Mar
2
6:00pm
Festival of Ideas: Sathnam Sanghera, How Does Imperialism Shape Modern Britain?
By Bristol Ideas
Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how imperialism is everywhere in modern Britain, though we often choose not to see it.
Covering everything from our national habits to how we live – the foundation of the NHS, the nature of our racism, our economic status and our wealth – he argues that imperialism is central to the way we think and conduct politics, from the distrust of intellectuals in public life, to the exceptionalism that inspired Brexit and our response to the COVID crisis.
He makes an impassioned call for proper education about the reality of the empire in order to address our attitudes to our past and its effects on the present. Imperialism is a fact of our collective British lives, but unlike Germany, or even America, we have never confronted the history of our interaction with the outside world.
He believes we can only truly understand who we are by knowing who we were.
In conversation with author, journalist and broadcaster Elizabeth Day.
Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain is published by Viking. Buy a copy from Waterstones, our bookselling partners.
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