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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
challenging
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
Excellent, incredibly well-research history of the British Empire. It took me so long to read because of the horrors it detailed. The level of detail in the research and number of sources cited is mind blowing. So much of the problems we see today in the world can be directly attributed to Britain's quest for empire at any costs.
informative
slow-paced
Shocked I finished this in one week
I’ll write something more articulate at later but I sense the rave reviews are because she preaching to the choir and not because she successfully proved her thesis. Broad and structurally weak this reads at times more like a history of empire than a history of state violence and outright terrorism within an empire. I found lacking complex analysis for an otherwise supposed academic work and her insistence of using “legalized lawlessness” when it was outright state terrorism is eyeroll worthy. This would have been a better work in more capable hands.
That said it’s funny to read negative reviews from Brits pulling a whataboutism regarding the United States and 250 years of its violence but alas this about the British empire so cope elsewhere.
I’ll write something more articulate at later but I sense the rave reviews are because she preaching to the choir and not because she successfully proved her thesis. Broad and structurally weak this reads at times more like a history of empire than a history of state violence and outright terrorism within an empire. I found lacking complex analysis for an otherwise supposed academic work and her insistence of using “legalized lawlessness” when it was outright state terrorism is eyeroll worthy. This would have been a better work in more capable hands.
That said it’s funny to read negative reviews from Brits pulling a whataboutism regarding the United States and 250 years of its violence but alas this about the British empire so cope elsewhere.
Legacy of Violence is a brilliant expose of systematised state-sponsored violence in the ‘late’ British Empire. It is one of the best histories/polemical books related to imperialism that I have read comparable in impact and gravitas to Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism. If British studies in the United States are on the wane, then Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence: A History of The British Empire has certainly stirred the nest. The Harvard professor dug up facts that left many readers feeling discomfited. The one-star reviews posted by some, however, are churlish and irresponsible and we should all thank Elkins for taking the trouble.
The author, who previously focused on the British colonial response to the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, broadens the net here taking the late British Empire from 1857 until the early 1970s as her period of study beginning with a rebellion in Jamaica and ending with “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. We are presented then with a series of regional case studies spanning the whole globe. A pattern emerges and while the formal empire espoused an ideology of liberalism and rule of law, not far behind came violence. The cases are all different, but the level of violence is quite surprising in its extent and systematised nature. Elkins argues that this was no accident and that the colonial empire a) Saw violence as necessary for its ‘moral effect’, and b) The instances of violent repression were part of a large organisational and ideological cobweb that may appear ad hoc but was actually coherent. The violence was instigated by a small, close-knit and mobile group of dedicated protagonists. These individuals, some famous and others less so, pop up repeatedly.
Reading this book was an extraordinary experience for me. Of course, you knew that some ‘rough stuff’ had gone on here and there in the Empire, a few heads banged together perhaps, on balance though the British weren’t that bad compared to...the Nazis? In just one shocking case Elkins describes in nice detail the way the British tortured Germans in Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDICs) both during the war in London and at Bad Nenndorf ironically just before the Nuremberg trials. Perhaps the torture was not so nasty as the Gestapo’s; screams and wrecked bodies suggested otherwise. In later ‘Emergencies’ — Kenya, Malaya, and Cyprus for example — CSDICs were set up as standard. This history was not known to me at all or to many British people. And that is the main point--they were carefully, indeed skilfully, concealed (the burning of documents during decolonisation is a whole compelling subplot running through this volume). The scale of the state-sponsored violence in Kenya is truly astonishing. Was it really necessary? Of course not. Some said as much at the time and they were ignored. An ugly will to dominate and prevail over anti-colonial resistance prevailed; the violence was justified under emergency regulations, what Elkins calls ‘legalised lawlessness.’ She demonstrates that the ‘Rule of Law’ in the British Empire was a potent fiction, and ‘Liberal Imperialism’ an oxymoron.
