Morning! I’ve had my Weetabix and instead of a single QOTD from #EmpireLand, today I will post a few, all taken from a chapter I spent months on, and which address a question which causes confusion in British public life. Namely, was British Empire racist? In short: yes! 1/6

By time Empire peaked in C19th/20th Century, it was a wilful exercise in white supremacy. Kipling wrote about “the white man’s burden”, Rhodes about how “we happen to be the best people in world”, there were racial freakshows in London and ads like this

These attitudes persisted well into the 20th Century, and were explicitly taught in schools. No historian I read in years of research, however nostalgic for empire, denied this basic white supremacy. Imperialists were proud of it. It was a simple fact of life. 3/6

Such attitudes (I argue in #Empireland) continue to shape our particular brand of racism today – just one illustration here. I believe that if we never confront the British imperial history of white supremacy and (sometimes) actual genocide, we will never defeat racism. 4/6

When Nigel Biggar (not a historian, a theologian), made this statement this week, it was part of a right-wing culture war designed to gaslight, sow division and deny the persistence and reality of racism. I doubt Victorian imperialists would recognise themselves in it. 5/6

This war leads to attitudes like this. It's true we might have tradition of anti-racism cos of Abolition. That empire created multiculturalism. But you can no more remove racism from empire than egg from a baked cake. 6/6 https://twitter.com/exdurham/status/1359228756804665344