JEREMY PAXMAN: It was the empire
on which the sun never set, or, as some said,
on which the blood never dried. At its height, Britain ruled over
a quarter of the world's population. Many convinced themselves
it was Britain's destiny to do so. Much of the empire was built on greed
and a lust for power. But the British came to believe
they had a moral mission, too, a mission to civilise the world. The builders of empire were bold, they were adventurous. Some were ruthless and some were just a bit
unhinged. The sheer expanse of British rule
was breathtaking. It stretched
from the wilderness of the Arctic to the sands of Arabia and the islands of the Caribbean. There was a time when Britannia
really did rule the waves and it's a memory
which has never wholly faded. (PINGING) Once, the Navy imposed blockades, sank enemy vessels at will, suppressed slavery,
mapped the world's uncharted oceans, and generally forced Britain's will
onto foreign governments. That heritage helped Britain to belie
ve she's still entitled to a place
at the top table in world affairs. How did such a small country
get such a big head? So much that shaped the extraordinary story
of the British Empire was born here, in the complex,
timeworn expanse of India. It was here the British learned
the art of imperial power. Yet it was a treaty signed
thousands of miles away that determined the fate of India. In February 1 763, the great European powers
were meeting in Paris to end years of war
and to divide the world
between them, from Canada to the Philippines. Britain's representative
at the peace talks was the Duke of Bedford, a stubby, arrogant little man
who'd never been to any of these places. In fact, his gout had made it difficult
enough for him to get to Paris. But the Bedfords did pretty well
out of the summit. The Duchess was given
an 800-piece porcelain dinner service by the King of France, and the Duke? The Duke got India for the British. The technologically advanced
countries of Europe were eyi
ng up foreign lands
for future conquest, and Britain had a head start. India was decisive. It gave Britain the resources,
the markets, the manpower and the prestige
to build a worldwide empire. And in the years to come,
they worked feverishly to secure that prize. First, Britain took control
of the Mediterranean, then they took the Cape of Good Hope
at the bottom of Africa, then Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, of course, and finally, Singapore. A web of strongholds
rig
ht across the globe. This was the beginning of Britain's time as the undisputed top dog of the world. Yet the whole thing was built upon
something decidedly fragile. A small island like Britain
couldn't, by itself, find the manpower
to hold on to this vast new territory. So they came up with a system that
would become a cornerstone of empire. They paid local soldiers
to fight for them. British officers would now lead
Indian troops. The colonised would provide
the fighting force of colonialism fo
r centuries to come. (SHOUTING ORDERS IN HINDI) PAXMAN: The Madras Regiment,
founded in 1 758, is the oldest in the Indian Army. It spent most of its existence fighting
not for independent India, but for Britain. (OFFICER SHOUTING ORDERS IN HINDI) PAXMAN: It doesn't bother
Captain Dilip Shekhar that his regiment helped
to build the empire. These are the battle honours
we've won under the British. On the left you can see
these are outside India. PAXMAN: China, Afghanistan, Burma... -Kilimanjaro?
-SHEKHAR: Yes. PAXMAN: That's in the First World War,
in East Africa, isn't it? SHEKHAR: Yes. And then all these are
battles you've fought... Yeah, these are within India. PAXMAN: Sure, but three quarters
of your battle honours are -when you were part of the British Army.
-SHEKHAR: Yes. -PAXMAN: What do you think about that?
-That's great. You were on the wrong side then, from an Indian Nationalist
point of view. -You were fighting for the British.
-We were soldiers, and a soldier does not know
whose region it is for he's fighting. Tomorrow I have a fight
with any other country, I'm told to fight with that country,
I don't have any personal... Do you think the British being here
was a good thing or a bad thing or what? Whatever happened in history is history. But still, we should not be
going into that. But yes, they have done good for us,
and even bad. It was that way. But it's a good thing
they're not here, isn't it? -Yeah.
