Session 4: Legacies

Introduction

Empires had many different endings. Extricating systems of power that were centuries in the making required complex political, economic, cultural and social interventions. Resistance in all its varied forms was necessary in the making of independence. Decolonisation left behind traumatic memories and contested histories that impacted on the relationships between individuals, communities, and nation states.

It was not a neat or orderly process and its unfinished business continues to shape the world today.

The idea that the legacies of empire still influence society poses a challenge to the concept of empire ending. If we continue to live with its afterlives, then to what degree can empire be said to have finished? What does that incomplete rupture with the past tell us about the persistence or durability of imperial power?

Figure 1 Statue of plantation and slave-owner Robert Milligan (1746–1809) with protest placard and cloth before removal in June 2020. The statue is located at the West India Docks in London. The docks opened in 1802 to support the trade in slave-produced commodities. Up until 1807 they were also used by ships in the slave trade. The old sugar warehouses are now home to the Museum of London, Docklands which houses the ‘London, Sugar, Slavery’ permanent exhibition.

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Colour photograph of a statue of a white man - the plantation and slave-owner Robert Milligan (1746-1809). A cloth can be seen draped over the statue’s head and a protest placard has been placed around the statue’s neck. The placard reads ‘Black Lives Matter’. In the background are historic dock buildings and an advert for the Museum of London Docklands.

Figure 1 Statue of plantation and slave-owner Robert Milligan (1746–1809) with protest placard and cloth before removal in June 2020. The...

Empire altered colonised societies. It redrew borders and restructured communities. It created new forms of identity, instilling a sense of imperial citizenship in the colonies, although that citizenship was not equal. It created new forms of nationalism for post-independence countries.

Empires were extractive systems: they were designed to harness wealth and resources in the service of the metropole. The economic, cultural, and ecological legacies of that extraction have been the subject of debate, particularly in relation to issues of repair, restitution, and the repatriation of material culture.

Metropolitan centres were also transformed by the experience. We can trace this in material ways by looking at how the wealth of empire was invested in commerce, infrastructure, industry and culture. We see the imprint it left behind in the memorial landscape, the built environment, on street signs and building names.

With the movement of imperial citizens into the former centres of empire, the ideas that underpinned the construction of metropolitan national identity were also reconfigured. Racism, itself a legacy of empire, played a significant role in contestations over national belonging.

How the history of empires is remembered and represented also forms part of their troubled legacies.

This section examines some case studies to explore how the legacies of empire shaped post-independence nations and former colonial centres. It then explores the contested memorialisation of empire in both spaces.

By the end of this week, you will:

• be introduced to some of the ways that empire ended
• explore some of the different ways that the legacies of empire manifested in former colonies and imperial centres
• critically analyse how empire has been represented and remembered.

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