When I was at secondary school we had a text book by J A Williamson, The British Empire and Commonwealth: A History for Senior Forms (London: Macmillan, 1946; 1952).  A thick heavy red hardback, it not only lent an air of importance to one’s studies but was totally absorbing.  I didn’t realise it then, but Williamson was a real scholar of imperial history, a respected expert on the Cabot voyages, the first ever winner of the Julian Corbett Prize for naval history, a Ford Lecturer at Oxford and the author of some thirty-five volumes. What I also didn’t appreciate at the time that his was an already old-fashioned perspective: an overly cosy civilisation-bringing British Empire represented as a Good Thing.  My only stirring of doubt came towards the end of the book where he likens unemployed Indian graduates to children who have been fed wholly on cake.

A print of Fort St. George, Madras, by Gerard van der Gucht about 1736, showing the beach to which cargoes and passengers were carried through the surf. (YCBA) (The First British Empire, Amberley Publishing)

Williamson’s attitude would of course be unthinkable today.  He was excessively Anglocentric, and we would also say patronising and racist.  Yet imperial history has undergone a renaissance.  It’s thriving and popular, for good or ill.  We now confront the less-savoury aspects of empire, such as slavery, head on and are more likely to speak of “invasion” than of “settlement”.   Serious historians now try to incorporate multiple perspectives, those of the colonised as well as of the colonised, collaborators as well as resisters, slave and free. Imperial history is now livelier and more exciting than ever.

 I wrote The First British Empire to convey this excitement to a wide audience. More pedestrianly, I wanted to provide a detailed and readable account of what happened – hence the narrative and regional structure - and show how historians debate the significance of often unreliable, conflicting, incomplete or ambiguous evidence. Such debate depends upon a willingness to consider all the evidence, weigh every viewpoint, and to modify one’s position in the face of stronger interpretations.  Here I’ve tried to open up some of those debates for the general reader and to indicate a direction of travel rather than a definitive answer.    I’ve given a particular emphasis to collaboration with and resistance to imperial expansion; the vulnerability of most early colonies; and the strategic role of empire in balancing England (after 1707 Britain’s) weakness within Europe. 

A modern artist’s impression of the Battle of the Virginia Capes, which sealed the fate of Cornwallis at Yorktown. (The First British Empire, Amberley Publishing)

Sound historical understanding matters matter more than ever in an age of “culture wars” and “cancel culture” where, as Professor David Olusoga puts it, history is treated as a repository of handy myths to be “raided and deployed for political usage”. Sadly, we still encounter the “they’re grateful for the railways” kind of attitude, as well as a propensity to equate empire with genocide. Nine decades after W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman’s 1066 and All That pilloried nationalist myths (Britain as “top nation”) and ill-informed moral absolutism (“Good Things” and “Bad Things”) the targets of their satire are with us in intensified form.  This book is written in the belief that there is still a popular appetite for accuracy, nuance, balance and the fruits of scholarship. 

The First British Empire by John Oliphant is available for purchase now.