Empireland
How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain
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EMPIREWORLD IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER NOW
WINNER OF THE 2022 BRITISH BOOK AWARD FOR NARRATIVE NONFICTION
***THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE CHANNEL 4 DOCUMENTARY 'EMPIRE STATE OF MIND'***
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'The real remedy is education of the kind that Sanghera has embraced - accepting, not ignoring, the past' Gerard deGroot, The Times
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EMPIRE explains why there are millions of Britons living worldwide.
EMPIRE explains Brexit and the feeling that we are exceptional.
EMPIRE explains our distrust of cleverness.
EMPIRE explains Britain's particular brand of racism.
Strangely hidden from view, the British Empire remains a subject of both shame and glorification. In his bestselling book, Sathnam Sanghera shows how our imperial past is everywhere: from how we live and think to the foundation of the NHS and even our response to the COVID-19 crisis.
At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Empireland is a groundbreaking revelation - a much-needed and enlightening portrait of contemporary British society, shining a light on everything that usually gets left unsaid.
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'Empireland takes a perfectly-judged approach to its contentious but necessary subject' Jonathan Coe
'I only wish this book has been around when I was at school' Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
'This remarkable book shines the brightest of lights into some of the darkest and most misunderstood corners of our shared history' James O'Brien
Sathnam Sanghera, Sunday Times bestseller, February 2024
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Imperialism is not something that can be erased with a few statues being torn down or a few institutions facing up to their dark pasts," according to this pointed and wide-ranging survey of how Britain's imperialist past informs its present. Contending that most Britons remain ignorant of the many ways in which "the experience of having colonized" continues to affect British life and culture, journalist and novelist Sanghera (Marriage Material), calls for Empire Day 2.0, a reimagined version of an annual half-day school holiday from the first half of the 20th century. Among other lessons, students would learn that the expression "I don't give a damn" originated in British India, where a dam was a low-value copper coin, and that the oil and gas company Shell started as an importer of "oriental seashells from the Far East." Elsewhere, Sanghera turns to darker episodes in the history of British empire, including the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre that killed an estimated 600 to 1,000 Indian men, women, and children in 1919 and helped bring the British Raj to an end, and the looting of artifacts in Tibet. Ranging across the temporal length and geographical breadth of the empire, Sanghera amasses a devastating catalog of tragedies and injustices, and makes an irrefutable case that "imperial amnesia" hurts all Britons. It's a cogent and captivating wake-up call.
