David Olusoga’s Empire on BBC is an excellent corrective to right-wing attempts to glorify the British Empire, finds John Westmoreland

David Olusoga’s three-part series, Empire, is a must watch for anyone who finds themselves dismayed and disgusted by the anti-immigrant hate speech, culture wars and specious claims about ‘national identity’ that are spouted by flag-draped politicians angling for votes.

Empire is an Open University project, produced with the BBC, and David Olusoga is the ideal person to present it. His family roots include a Scottish soldier who fought in the wars of the British Empire, as well as a Nigerian branch that experienced imperial violence. He therefore represents the ethnic and cultural mixing, transporting and importing that defines Britain today.

As Olusoga puts it, ‘Empire is a history of Britain that links together the people of Britain and also the 2.4 billion people who are part of the Commonwealth, the former empire’. And, the series certainly has great success in its purpose of making sense of a world transformed by empire. It is, to quote Olusoga again, ‘a shared story for a colossal number of people’.

The three episodes cover the entire period, from the empire’s origins in sixteenth-century piracy, to imperial collapse in the face of the struggle for independence at empire’s end. The story is told with reference to archives, archaeology and artefacts that confound attempts to glorify the history. It is a story of brutality and the suppression of morality in the interests of imperial plunder; from the slave ports off west Africa to the genocide inflicted on the Aboriginal people in Tasmania.

At a time when the right-wing parties are demanding that the history of the British Empire should be taught in schools, to instil patriotism (as defined by them), Empire is an excellent corrective to that project. The history is too complex for any simplistic nationalist narrative. Every school could use Empire as a rich historical and cultural source. It is a series our young people need to watch.

It looks very likely that the tide of historical scholarship is flowing very strongly against attempts to glorify the British Empire, and David Olusoga has made a very powerful contribution to that current.

Empire can be watched on BBC iPlayer

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet