit at the expense of the great white father.
Thank you twice to Nicholas – for posting this incisive and damning review, and for having the stomach to watch that BBC drivel in the first place.
Even the painfully, excruciatingly PC William Dalrymple has dismantled the ridiculous and recent claim that the Mutiny was a “War of Independence.”
Let me make a bold assertion: Paxo never mentioned that the Mughals were, as implied by the name – simply the Persian word for Mongols, another bunch of conquerors and Imperialists from foreign lands.
I watched the program and it was a shocker. It lacked any educational merit whatsoever. One must presume that Paxman’s dumbed down narrative and soundbites were designed to be absorbed by younger generations who have not been taught any British history in school.
The program was exactly as you described it, Nicholas.
I had no intention of watching this programme, and everything Nicholas reported re-inforced my predjudices, then what else would one expect from the BBC other than a rabid anti British rant. What really gets my goat on this question is that it is presented by a man whose only experience of foreign parts is the view from the windows of whichever posh hotel he happens to be staying in at any particular time. I have worked and lived all over the World, from Siberia to the Caribbean and you would be surprised by the number of people who have come up to me and said “we wish the British had never left”
P.S. I loved your anecdote Anne, brilliant.
Stephen, I’ve had that experience of people saying that to me too, including in India. Another aspect not mentioned at all in the programme was infrastructure legacy, like the rule of law, the civil service and the railways. A cliché, I know, but since the programme makers were dealing in left wing cliché throughout one might have expected “balance” to have included it. There was also no comparison with other colonial regimes, such as the Dutch in the East Indies or the Belgians in Africa.
Typo alert – my comment at 21:16: first line wetted ??? OMG – must have been my bladder talking as it often does these days – and out of turn! Please amend to ‘whetted’ or even ‘whet’, Peter (which is strictly correct?) and spare my blushes.
[I didn’t tee that up so that Bruce could remind me of how often I talk out of another section of my nether regions, either – down ACP!].
Glad to see you back Anne and obviously in fine fettle. Keep on truckin’.
If you recall Paxo blubbing on ‘Who do you think you are?’ because his great grandmother went into the Workhouse, you will realise that Paxo’s forebears certainly had nothing to do with Empire except perhaps as cannon fodder or camp followers. Hence the jaundiced view, perchance?
Well, Wily Trout, I have plenty of forebears who might be described as “cannon fodder”, as well as workhouse inmates – and worse – but I am not jaundiced about Empire so I guess it is horses for courses. Nevertheless, I suspect Paxo’s disdain represents more the influence of his current class, profession, employer and social attitudes than anything inherited. It is quite difficult, in Britain, in 2012, to separate an objective history of our nation from the subjective and sometimes wished-for judgement of leftist ideology, which is both self-deluding, confused and agenda motivated. The application of a simplistic primary morality, even in hindsight and typical of the species, too often clouds and polarises complex events and issues of the past.
A good example of this is Mary Seacole. Yes, she was a previously overlooked part of Crimean War history and a useful black British icon for current “diversity” promotion but she has been elevated to the point where she has virtually eclipsed Florence Nightingale, and largely by a regime (and political grouping) whose National Health Service pretty much forgot or disregarded everything Florence Nightingale had stood for in the treatment of the sick and wounded. This iconising or glorification of tokens to support leftist dogma merely replaces the previous patriotic mythologies – a counter balancing some might say but actually the extreme swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. It has not swung central or balanced yet.
It goes back to my point about the marginalisation of minorities. Do you improve the situation by over-compensating to promote diversity – or make it worse in creating tension and resentment that didn’t even exist before the social engineering began (then make that tension and resentment worse by screaming “Racist!” when anyone complains). I believe that societies evolve and that pre-1997 Britain was a good example of this. The Left think that they can be engineered, and part of that engineering is to demonise aspects of our past, especially where it is not shared. This has been ramped up since 1997 with propaganda, censorship and coercive legislation. And since 2010 Cameron seems to have bought into this approach, the moralising, finger-wagging, coercive approach that, frankly, is guaranteed to get up a true Englishman’s nose. By implementing legislation that forces people to behave with decency and fairness you imply that they are not already decent and fair if left to their own devices. Some may not be but the legislation insults everyone. That is a horrible indictment and one that leftists deploy usually cynically and to advance their own power (“something must be done . . .” ). It saddens me greatly that a Conservative Prime Minister plays these tricks too.