-(BOTH CHUCKLING) (OFFICER SHOUTING ORDERS) PAXMAN: But all
the troops
you could hire could never control such a huge country. (HINDUSTANI MUSIC PLAYING) The British needed a political system
to keep them in power, and they found it in the Indian princes. In the mid-1 800s,
the British invaders signed a treaty with the local ruler here,
the Maharaja of Jodhpur. They promised him he could go on
running his kingdom just as before, but he'd have to pay them
for the privilege. This protection racket
would be repeated all over India. COMMENTATOR:
Fantastic go
al there by Menenkhar. They have finally woken up,
ladies and gentlemen... PAXMAN: In time, the ruling classes of
the two peoples would become entwined. (CONTINUES COMMENTATING) PAXMAN: British customs
and British dress became part of the trappings
of Indian court life. (PLAYING MARCHING TUNE) The present Maharaja
is the product of both cultures. This is the family palace, designed for them
by a British architect. Understated little place. Morning, sir,
welcome to Taj Umaid Bhawan Palace. Good m
orning. Good morning. But as the British extended
their grip on India, they tore up the treaty they'd made
with the Maharaja's ancestor. They stripped the maharajas
of their power, but let them keep their palaces. GAJ SINGH II: This way. -This is your drawing room, is it?
-This is my drawing room, yes. We've tucked ourselves
into a little corner of the palace. And all these chaps on the walls
are your ancestors, are they? -Yes, that's my father behind you.
-PAXMAN: Mmm-hmm. SINGH II: That's my
g
reat-great-great-grandfather. PAXMAN: Great-great-great-grandfather.
SINGH II: Hmm. PAXMAN: Splendid beard. (CHUCKLING) I suppose the first question is
what should I call you? -Baapuji.
-What does that mean? Everyone calls me baapuji.
Baapuji is a term of endearment as well as a term of respect. PAXMAN: But what does it mean? Literally it means baap,
which means father, and 'Ji''is like an honorific. But even as a child
you were called baapuji. Yes, absolutely. Your own involvement, of course,
i
n Britain is considerable, isn't it? Since the age of eight. PAXMAN: You were sent away
to school in England then? Prep school, yes.
Prep school, to Cothill. Then Eton, then Oxford. 1 4 years in all. So you were really brought up
as an English child. English Indian boy. (BOTH CHUCKLING) -PAXMAN: Was that good?
-But I would switch being what I was. Being an Englishman and then becoming
Indian when I came home. When you look back
at that original treaty, how do you feel
about the British reneging
on it? My ancestor at that time,
he was very unhappy, first of all, to have signed
that treaty in the beginning, but he had no option left. It was self-preservation.
Then he was very unhappy with it. Until the period came when we learned
how to use that presence to our advantage,
get the best out of the system. And at that point it becomes unclear
who's pulling whose strings, doesn't it? -(CHUCKLING) Yes.
-PAXMAN: Quite tricky. At the heart of British authority
was a gigantic confidence trick. I
t worked for as long as the illusion
could be maintained. (PLAYING SOLEMN TUNE) Take Government House in Calcutta. It was the seat
of British power in India. It's still the headquarters
of the regional government today. When it was built in 1 803 there were fewer
than 6,000 British officials nominally ruling over
some 200 million Indians. As one British Governor-General
who lived here put it, ''If each black man were to take up a
handful of sand and by united effort, ''throw it upon
the white-fa
ced intruders, ''we should be buried alive.'' And that's the reason
for the scale, the grandeur, the sheer boastfulness of this place. The idea being, if you look like a ruler
the people will treat you like a ruler. It helps to explain that arrogant,
self-satisfied look you see on the faces of so many
British imperialists. But the appearance
was an enormous bluff. It could only be a matter of time
before that bluff was called. Lucknow, in the mid-1 9th century was,
according to visitors, an ench
anting place. The British here enjoyed a life of
luxury and tranquillity. But in May 1 857, all that changed. Fired by decades of resentment, Indian troops rose up
and killed their own officers. Indian servants
murdered British families. The Indian Mutiny, or First Indian War
of Independence, had begun. It reached its climax at the British
headquarters in Lucknow. Here, the myth of imperial power
was shaken to the core. Three thousand British and loyal Indians
were trapped inside and surrounded
by 8,000 rebels. A terrifying siege was about to begin. I think these must have been
the servants' quarters or the kitchen or something, they're too small to be formal rooms. But the amazing thing about it is
that this place was just obviously built to impress the local Indians
and it ends up this scene of complete,
terrified squalor. At the height of the siege,
there were 1 0 Europeans dying every day. Just here. And these must be the marks
of some of the cannon balls that struck the building.
These ones didn't actually go through,
but in other places you can see the balls have just gone
straight through the wall. And that down there, I think,
is what was the banqueting hall. But during the course of the siege,
became used as the hospital. And was absolutely packed with the
wounded obviously, but also, the sick 'cause inevitably what happened
was that all the latrines filled up and overflowed and there were
corpses rotting in the heat everywhere. So, cholera broke out. And it was the
job of many
of the small children to wipe the flies off the faces
and the wounds of the injured inside the hospital there. It must have been
an absolutely appalling scene. After four and a half months,
British relief forces arrived. As they fought their way into the
stinking ruins, they showed no mercy. In the story of empire, rebellion
always met with savage retaliation. One British commander alone
executed 6,000 men. Elsewhere, he flogged
suspected mutineers, made them lick blood from the
slau
ghterhouse floor and then hanged them. In other cases,
mutineers were tied to the ground, branded with hot irons,
told to run for their lives, and when they did so, were shot dead. It was not enough merely to punish,
an example had to be made. The psychological impact
of the conflict was massive. Each side now knew how very thin was
the veneer of civilised co-existence - that with the right provocation,
they could unleash hell on each other. Two thousand men, women and children
had perished in t
he siege. The pretence of British rule
had been shattered, the bluff called. And when peace returned,
British attitudes hardened. The poet Rudyard Kipling called it, ''Wearing knuckle dusters
under kid gloves. '' The British would soon find a new way
of showing who was boss. Shukriya. This bleak patch of waste ground
outside Delhi was once the setting for a series
of extraordinary spectacles. They were called ''durbars,'' the Indian word for a meeting
between ruler and ruled. It was less a meeti
ng than
a ceremonial show of strength. One Indian called it,
''Terror in fancy dress. '' Presiding over each
of these gaudy ceremonies was the British ruler in India,
the Viceroy. One of them understood the power of extravagant display
better than any other. ''Lord George Nathaniel Curzon''
went the rhyme, ''was a most superior person. '' He liked to assemble
his magnificent uniforms including assorted foreign decorations,
from various places, one of them being a London
theatrical costume shop.
Magnificent events like this were meant
to dazzle the country into submission. A few old statues in the corner of
this foreign field are all that's left. Even the caretaker of this peculiar
place isn't much interested. -Hello.
-Hello. Can I ask you some questions? What do you think of all the statues
just down here? (SPEAKING HINDI) Oh, I'm afraid we're some
of the occasional white men. But do you know what happened here? (SPEAKING HINDI) Not very interested. (SPEAKING HINDI) There's one relic o
f the British Raj that still exerts
something of its old magic. Like the Taj Mahal, the Victoria
Memorial is a shrine to a woman. A British queen
in the heart of Calcutta. In the person of Queen Victoria, the British liked to believe
the empire had achieved human form. They cooked up the resonant
but meaningless title of Empress of India for her. But she was more than a title. Victoria was Empress,
mother, virtual god. In the years following the mutiny,
over 50 statues of her were commissioned a
nd shipped out from Britain. The Maharaja of Baroda for example, paid £1 5,500 for a solid marble statue. And at the feet of it,
flowers were regularly laid and every week it was given a shampoo
to keep the old queen looking spruce. Victoria had plenty to smile about. A mix of enterprise and cunning,
brutality and pomp, had turned India into
the biggest, richest and most significant colony in the empire. By the closing years of Victoria's reign, India formed the heart of an empire that stretched
from Canada in the west,
to Australia in the east. It was time to celebrate. Victoria's diamond jubilee
on the 22nd of June, 1 89 7, was the grandest showing off of empire
Britain would ever see. If the Indian durbars were designed
to cow the empire's subjects, the jubilee was a piece of theatre meant to fire the British public
with imperial fervour. A vast cavalcade made
its way across the capital to the so-called 'parish church of empire':
St Paul's Cathedral. Thousands of troops had been
sum
moned from all over the empire. Canadian Hussars, Indian lancers, Cypriot policemen wearing fezzes,
Jamaicans in white gaiters. There were Hong Kong policemen,
Australian cavalry men, Diachs, Maoris, Rajas and Maharajas. In the midst of all this frenzy
rode the matriarch of empire. She allowed herself an occasional tear. The day was marked by celebrations
throughout her colonies. The Daily Mail brought out
a special edition in gold ink to mark the occasion. As the procession passed,
its star rep
orter was quite overcome. ''You begin to understand, as never before,
what the empire amounts to. ''Not only that we possess all these
remote, outlandish places, ''but that we send out a boy
and he takes hold of savages ''and teaches them to obey him.
