Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera is a collection of the author’s musings on the British Empire and its resonance to the present. Well researched, the book is soaked in important historical record with a dusting of memoir and a relfection of the current conversation relating to colonialism in Britain.

Sathnam is a journalist and he has an ability to weave a narrative through compelling historical archives and reports and show it’s relevance in today’s media (mostly but not exclusively right wing) and national conversation. If you think British do you think white skin? Increasingly the answer is ‘yes’ however, countless writers, not only Sanghera, have pointed out that significant proportions of Britain’s wealth is built on the back of brown and black subjects of the British Empire. Not just the royal family’s wealth but also that of your average Jack and Jill whose ancestors perhaps worked in India and beyond where looting was unofficially permitted and a matter of course for serving soldiers in the East India Company and civil servants appointed there.

Empireland is an interesting if flawed book. The author’s memoir portions are meant to be endearing and occassionally are. As mentioned previously he is a journalist, however, I found some of his writing sloppy like a collection of off-the-cuff tweets rather than a book that had a real editor. I found some of his comments even offensive and find the author to have prejudices of his own so it might have been better if he omitted his personal opinions and stuck with facts.

As someone of South Asian origin myself, I found it odd that Sathnam Sanghera referred several times to the Indian contribution to the World Wars not mentioning even once that the India he is referring to is pre-partition India and therefore includes today’s Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh. Sanghera lamented that growing up he never knew about the Indian contribution to the wars so it is odd that he wouldn’t fully correct the narrative so that British South Asians of multiple origins might feel a connection in future. At least a quarter of the book is given over to notes and references and there are significant footnotes throughout the book which is why I find basic ommissions odd.

Buy the book here.