Nicholas (14:31)
Agree almost entirely but to nitpick a little: your last sentence – I would have put Conservative in quotation marks. I think he’s proved almost beyond reasonable doubt that he isn’t, or to put the least worst interpretation upon his stewardship of the office, that he’s prepared to ditch conservatism pro tem in order to maintain residency of No.10
Frank P – agreed. He is supposed to be and he is in title but in reality represents nothing of what you and I might expect from a person in that position. I actually think that in effect we have a left-leaning LibDem government that puts out sops to the Conservative grass roots in a fairly badly managed attempt to keep them on board whilst at the same time treating them with undisguised contempt. Cameron surprised me by publicly referring to the EDL as “scum”, which struck me as both unwarranted and a very foolish thing for a PM to say – especially as he had not used such a pejorative term (or any pejorative term) to describe Islamic extremists. This kind of moralising refusal to engage with such concerns is more left than right in character. It reminded of the way Fraser Nelson refused to engage on Neathergate.
Most conservatives I know are thoroughly disenchanted with him to the point almost of hatred. He must know what is happening within the Conservative Party so it makes me think he is either incredibly thick or pursuing another agenda.
Stephen Maybery, “I have worked and lived all over the World, from Siberia to the Caribbean and you would be surprised by the number of people who have come up to me and said “we wish the British had never left””
– a minor addition: I have a copy of Anthony Wynne’s biography of Percy Sykes, which recounts how Sykes travelled extensively through southern Persia over a century ago, and found the inhabitants hoping to become part of the British Empire, seeing it as preferable to Persian rule. Contact with the British themselves had been rare, and they were basing their opinions on information gleaned from travelling Indian and Afghan merchants
The British Empire’s history is virtually that of the whole world.
I didn’t see the programme but it doesn’t sound much cop. Personally I think the Empire was pretty much a criminal enterprise based on salvery (initially) violence, theft and exploitation, because those are the facts of the matter.
However, there were some good points and it was not much worse than other empires and much better than many. I agree entirely about the outrageous way people like Rageh Omar are allowed to whitewash the crimes of the Islamic Empires which were far worse than those of the British.
Many thanks to Nicholas for his blog. It indicates that with regard to Mr. Paxman’s series it seems that “you ain’t missed nothing yet!”. Prompted by the piece, I read one or two reviews of the first episode in the media and they all seem to bear out to a greater or lesser extent the objectivity of our correspondent. The Guardian, territory into which I rarely stray for fear of dragons, sums up in its TV & Radio Blog: “…Paxo suggested the empire was basically a protection racket based on razzmatazz and bluff which was eventually called by the locals”. I am sure that blogger is even better informed than the Guardian allows him to be, but I wonder whether part of his research for his entry was conducted by reference to Nicholas’s own blog when he points out along with our man: “…you can’t talk about British atrocities after the relief (there were two) of the residency of Lucknow seige in 1857 without a passing reference to the earlier massacre of British men, women and children at Cawnpore”.
The old joke tells of a tourist in Ireland who asks one of the locals for directions to Dublin. The Irishman replies: ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’. In beginning the series with India, Paxman seems to have begun his effort in an inappropriate place, though I understand that a chronological narrative is no longer considered artful. For a while, reading Nicholas’s blog, I thought I had been mistaken that this was to be a series, but that Paxman had instead tried to cram everything in the one.
The Guardian writer observed that Jeremy Paxman in an open-necked shirt is not enough justify an hour of prime-time TV. This carries an old-fashioned assumption that the prime-time TV is to educate as well as entertain; and Paxman may not have shared both objectives.
Curiously enough, Murray Wardrop in the Daily Telegraph, discussing the proposed moves of the broadcasting company’s offices, quotes Paxman as saying of the people at the BBC that “they’re all far too politically correct”.
I recommend that all TV reviewers first read Nicholas for the rest of the series. There is more meat in his six paragraphs than, it would seem, a whole hour of Paxman.
My wife had asked me to record the first episode and I did but have as yet not watched it.
I must confess to being a bit confused.
I had always thought that Jeremy Paxman was one of us, a conservative albeit he has many odd eccentricities but comments here suggest that I am mistaken, if not deluded.
Or could it be that I was correct all along, but that conservatism has now moved so far to the left that I am not now an acceptable conservative?
David Ossitt (11:06)
I knew Paxo slightly when he was a good investigative journo back in the 80s, before he became a TV news anchor. I would have said that at that time he didn’t show any signs of being overtly leftist (you once accused me of being a leftie btw, so sometimes you do sometimes misread between the lines) :-).
