What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?

The murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020 and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in Britain over the legacy of the British Empire have reignited interest in imperial history. This focuses, in particular, on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering and maintaining an empire shaped British politics, culture and society. More broadly, the teaching of Britain’s imperial history has become a contentious issue in public debate. One side complains that the history of the British Empire is barely taught, while the other side attacks attempts to teach about colonial legacies in Britain as ‘biased’ exercises in national ‘self-flagellation’. For teachers, bringing this hotly-contested history in the classroom may at first seem daunting, but the topic offers opportunities to open pupils’ eyes to the history all around them, enabling them to look anew at the everyday and the taken-for-granted.

The present public debate over the legacy of Empire mirrors older and ongoing debates in the historiography about the influence of the empire on Britain. This turn towards examining the domestic impact of empire was first popularised by the historian John MacKenzie...