And to believe in him. ''And to die for him and the Queen.'' But not everyone shared this
sense of wide-eyed amazement. There were some who looked
at the spectacle and wondered. They remembered the splendour of the
Roman Empire and how that had fal
len. How could an empire that
wouldn't stop growing be sustained? And, in particular, how could
the great prize of India be secured? The answer to that
had already taken the British to some pretty unexpected places. One morning in September 1 882,
the Egyptian people woke up to find they were not alone. A British army had landed
and was advancing on the capital. Egypt was never part of the empire, you may say, and indeed, formally, you'd be right. Egypt was an emergency, an anomaly,
an experimen
t, and, for a while, a bit of a success. No sooner had British troops landed here than the British government
announced they'd be leaving. In fact, they stayed for 70 years. What on earth were they doing here? The reason could be found
just across the desert. The Suez Canal. This 1 20-mile slice
through Egyptian territory was the lifeline of the empire, dramatically cutting sailing time to India. Most of the ships passing through it
were British. They brought tea and cotton and jute
from India a
nd beyond to Britain. They could take troops back
to quell another mutiny. Trouble near the canal
might spell trouble for Britain. And trouble had been brewing
in the streets of Cairo. Egyptians were angry about
foreign influence in their country. When riots broke out in the city,
the British grew nervous. The Cairo riots triggered
a classic piece of imperial footwork. The pattern goes like this. British people or British interests
are threatened, British forces are sent to protect them
and they
never leave. In Egypt, they didn't leave because
they hardly admitted they'd arrived. Much of the British occupation of Egypt was passed off as little more
than a spot of armed tourism. -Good morning.
-Welcome. Thank you. For many years, Egypt was run
quietly from this building, now the British Embassy. And this was the man who ran it. Ruling Egypt for over 20 years and perfecting the strange machinery
of British power in the Middle East. Sir Evelyn Baring. Officially he was just Consul-General
,
rather than Colonial Governor, but with 6,000 troops stationed next door, there was no doubt who was in charge. It wasn't just his size that gave him
the nickname ''Over-Baring''. Baring was an imperialist
through and through. He regarded the Egyptians, and indeed,
most foreigners, as children. And he treated them accordingly. With occasional concern and permanent disdain. It earned him their profound resentment. Baring allowed the Egyptian elite to imagine they were still running the country.
''The British are easy to deceive,''
said one Egyptian politician, ''but when you think you've deceived them, ''they give you the most
tremendous kick in the backside.'' Baring was a man who liked to
exercise power behind the throne. He did not give commands, but, it was said,
''Advice which had to be taken. '' Here, the workings of empire
had become almost invisible. The British found a word for it. Egypt was not a colony -
it was a protectorate. Baring allowed himself two hours each evening t
o exercise at the Gezira Sporting Club. As they did all over the empire, British officials in Cairo repaired to the club at the end of the working day. You can be so mean in croquet, can't you? -And it is in many countries now.