But a pre-requisite of elevation into high rank within the BBC front line cadre of Agitprop is usually (a) being bent sexually (b) left leaning (c) just a plain neo-Marxist activist, or (d) preferably a permutation of all three. Paxo is hetero, obviously, but as for the political proclivities? I think we all agree here that the press and TV unions are seed-beds of Marxist activism; elevation without a union ticket is very difficult. Those who dress to the right have to keep their shit to themselves if they want to get the plum jobs – or they toe the leftist line holding their nose. There are notable exceptions to any general rule, obviously. Perhaps that accounts for Paxo’s increasingly lugubrious physiognomy. And the weight of his conscience might account for his bandy legs.
As for these ‘series’ that they are awarded; just extra pension pots for loyal service. He’s not a good front man for historical docs, imho, nor will he ever be a ‘smiling assassin’ of an interviewer: too much bluster and bullying.
Paxman may have been chosen exactly because he would NOT provide viewers a sophisticated education in the history of the British Empire; or it may be another instance of the blind historical principle of “Cometh the hour, cometh the half-baked”.
Paxman himself seems to be a bit of an opportunist as his piece in the Daily Telegraph tries to establish him walking ‘the middle road’; thus we are given O-level history examination statements such as “Of course there were many things that were bad. But there were others that were rather admirable”. Or, otherwise writ: “Empire Good Thing; Empire Bad Thing”.
The Important Thing is that Paxman keeps his name in the frame.
(you once accused me of being a leftie btw, so sometimes you do sometimes misread between the lines) .
My sincere apologies, I am guilty as charged.
As I indicated above the British Empire’s history is pretty much synoymous with world history. Do we ask “Was world history a good thing? ” Er – no we don’t – it just happened, and we live with what happened.
But as a matter of fact, the British Empire did involve slavery, violence, theft, exploitation, racism and political repression…nothing much to be proud of.
I think we should just accept it happened and that, like the rest of history it was a mix of good and bad.
There is much to be proud about the British Empire, and various members of my family fought against it and for it. Like the Roman Empire, Muscovite Empire (a.k.a. Russia), and even the Ottoman Empire, the only reason it lasted so long was that it was better than the alternative(s) at the time.
There is little point mentioning slavery without mentioning that the Empire banned it long before the other powers, and 1,500 Britons died enforcing the ban.
The fact that it fought against the three most vile threats to the world in all its history – the sick perverts Napoleon, Wilhelm II, and Adolf Hitler – more than makes up for the inevitable but infrequent bouts of shameful or downright stupid adventures (Boer War, Singapore, Crimean War).
The main point was that the Empire happened by accident, in different parts of the world, and it grew because it was based on trade and prosperity, and was built by people with courage and intelligence.
As for criminality, Daniel Maris and his ilk should educate themselves and read C S Lewis. Politics is a criminal business, but take look at the British Empire’s “master criminals” – the Scots behind the Opium War. They were 100 times superior to the base, cowardly scum in charge of our beautiful country over the last decade or so, who turn a blind eye or actively collaborate with terrorists, neo-nazis, the enslavers of women and children, and embark on the most cowardly military campaigns in recent history.
Our political class today is against trade and prosperity, and is infested with specimens with nothing so much as resembling courage or intelligence.
“Personally I think the Empire was pretty much a criminal enterprise based on salvery (initially) violence, theft and exploitation, because those are the facts of the matter.”
Er no, those are not the “facts of the matter”. Those are opinions based on subjective prejudice. How was the colonisation of India based “initially” on salvery (sic)? It wasn’t. The “violence” was often reciprocal and followed (usually unwanted) on the heels of trading aspirations. How can you “steal” something (theft) which does not have an identifiable owner and is not even in being or demand unless it is exploited? You make the mistake of contemporary leftists in universally elevating those who opposed the British (for various reasons) as “victims”. India was not a country or nation state at the time but a collection of principalities, many of them oppressive, murderous, venal and corrupt. You should balance your negative presumptions against that. For example how do you think the victims of suttee or thuggee would feel about the British rule of law being imposed upon them? Do you think they would view it as an oppressive exploitation or a salvation? Why do you think that when Hong Kong was established as a British foothold Chinese people from the mainland flocked there to work, prosper and escape persecution from day one – and continued to do so for over one hundred years? Do you think they went there to be subjected to “violence, theft and exploitation”? Why do you think the similarly artificial Empire construct of Singapore prospered? Do you know what the mainland Chinese called Hong Kong? They called it “The Mountain where Men Eat Fat Pork” not “The Mountain Where Men Suffer Violence, Theft and Exploitation”! The British had no “Death of a Thousand Cuts”. Their accused were not beaten with staves in the courtroom until they confessed. There was no British persecution of intelligentsia during the Maoist Cultural Revolution or of students seeking democracy in 1989. And yet you write of “violence, theft and exploitation” by the British Empire ?