The cases of Kenya, which Elkins previously wrote about, and Malaya are dealt with in some depth in this book, and here we start to see the ugly convergence of racism and repressive violence on a large scale. Of course, it was another time, and empires are always violent; however, what the British did in both these countries was downright illegal according to conventions Britain had signed up to and they knew it. British politicians and the Colonial Office had to peddle hard to keep critics and international lawyers at bay. The suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion was especially brutal with a staggering 1090 executions taking place. The ‘villagization’ programme forcefully relocated over a million Kikuyus within reserves, a practice pioneered in South Africa and repeated in Malaya. These ‘Emergency villages’ were effectively detention centres that punished innocent people. Necessary? That depends on your point of view. For the British colonial authorities, they were part of a necessary pacification programme, and also a part of racial capitalism. As well as taking a close look at this history, Elkins also wants us to reflect on the future consequences of these strategies and to my horror I see they have been largely copied for example by China today in Xinjiang Province. That is the point of the title of the book, the legacy of Britain’s imperial violence is copycat imperial violence, internment and racial, or racist, capitalism. The colonial assimilationist policies that obliterated local languages and traditional practices and trampled on land rights are being tragically repeated today.
This is a rich book that tells detailed stories with a cast of characters but which also poses questions relevant to the world today. It is well-written, thoroughly researched and polemical in the English radical tradition. It includes many interesting photos and is fully documented. In my view, Legacy of Violence, albeit narrowly focused on the bad, fully torpedoes the view that the British Empire was a ‘Good Thing’, despite what many people would like to believe.
The author, who previously focused on the British colonial response to the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, broadens the net here taking the late British Empire from 1857 until the early 1970s as her period of study beginning with a rebellion in Jamaica and ending with “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. We are presented then with a series of regional case studies spanning the whole globe. A pattern emerges and while the formal empire espoused an ideology of liberalism and rule of law, not far behind came violence. The cases are all different, but the level of violence is quite surprising in its extent and systematised nature. Elkins argues that this was no accident and that the colonial empire a) Saw violence as necessary for its ‘moral effect’, and b) The instances of violent repression were part of a large organisational and ideological cobweb that may appear ad hoc but was actually coherent. The violence was instigated by a small, close-knit and mobile group of dedicated protagonists. These individuals, some famous and others less so, pop up repeatedly.
Reading this book was an extraordinary experience for me. Of course, you knew that some ‘rough stuff’ had gone on here and there in the Empire, a few heads banged together perhaps, on balance though the British weren’t that bad compared to...the Nazis? In just one shocking case Elkins describes in nice detail the way the British tortured Germans in Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDICs) both during the war in London and at Bad Nenndorf ironically just before the Nuremberg trials. Perhaps the torture was not so nasty as the Gestapo’s; screams and wrecked bodies suggested otherwise. In later ‘Emergencies’ — Kenya, Malaya, and Cyprus for example — CSDICs were set up as standard. This history was not known to me at all or to many British people. And that is the main point--they were carefully, indeed skilfully, concealed (the burning of documents during decolonisation is a whole compelling subplot running through this volume). The scale of the state-sponsored violence in Kenya is truly astonishing. Was it really necessary? Of course not. Some said as much at the time and they were ignored. An ugly will to dominate and prevail over anti-colonial resistance prevailed; the violence was justified under emergency regulations, what Elkins calls ‘legalised lawlessness.’ She demonstrates that the ‘Rule of Law’ in the British Empire was a potent fiction, and ‘Liberal Imperialism’ an oxymoron.
