Orwell, Race, and Empire

A chapter in "The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell" by Nathan Waddell

This chapter examines the evolution of Orwell’s thinking and writing about imperialism and race. It traces Orwell’s struggle to identify and divest himself of inherited prejudices against other peoples and to atone for his early employment in the Indian Imperial Police. These efforts remained in tension with his sociological outlook and strong identification as an Englishman of a particular class writing for Englishmen of a certain class. The result was a kind of “doublethink” about race and empire. The chapter homes in on the future-oriented nature of Orwell’s political thought, his disabling conviction that the value of liberatory struggles lies in their prospective success. His lingering commitment to the liberal notions of progress that underwrote British imperialism limited his capacity for consistent or committed anti-colonialism.