Above all else your simplistic condemnation ignores that participation of indigenous entrepreneurs, traders and workers who prospered from Pax Britannica and safely within it – or do you really believe the benefit was wholly one sided? If you do I respectfully suggest that you need to immerse yourself in considerably more of the historical record or refrain from commenting on it in ignorance.
European politics at the time created a cycle of colonisation that the British could not avoid participating in. War with France involved competing with France to establish colonies in Canada, the West Indies and India. If Britain had not prosecuted the conflict on those terms those countries would have been colonised by France and Britain might well have succumbed to defeat and subjugation on her home soil. In colonisation military muscle invariably followed trading venture. Why do you think India was run by the East India Company before the establishment of the Raj?
The Empire was “vibrant diversity” in the truest sense, not in the sense of the wet, hand-wringing, utterly counter productive, wholly bogus and politically motivated tripe of the Little Lefty do-gooder.
You cannot judge history by the political sensitivities and with the ideological preferences and prejudices of the present. They are meaningless in terms of what happened at that time. If you do, all you are doing is propagandising for the present. That is not history.
daniel maris – The very clothes and shoes you are wearing ‘involve exploitation’, so you may wish to dismount from your high horse.
Your position also seems to be confused. If history is an ineluctable progression towards peace, love and understanding, you can scarcely blame our poor benighted forbears from slapping the natives about a bit. Otoh, if it is an eternal churning maelstrom of rum, sodomy and the lash, how, oh how, did it ever produce such a paragon as yourself?
Bruce F (ACP) (11.34)
How indeed!
The Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen made, some remarks to the University of Hong Kong’s Students Union in 1923 which are very much worth bearing in mind when contemplating the British Empire at most times during its history:
“”Where and how did I get my revolutionary and modern ideas?” The answer was, “I got my idea in this very place; in the Colony of Hong Kong.” – (Laughter and applause.) “I am going to tell you,” continued Dr Sun, “how I got these ideas. More than thirty years ago I was studying in Hong Kong and spent a great deal of spare time in walking the streets of the Colony. Hong Kong impressed me a great deal, because there was orderly calm and because there was artistic work being done without interruption. I went to my home in Heungshan twice a year and immediately noticed the great difference. There was disorder instead of order, insecurity instead of security.
When I arrived home I had to be my own policeman and my own protector. The first matter for my care was to see my rifle was in order and to make sure plenty of ammunition was still left. I had to prepare for action for the night. Each time it was like this, year after year. I compared Heungshan with Hong Kong and, although they are only 50 miles apart, the difference of the Governments impressed me very much. Afterwards, I saw the outside world and I began to wonder how, it was that foreigners, that Englishmen could do such things as they had done, for example, with the barren rock of Hong Kong, within 70 or 80 years, while China, in 4,000 years, had no places like Hong Kong…”
The article from which I am quoting continues in reported speech:
“He returned to Hong Kong and began to study the government. He found that among the [Hong Kong] government officials corruption was the exception and purity the rule. – (Applause.) It was quite the contrary in China, where corruption among officials was the rule. – (Laughter.) He thought the Provisional Government would be better and went to Canton. He found that the higher the government the more corrupt it was. – (Laughter.) Finally he went to Peking, but he found things there one hundred times more corrupt and rotten than areas in Canton, and he was forced to the opinion that, after all, village government was the purest government in China. – (Applause.) He was told that the good governments in England and in Europe were not at first natural to those places, but that … years ago there was just the same corruption, just the same forgeries in the Courts, and the same cruelty. But, he was told, Englishmen loved liberty and that Englishmen had said: “We shall no longer stand these things, we shall change them.” Then the idea came into his head. “Why can we not change it in China?” – (Applause.) We must imitate the same thing; we must change the government first, before we can start anything. Without good government a people could do nothing and in China “we had no government” and were miserable for many centuries. “Immediately after I graduated I saw” added Dr Sun “that it was necessary to give up my profession of healing men and take up my part to cure the country. – (Loud applause.) That is the answer to the question, where did I get my revolutionary ideas: it is entirely in Hong Kong. – (Laughter.)”
Well, Mr. Paxman?