The cases of Kenya, which Elkins previously wrote about, and Malaya are dealt with in some depth in this book, and here we start to see the ugly convergence of racism and repressive violence on a large scale. Of course, it was another time, and empires are always violent; however, what the British did in both these countries was downright illegal according to conventions Britain had signed up to and they knew it. British politicians and the Colonial Office had to peddle hard to keep critics and international lawyers at bay. The suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion was especially brutal with a staggering 1090 executions taking place. The ‘villagization’ programme forcefully relocated over a million Kikuyus within reserves, a practice pioneered in South Africa and repeated in Malaya. These ‘Emergency villages’ were effectively detention centres that punished innocent people. Necessary? That depends on your point of view. For the British colonial authorities, they were part of a necessary pacification programme, and also a part of racial capitalism. As well as taking a close look at this history, Elkins also wants us to reflect on the future consequences of these strategies and to my horror I see they have been largely copied for example by China today in Xinjiang Province. That is the point of the title of the book, the legacy of Britain’s imperial violence is copycat imperial violence, internment and racial, or racist, capitalism. The colonial assimilationist policies that obliterated local languages and traditional practices and trampled on land rights are being tragically repeated today.
This is a rich book that tells detailed stories with a cast of characters but which also poses questions relevant to the world today. It is well-written, thoroughly researched and polemical in the English radical tradition. It includes many interesting photos and is fully documented. In my view, Legacy of Violence, albeit narrowly focused on the bad, fully torpedoes the view that the British Empire was a ‘Good Thing’, despite what many people would like to believe.
informative
medium-paced
Extremely well researched and a comprehensive history despite the systematic burning of incriminating official records from nearly everywhere the British withdrew.
challenging
informative
This book is a real slog, interesting in parts and undoubtedly well researched and documented but in one significant respect it fails to do what it should. Make no mistake, the British empire was founded on slavery, enslavement, plunder, exploitation, repression, torture, mass murder and rape; and for the benefit of the tiny parasitic minority who get rich from the toil of others which includes those at the top of the social system in the UK the so called 'royal' family. An astonishing fact which the author doesn't mention is that up until 2015 successive British governments have being paying compensation to slave owners for the loss of their slaves! One such beneficiary sits as an MP for the bigoted racist party that governs the UK.
For a majority of my countrymen and women the British empire is viewed favourably both in terms of its benefits to the UK and to those colonised; British history regards Churchill as a hero for his leadership in WW2 and ignores his racism and colonial past. Unfortunately this book is unlikely to reach those who revel in the empire's past, nor convert its modern day apologists and one reason is the author's undoubted loathing for the UK and its people and the bias and prejudice which pervades her writing. Just a couple of examples: on page 264 of the hardback she mentions British bombing of German cities including Dresden, an appalling senseless act which served no purpose and cost upwards of 20,000 Germans their lives, many fleeing the rapists and murderers of the Red Army; for some reason she fails to mention that the US air force bombed Dresden in daylight following the British night raid, so adding to the death toll. On the following page she mentions the "harrowing experiences" of alien internees during WW2 in Britain - does she not know or conveniently forget about the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2?
Two wrongs don't make a right but this double standard reduces the impact of the book, the misplaced moral superiority from the author is rather hard to take from a country that committed genocide against the Native Peoples of America and perfected the system of slavery and repression of black people which continues to this day.
The partiality and prejudice of language is most inappropriate for a historian, who uses such terms as "taken out" when British civilian administrators were killed, yet victims of Britains security forces were nearly always described as murders. She even goes as far as defend pro Japanese Indians in WW2 because they were fighting against the British empire - what does she think the Japanese were doing in invading Singapore, Burma etc? Hardly a benign humanitarian act on the part of Japan.
Every example she quotes from bombing Dresden to internment without trial, to rendition to the use of chemical weapons have been perpetrated since by the USA; the dropping of more bombs on Vietnam, Loas and Cambodia by the USA than in WW2, Agent Orange in Vietnam; mass murders of civilians such as at My Lai where the perpetrators received derisory sentences; the illegal invasion of Iraq with UK connivance and rendition to Guantanamo Bay.
What is difficult to sustain for her is that as she says Britains empire shaped the modern world - undoubtedly the drawing of arbitrary lines on maps Britain and other colonial powers was reprehensible, but is she really saying that the current situation in Palestine between Arabs and Jews is all the fault of the UK and that without this country's interference they would be living in peace and harmony?