-It is in many countries, yes. (SPEAKS ARABIC) Have you been a member
here a very long time? In the club? Yes, about...
more than 50 years. 55 years. 55 years! Do you remember when the British were here? Yes. And what did you think? I think they were forbidding
any Egypti
an to enter this club, unless they take a licence. -Really?
-Yes. -Were you glad to see the English go?
-For sure. -We weren't all bad, were we?
-Huh? -We weren't all bad?
-All kinds of imperialism is bad. Was there nothing good
that the British did here? Nothing was good. All the time they were here,
70 years, and it was all... -70 years, more than 70 years.
-Yes, did they do nothing good? I think, no. Nothing. How many times did you come to Egypt? -I've been three or four times.
-Four times? -
Yes. I think.
-You are most welcome here. Well, it's very nice of you.
Thank you very much. -Yes.
-Particularly in light of our history. This is one of the good things
British did in Egypt. There you are, you've found one thing. The temporary intervention in Egypt,
the bit of Empire that never was, would last into the middle of the 20th Century. Baring himself, the invisible man, left in 1 907 to retire to Bournemouth. Baring's last carriage journey from the British headquarters
to the railway s
tation, was marked by what one witness
called, ''a chilly silence.'' I don't suppose
he'd have cared that much, he wasn't here to be loved. But I wonder what he'd have made
of the fact that, even generations later, there were Egyptians travelling
to England to spit on his grave. As the 20th Century dawned,
Britain's sense of its role in the world had given it dangerous delusions
about what it could do. World war and its aftermath would expose these delusions
in a merciless fashion. The First Wor
ld War stretched far beyond
the mud and trenches of northern Europe. It reached into the streets and deserts
of Palestine and the Middle East. Once again, Britain feared
for its key strategic asset, its lifeline to India, the Suez Canal. It had to be protected. The region was ruled by
Britain's war enemy, Turkey. In their desert conflict with the Turks,
the British needed allies. The Bedouin tribes of the
Arabian Desert knew this arid land and they knew how to survive in it. If they could be enc
ouraged
to rise against the Turks, they might prove invaluable. But who could unite them? This is the edge of the Sinai Desert. It was here that a young man came on a secret mapping mission
for the British Army. It was disguised as
an archaeology field trip. And it was the beginning
of a long love affair with the desert and
with the Arab people. That love affair created one of the
most romantic figures in the history of the British Empire,
Thomas Edward Lawrence. Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence, th
e illegitimate son
of an Irish baronet - scholar, archaeologist, linguist - was just the man to charm and inspire
the Arabs into a desert revolt. The story of an Englishman leading
an exotic army across the desert caught the public's imagination. In contrast to the mud and murder
of the Western front, here was a sweeping campaign
fought in blazing sunlight. And here, too,
was a different kind of imperialist. Romantic, idealistic, dashing and slightly nuts. Lawrence had a passion for the Arabs
an
d their way of life. His ability to live like them
impressed them. So did the gold from the British
treasury he brought to pay them. And he gave them something more, a belief in themselves as an Arab nation. As his masters in London had hoped, he coaxed them
into fighting with the British, with the promise of their freedom
once the war was over. (SPEAKING ARABIC) -Do you think he was a good man?
