Slavery and Empire

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slavery and empire; two themes that run right through this country’s history. Britain’s imperial project dominated at least the last three centuries of our national life. Its advocates claim it was a civilising mission by which Britain spread enlightenment and improvement across the globe. Opponents have long seen it as a brutal business, with Britons cast as cruel oppressors out to exploit a conquered world. Is our imperial history so clear cut? What if Britons were themselves captives, either as prisoners of an imperial enterprise that sucked them in, generation after generation or, in some startling cases, as slaves to foreign peoples? Is slavery an inevitable part of empire: does it come with the territory? And how did Britain finally shake it off?

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Guests

• Linda Colley 5 episodes
  School Professor of History, LSE
• Catherine Hall 3 episodes
  Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History, University College London
• Felipe Fernandez Armesto No other episodes
  Professorial Research Fellow, Queen Mary College London

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Programme ID: p00548jd

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548jd

Auto-category: 909.097124 (British imperialism)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, this week on In Our Time we're discussing captivity and empire, which brings in slavery and empire, two of the themes that run through this country's imperial history.