India and Pakistan have had 75 years free of British rule, surely inter-communal violence today cannot be blamed on the UK and those ruling elites in India and Pakistan and elsewhere such as Zimbabwe could quite easily have dispensed with British empire era repressive measures - except of course they suit their purpose in keeping the poor in check so they can plunder the wealth of the country. The last thing the rulers of India, Pakistan, Israel and Hamas want is for ordinary people to live in peace and harmony, violence serves their purpose.
The last chapter Empire Comes Home is an expert summation of modern Britain, from reverence to the Empire, the institutional racism of London's police, racist immigration policies and the misplaced exceptionalism that led to the vote to leave the EU. Modern Britain has parallels with the US, Brexit was our very own Make Britain Great Again, except of course it is mostly the English white nationalist bigot and racist who voted it through.
Whilst justifiably savaging the UK's record of colonial violence the prejudice and bias in the language used will only repel and entrench rather than enlighten and educate the average Briton.
Ms Elkins is clearly preaching to the converted but a little humility acknowledging the crimes committed in the name of American imperialism wouldn't go amiss.
For a majority of my countrymen and women the British empire is viewed favourably both in terms of its benefits to the UK and to those colonised; British history regards Churchill as a hero for his leadership in WW2 and ignores his racism and colonial past. Unfortunately this book is unlikely to reach those who revel in the empire's past, nor convert its modern day apologists and one reason is the author's undoubted loathing for the UK and its people and the bias and prejudice which pervades her writing. Just a couple of examples: on page 264 of the hardback she mentions British bombing of German cities including Dresden, an appalling senseless act which served no purpose and cost upwards of 20,000 Germans their lives, many fleeing the rapists and murderers of the Red Army; for some reason she fails to mention that the US air force bombed Dresden in daylight following the British night raid, so adding to the death toll. On the following page she mentions the "harrowing experiences" of alien internees during WW2 in Britain - does she not know or conveniently forget about the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2?
Two wrongs don't make a right but this double standard reduces the impact of the book, the misplaced moral superiority from the author is rather hard to take from a country that committed genocide against the Native Peoples of America and perfected the system of slavery and repression of black people which continues to this day.
The partiality and prejudice of language is most inappropriate for a historian, who uses such terms as "taken out" when British civilian administrators were killed, yet victims of Britains security forces were nearly always described as murders. She even goes as far as defend pro Japanese Indians in WW2 because they were fighting against the British empire - what does she think the Japanese were doing in invading Singapore, Burma etc? Hardly a benign humanitarian act on the part of Japan.
Every example she quotes from bombing Dresden to internment without trial, to rendition to the use of chemical weapons have been perpetrated since by the USA; the dropping of more bombs on Vietnam, Loas and Cambodia by the USA than in WW2, Agent Orange in Vietnam; mass murders of civilians such as at My Lai where the perpetrators received derisory sentences; the illegal invasion of Iraq with UK connivance and rendition to Guantanamo Bay.
What is difficult to sustain for her is that as she says Britains empire shaped the modern world - undoubtedly the drawing of arbitrary lines on maps Britain and other colonial powers was reprehensible, but is she really saying that the current situation in Palestine between Arabs and Jews is all the fault of the UK and that without this country's interference they would be living in peace and harmony?
India and Pakistan have had 75 years free of British rule, surely inter-communal violence today cannot be blamed on the UK and those ruling elites in India and Pakistan and elsewhere such as Zimbabwe could quite easily have dispensed with British empire era repressive measures - except of course they suit their purpose in keeping the poor in check so they can plunder the wealth of the country. The last thing the rulers of India, Pakistan, Israel and Hamas want is for ordinary people to live in peace and harmony, violence serves their purpose.
The last chapter Empire Comes Home is an expert summation of modern Britain, from reverence to the Empire, the institutional racism of London's police, racist immigration policies and the misplaced exceptionalism that led to the vote to leave the EU. Modern Britain has parallels with the US, Brexit was our very own Make Britain Great Again, except of course it is mostly the English white nationalist bigot and racist who voted it through.
