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.