![]() ![]() While the author takes us on his own journey of discovery as he researched for the book, he also leads us – carefully – down to the dirty and murky paths we do not wish to go by ourselves. ![]() His words are, relatively speaking, kind, gentle and wise.īut is this an apologetic for colonialism then? Absolutely not. Later in the book he is effusive in his praise for Britain, how’s he’s glad he’s British and how there is much in the Empire to be grateful for. But after a period of time, it starts to be obvious that he’s not some guy with an axe to grind against the British. Initially, it sounds like he’s being dryly ironic I kept waiting for the gut punch. ![]() Sanghera, a journalist and member of the Sikh community in Britain, begins by toasting the idea of bringing back ‘Empire Day’. I was really quite surprised by what I actually read. I expected a brutally honest and scathing critique of the British Empire. I came to Sathnam Sanghera’s book then through recommendations of a British Asian history teacher I followed on Twitter for a while. I recently started a run of reading non-white historians to get a much better balance of interpretations. A long-time lover of Global history, I’m very aware just how too much of what I’ve read has been written by white British historians ( Peter Frankopan is just about the best of them). ![]()
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