Whilst justifiably savaging the UK's record of colonial violence the prejudice and bias in the language used will only repel and entrench rather than enlighten and educate the average Briton.
Ms Elkins is clearly preaching to the converted but a little humility acknowledging the crimes committed in the name of American imperialism wouldn't go amiss.
This book was a difficult read, not because of issues with the writing (the writing is very clear and tells a compelling narrative that connects all the different threads cohesively), but because of the subject matter.
Legacy of Violence is a book that in the four months since finishing reading it, has gone on to noticeably shape my view of the British and their former empire. I grew up with a shade of anglophilia (as an American and the child of an Anglophile that grew up in Hong Kong), and over time I’ve worked to reassess the horrendous colonialist and imperialist attitudes that are either treated as quaint relics of the past, or irrelevant to the “modern” Britain.
Legacy of Violence makes it impossible to rationalize the colonialist attitudes of the Empire to some foggy past, and forces any good faith reader to reckon with the continued current by both the UK government and a vocal segment of its people of white supremacy, covering up atrocities committed in the name of King and Country, and the continued oppression of former colonies through soft power diplomacy, obstructionism, and rewriting history.
To my surprise, Legacy of Violence opens with the end of WWI, rather than the earlier colonial ventures during the normally discussed “First Phase” colonialism of North America and mercantilist expansion, or even the “Neoimperialst” period of the Scramble for Africa and industrial expansion. Instead, it focuses on the era within living memories and active litigation: Israel and the Middle East, Malaya, and Kenya.
Today’s narrative on the legacy of the Empire focuses on stolen art and artifacts. While topics like the Benin Bronzes are worthy, I feel it’s an intentional distraction from the more fundamentally-destabilizing topics covered in Legacy of Violence: intentional actions by the British State to commit genocide and violent colonial repression, even after the end of WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Elkins describes her personal involvement with the lawsuits filed by the survivors and descendants of those massacred by the British while repressing the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and through this slog of a book, she lays out the evidence for a deep pattern, chain of events, and recurring administrators and actors within the British government linking atrocities and cover ups through the 20th century and creating between 1930 and 1965.
By all accounts, I recommend this book.
Legacy of Violence is a book that in the four months since finishing reading it, has gone on to noticeably shape my view of the British and their former empire. I grew up with a shade of anglophilia (as an American and the child of an Anglophile that grew up in Hong Kong), and over time I’ve worked to reassess the horrendous colonialist and imperialist attitudes that are either treated as quaint relics of the past, or irrelevant to the “modern” Britain.
Legacy of Violence makes it impossible to rationalize the colonialist attitudes of the Empire to some foggy past, and forces any good faith reader to reckon with the continued current by both the UK government and a vocal segment of its people of white supremacy, covering up atrocities committed in the name of King and Country, and the continued oppression of former colonies through soft power diplomacy, obstructionism, and rewriting history.
To my surprise, Legacy of Violence opens with the end of WWI, rather than the earlier colonial ventures during the normally discussed “First Phase” colonialism of North America and mercantilist expansion, or even the “Neoimperialst” period of the Scramble for Africa and industrial expansion. Instead, it focuses on the era within living memories and active litigation: Israel and the Middle East, Malaya, and Kenya.
Today’s narrative on the legacy of the Empire focuses on stolen art and artifacts. While topics like the Benin Bronzes are worthy, I feel it’s an intentional distraction from the more fundamentally-destabilizing topics covered in Legacy of Violence: intentional actions by the British State to commit genocide and violent colonial repression, even after the end of WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Elkins describes her personal involvement with the lawsuits filed by the survivors and descendants of those massacred by the British while repressing the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and through this slog of a book, she lays out the evidence for a deep pattern, chain of events, and recurring administrators and actors within the British government linking atrocities and cover ups through the 20th century and creating between 1930 and 1965.
By all accounts, I recommend this book.