Britain’s Culture War: Disguising Imperial Politics as Historical Debate about Empire

In step with many governments today, the current British government has consistently attacked scholarly efforts to understand imperialism and its legacies. Instead, it foists a historical narrative that rehearses Victorian pieties about colonial upliftment upon a sceptical nation, only confirming the urgent need to reckon constructively with Britain’s imperial past. This bind is not so much the result of a debate about history than a mark of the persistence of colonial ways of using history to justify imperial commitments.