Material Witness

REVIEW: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

My formal education in history ended in 1985 when I was just 13, despite it being my favourite subject, if not at that time,  then certainly since.  Owing to a quirk in the syllabus at my senior school, studying history was incompatible with studying three sciences (all of which I loathed, but took anyway) and Latin, which I quite enjoyed but which has since proven largely pointless. And only those who have heard me try to speak Spanish would still argue that Latin is helpful in understanding other languages. That is bollocks, if you'll excuse my French.

All of this is by way of explaining that it has been 36 years since I last attended a history class, and it is possible that my memory is faulty. And my memory is this: my entire recollection of the content relating to the British Empire in the five years I did study history boils down to the Black Hole of Calcutta. One atrocity, perpetrated on the British. Not exactly what you'd call balanced. 

It didn't take long for Sathnam Sanghera's excellent Empireland, "a book about how modern Britain has been shaped by its past", to redress that balance. Put your hand up if you've heard of Jallianwala Bagh? No? Well, it's a park in Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs in the Punjab. In 1919, 50 British soldiers under the command of one General Reginald Dyer opened far on a peaceful gathering of people in the park, killing between 600 and 1,000, according to conservative estimates.

Don't be embarrassed by your ignorance. Sathnam, born in Wolverhampton to Sikh immigrant parents, admits to having had no idea about it either. And, for him, the story is personal. 

And with this story and a visit to Amritsar, so begins a very personal, and yet commendably even-handed, exploration of Empire: of what happened then, and what it means to him and to us British now. 

At this point, an important disclosure. Sathnam is a former colleague as our time at the Financial Times at the turn of the century coincided almost entirely. We didn't know each other that well, and didn't work together, but I knew him well enough that to refer to him by his surname, as I would any other author, would feel odd. My most distinctive memory of those times was being told by another colleague to keep an eye on the career of 'the most gifted writer' at the newspaper. 

Those gifts are on full display here, in a book about very difficult, contentious and complex issues that is never less than accessible. The thematic approach to the content helps, with Sathnam looking at Empire through a series of lenses including education, slavery, economics, foreign policy and cultural appropriation (and outright theft). While Empireland is detailed where it needs to be, rigorous in its approach to the history and exhaustively researched (the bibliography is a book in itself), it is also written with a wry wit and a light touch.

That isn't to say that it does't hit its targets hard. If anything the power of some of Sathnam's conclusions are felt more powerfully still because the iron first is delivered from within a velvet glove.    

The charge that has raised the most controversy since publication is that Empire was essentially a racist, white supremacist enterprise that played a large role in creating a modern Britain in which racism was rife. It's not easy and perhaps not fair to pull out a single line to illustrate this view as each argument is constructed with care, with supporting evidence and as much balance as possible, but this perhaps sums it up: "It seems clear to me that our experience of empire has influenced , if not created the distinct brand of racism practiced in Britain". 

If you're currently reaching for the comment button to defend Britain against this charge, it's probably worth considering this before you do. In the months since Empireland was published, Sathnam has been subjected to viciously racist trolling campaign on social media and through other channels, as detailed in the Guardian.  And a further pause for thought is required to understand the contrasting experience of white historian William Dalrymple, who has covered much of the same ground, and reports having received not a single piece of hate mail. 

Empireland is all the more compelling because of the personal perspective Sathnam brings and the seering honesty with which he treats his own views and experience. It also works, however, because it is personal for the reader. To me, it exposed the gaping hole in my Imperial knowledge - 98.2% of which has been derived from reading the novels of JG Farrell and George Macdonald Fraser. It made me think for the first time about whether my public school education was Imperially-influenced as Sathnam's (I think not as the school's ethos was somewhat different from the public school norm). It helped me to sort through my views on Britain's relationship with its slaving past and, most importantly, its exceptionalist and dangerous view of itself in the world. 

Empireland is an important book and one that should find its way into the history curriculum and into wider circulation as the centrepiece of a more honest conversation Britain needs to have with itself about its past, so that we can make better and more informed decisions about the present and the future. 

 

  

REVIEW: The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird

Reading a novel about a global pandemic during a global pandemic might not be everybody's idea of a good time. Nonetheless, early reviews of Christina Sweeney-Baird's debut novel were sufficiently enticing for a reader with a penchant for dystopian fiction, and I had no cause to regret my decision.

Some advice for those thinking of following suit: first, don't start the book at 11.30pm. I was hooked immediately and only managed to stop at 3am, which is far from ideal on a school night.  Next, this is no distraction from the all-consuming Covid news environment. It will leave you asking yourself a series of "what ifs?" and other questions. Not least, what if Covid's mortality rate had been as high as that of the "male plague" in Sweeney-Baird´s story? How would the story have been different if women, rather than men, had been its victims? What if the gvovernment's response to Covid had been as slow and inadequate as that described in this novel? OK, maybe that's a question you already know the answer to. 

The basic thrust of the narrative is simple: a pandemic that starts in Scotland, that impacts only men, rapidly spreads across the global killing one in nine men infected and irrevocably alters the face of every family, organization and society on earth. What makes the story so compelling are first, the brilliance of the narrative construction and, second, the way it raises issues that will you will still be thinking about hours after you've put the book down. This second I think was clearly heightened by the fact we are living a version of this narrative now and are wearily familiar with many of the issues introduced - sources of such viruses, medical responses, vaccine development and so on. 

Sweeney-Baird tells her story from a multitude of viewpoints: the anthropologist recording the history of the plague; the Scottish doctor who treats the first cases and raises the alarm; the virologist searching for a vaccine; the government official seeking to control the breakdown of society; and regular folk just doing what they need to do to survive. This panel of narrators come together to deliver a comprehensive, frightening and emotionally charged story that never loses its grip. 

And this last point was particularly important for me.  A lot of dystopian fiction is stronger in the first half of the story than the second. The narrative of the unfolding disaster itself is so powerful and critical, once it's been told the air goes out of the story and it loses its way. Not here. In fact the second half is probably even more compelling than the first (that kept me up to 3am) as Sweeney-Baird allows her characters to develop their own stories and to tell the story of a world coming to terms with men as a micro-minority.  And those stories are incredibly raw as the (mostly) women deal with their grief, anger and loneliness. Sweeney-Baird also gets into some really interesting ethical and practical questions: with limited sperm available, who gets to have a baby? If men are a micro-minority, what happens to gay men, an even smaller (nano?) minority? Is it OK to make vast personal profits from saving the world? 

It's all incredibly well done, and is from the very top drawer of dystopian fiction with The Stand, Station Eleven and The Death Of Grass. Five stars.