-Yeah. Why? (SPEAKING ARABIC) He was a real man. Yeah. Do you think that the promises
that he made we
re ever kept? (SPEAKING ARABIC) Lawrence promised his Arab fighters
freedom from foreign rule. They believed Palestine would be theirs. There would be many more promises made, and just as many broken. The war in the desert finally brought
Britain a string of heady victories. Imperial troops from India, Australia
and New Zealand, as well as Britain, swept across the region. By the winter of 1 9 1 7, the ultimate prize
was within their grasp. The Holy City itself. And so was born the dangerous con
viction
that the interests of the British Empire and the will of God, might be one and the same. For Christians,Jerusalem was sacred as the site of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, venerated as the place
where Christ's body was laid. (PEOPLE SINGING HYMNS) But Jerusalem
was sacred to other faiths, too. A thousand years before Christ,
it was the capital of the Jews. Sharing the city with the Jews
in relative peace, were the Arabs, for whom Jerusalem
was one of the holiest cities in Islam. (MAN C
HANTING) For the British prime minister,
Lloyd George, the empire now began to feel
like a divine mission. Most British political leaders
had been brought up on the Bible. They were steeped in its geography, and as for its history,
well, Lloyd George claimed that, as a boy, he knew the names
of the kings of Israel long before he knew the names
of the kings of England. At noon on December the 1 1 th, 1 9 1 7,
British forces entered Jerusalem. In a show stage-managed from London, for this imperial
victory
the trappings of power were discarded. Commander-in-chief
General Edmund Allenby dismounted from his horse
and entered the city on foot. To a watching world,
Allenby was proclaiming that he came not as a conqueror,
but as a pilgrim. Behind him, in borrowed army uniform,
was a jubilant Lawrence. But his joy would prove short-lived. On the walls of the city, Allenby ordered a solemn proclamation from the British government
to be read out. He knew, he said, that the place was sacred
to thr
ee great religions, that its soil had been sanctified
by prayer and pilgrimage. And he promised to preserve it. But for all his fine words, Allenby had been handed
a ticking time bomb. For back in London, the British government
had just gone even further. The Jews of Europe,
scattered for centuries, had been made a remarkable offer. In the Balfour Declaration,
the British foreign secretary committed Britain to helping the Jews
make a home in Palestine. Playing God in the Holy Land
was an astonis
hing gesture. The British had come to feel
they were agents of destiny. They had become powerful enough,
and you might say, well-meaning enough to believe they could solve
the problems of the world. The Promised Land
had now been promised once too often. Over the next decade, as more
and more Jews arrived in Palestine, tension between them and the Arabs rose. It came to a head at the Wailing Wall,
in the heart of old Jerusalem. In 1 929, riots broke out here, at the site sacred
to both Jews and
Arabs. The riots spread. And later, Arabs murdered Jews
in their homes. The British police
were completely outnumbered. And the British authorities decided that,
from now on, all Arab outrages would be met with real aggression. MAN: The British want peace
at any price. They try to restore order,
search everybody. They act as if both sides
are equally guilty. PAXMAN: To the Arabs, the British had broken the promise of freedom made to them by Lawrence. Instead, the Arabs were having
to give up the
ir land to the Jews. The Jews felt the British
were failing to honour the terms of the Balfour Declaration and the promise
of a national home for them. Both sides made their case with gelignite. Both sides committed appalling atrocities. Palestine became a posting
from which many never returned. The Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion
is full of British graves. Many belong to soldiers, policemen and civilians who died trying
to keep apart two peoples who had previously lived
relatively peaceably t
ogether. After a while, you begin to notice
one date keeps reappearing. The 22nd of July, 1 946. MAN: It was in the wing
on the right of the picture that the terrorists
placed their explosive. (EXPLOSIONS) The hotel housed
the British Army headquarters and the Palestine government offices.
And casualties were very heavy. PAXMAN: Ninety-one people
were killed, including 4 1 Arabs, 28 British, and 1 7 Jews. Sara Agassi was 1 7 at the time. She was a member
of the team of militant Jews who bombed t
he King David Hotel. Pretending she was
just attending a dance, she scouted the hotel
for the terrorists, deciding where the bomb
should be placed. So they came down here with the bombs,
and then what? To the... To the place where...
No, it's not here. -There. Let's go.
-Through there? AGASSI: It was open.
PAXMAN: Do you recognise it? AGASSI: Yeah, of course.
We came from here. This was the place
that you had been looking at -when you came dancing that day.
-Yes. Here. Here was the bar
and here
was the orchestra. And all this was very big and it had a lot of chairs and tables. Beautiful lamps
and everything was very beautiful. Now, where were the bombs put? Into these columns. PAXMAN: This is one of the columns
that supports the whole hotel, I guess. -Or this corner of it.
-Yes, yes. It's not one. One, two, three... But four, five. PAXMAN: Five columns, five bombs. What was your reaction
when you heard the bomb go off? -What did you think? What did you feel?
-We were satisfied. -PAXMAN
: You were satisfied?
-Yes. It was a mission. You've never been worried
about what you did? Of course I was worried. To succeed. But your sense of morality,
your conscience, -hasn't bothered you since?
-No, no. We fight for our... (SPEAKING HEBREW) To do something against the British. What do you think about it
after all this time? This is over 60 years ago now.
Have your views changed? No. No. (SPEAKING HEBREW) PAXMAN: Do you not feel
any thanks at all to the British? I mean, without the Balfou
r Declaration, there would have been no Jewish homeland
in this part of the world. (SPEAKING HEBREW) PAXMAN: The motive
is neither here nor there. I mean, whatever the motive was, do you not think
that the Balfour Declaration, the right of the Jews to have
a homeland in Palestine... It was a good start. -That was a good thing, wasn't it?
-Yes. PAXMAN: And are you not grateful
for the British for that? (SPEAKING HEBREW) It was now a lot less
like the Promised Land, than hell on Earth. ''Tommies g
o home,''
someone daubed on a wall. And beneath it,
a despairing squaddie wrote, ''I wish we fucking well could.'' What Lawrence called the British love
of policing other men's muddles had proved a disaster. The British Empire is gone
from the Middle East but everyone still lives
with the consequences of Britain's presence in Palestine. Divided peoples and a divided land. The Middle East
taught the British a lesson that all empires had to learn
sooner or later. That though you may begin with amb
ition, and come to believe
you will last forever, one day, you will have
a head-on collision with reality. In the end, and there is
no disguising this fact, the British ran away. (PLAYING THE LASTPOST) PAXMAN: It was May, 1 948. One departing official commented bitterly, ''It is surely a new technique
in our imperial mission to walk out, ''and leave the pots we placed on the fire ''to boil over. '' The bluff of British omnipotence
had been called. It would be called again and again
over the next
few decades. The empire that had lasted
more than 200 years would be dismantled in scarcely 20. The British were beginning
to lose interest. The battered country that emerged
from the Second World War was more concerned with bettering
the lives of its citizens than anything else. An American politician later remarked
that the British people had decided they preferred free aspirins
and false teeth to a role in the world. But it hasn't entirely turned out that way. In fact, we've done anything
bu
t climb into the back seat. The empire may be over,
but imperial habits linger on. (SHOUTING) PAXMAN: In the last three decades, Britain has embarked on seven foreign wars. There were arguments aplenty
for fighting any one of them. But you can't help wondering if,
without the memory of empire, Britain would have plunged in
quite so readily. It's as if we can't quite let go
of who we once were. (ALL CHANTING)
Comments
I can watch british made documentaries all day. Such brilliance.
It was their destiny The last hurrah before we abandoned all efforts to evolve
Thanks - can you up load paxmans ww1 series at all?
52:04 How is a terrorist allowed to survey the scene of her crime? Oh yeah
The infamous Madras Regiment, with its oldest battalion the 9th one, served its master well by partaking the inglorious colonial war against China on 1840-42, 1857-60 and 1900. @6:45
Thr Jodhpur Raja sounds absolutely Indian, upper class certainly. No trace of English upbringing
53:11 don't you feel thankful to the British? lol cheers guv. in my trousers because of you.
The British are accused of extraordinary arrogance. Paxmans hauteur, entitlement, arrogance and cynicism measure the job equally. The pot calling the kettle black. Most of history is about power play , assumption and arrogance. So what is new or unique. Paxman completely looses that context in order to show how clever he is to stand on the very English shoulders that he continually sniggers at. In short, this says more about Paxman than his subject.
Calm down Brits. They had spears, bows and arrows.
The British Empire is Alive and Well. It's just done through Indirect Rule.
Well the Israel-Palestine conflict is repeating itself again 🙄
Not 10 Europeans, 10 English were dying daily.