PODCAST. What was it like to be a 'subject to the British Empire'? And how does British colonial history affect the present? Listen to these rarely told stories from the people of British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, America, Hong Kong, and India.
The sun never sets on…
“The sun never sets on the British Empire”, people used to say, and that is literally true. At its peak, the British overseas colonies covered close to 25% of the earth's surface, from snow-covered Canadian planes to the subtropical island of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean. It numbered 1/5 of the world’s population and it was the largest and most powerful empire in the world for more than a century.
At the beginning of the “We Need to Talk About the British Empire” podcast, we are told that traditionally a lot of Britains from generations past and present have felt great pride in the history of the British Empire. An often-told story is how the Empire provided the colonised countries with railways, education, and democracy. However…what do you see if you take a closer look? What possibilities did it offer its ‘subjects’ - and at what cost? And how are today's generations still affected by colonial times?
In this podcast, writer and journalist Afua Hirsch speak with some of those who personally have experienced the empire first hand or relatives to these. She has picked up stories from British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, America, Hong Kong, and, of course, the biggest of them all, the “jewel in the crown”: India. The stories Hirsch has collected are only seldom told and they reveal details about the British Empire - big and small - that I guess most of us have never heard of. Like the one I have chosen to present to you here which takes place in colonial India.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
Diana Rigg is a British actress, born in 1938. If you recognise her name you will know that she has played in a large number of tv-series, theatre plays and movies during her long, long career - from the Bond-movie “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” from 1969 to the Netflix series the “Game of Thrones” from 2011-2019.
In 1994 she was made a ‘Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire’, and speaking of ‘empire’…Dame Rigg has actually had some first-hand experiences in this field ‘cause for the first eight years of her life, she and her family lived in the British crown colony of India.
It all began with her father.
“He was a very, very clever apprentice to a railway engineer in Doncaster and I think my father had ambitions beyond Doncaster”, Diana Rigg tells us in episode 4 of the podcast. The name of her father was Louis Rigg and he was a young working-class man who lived in a house that had a lavatory at the bottom of the garden. He also had a strong idea that Doncaster was not the place where he would spend the rest of his life. So when he one day saw an advertisement in the Times for engineers to go to India to work on the railway he thought that this could be his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Although he was not an engineer himself he saved up for a train ticket to London, went for an interview…and got the job.
Colonial fear of race and power
Getting a position at the railway in India was an opportunity that was very rare to obtain for folks like Louis Rigg those days. But obviously it was a very attractive position, ‘cause out here it was possible to make a lot of money and come back very rich.
However, it was not an easy job Rigg had thrown himself into. The construction site was placed miles and miles from the nearest city, diseases such as cholera and typhoid were rife and he and his fellow workmen would work at temperatures that would rise as high as 50C (122F).
Indian railway, c. 1900.
Still, Louis Rigg managed his new life pretty well and after three years he was rewarded by being sent back to the UK - he had to find himself a wife.
This was a very common thing to do, Diana Rigg tells us and we are explained how marriage arrangements like this sprang out of a colonial fear of race and power. Apparently the British were nervous that mixed relationships - resulting in children of ‘mixed heritage’ - would undermine their power position. To maintain this idea of racial superiority the British rule made sure to pair up their British workforce with women from back home.
And it was not only in the marital area that the British made sure to distance themselves from the locals, it was in most areas. In the workplace, for instance, there was often a big difference in what the British workers were offered compared to their Indian colleagues. At the railway construction site, where Diana Rigg’s father had his daily routine, the British men possessed more technical jobs, all the while the local Indians took on the more hard physical labour. And while the British workers lived together in camps that were specially built for them, the Indian employees were offered no accommodation but had to provide their own temporary homes.
Culturally the British would also separate from the locals. For instance, they made sure only to eat British food, which typically would be tinned food such as ’Spam’ and corned beef, and in their private homes, the rooms were equipped with British furniture.
This systematic behaviour performed by the British conditioned the local people to believe in - and internalise - ideas about their own inferiority, we are told. And according to the podcast host Afua Hirsch, those ideas still persist to some extent today.
Tea time, India early 1900s.
Back in England Diana Rigg’s father found himself a suitable wife. Beryl Helliwell was her name, and in 1934 they got married in Bombay’s Cathedral. A couple of years later, Diana’s brother was born and in 1938 she herself entered the world.
Banquets at the Maharaja’s palace
“I have such happy memories, I really do. I loved it.” Growing up in Rajasthan in the northern part of India life was in most ways different from how it all would have looked like had Diana Rigg been in England. The weather was extremely hot and so Rigg’s parents had gotten themselves a large house in the cooler mountains where they could spend the warm summer days.
Here they had servants to help around the house, they had gardeners that attended the outdoor area, tailors who made them clothes and nannies that looked after Diana and her brother. During the day the British women paid each other polite visits and from time to time Rigg’s parents were invited to banquets at the Maharaja’s palace.
It was all very extravagant and certainly a big step up for the Rigg family. However, at the same time, it was also a bit of a culture shock. None of them were used to managing a large house and a staff, and meeting with their upper-class British countrymen made Diana’s mother feel out of play. The Rigg family was still considered the lowest in the hierarchy in the social circles of the colony because of their working-class background and everything just seemed..well very formal and very snobbish.
But, culture shock or not, Diana Rigg’s parents were still pleased with their life in India all in all it seemed and they would probably have stayed much longer if not a certain big event had come in the way. In 1947 India became independent and as the country went through the so-called “great partition” the situation became quite chaotic for a period of time. Diana’s parents decided it was time to move back to England and so life in India came to an end for the Rigg family.
Huge arrogance and good exchanges
Now sitting here so many years later looking back, Diana Rigg is asked if she believes that the attitude towards the British Empire has changed since she was a child. And yes she does think it has changed. Especially recently it is like ‘the empire’ is something to be ashamed of and to apologise for, she tells us. But this is not an entirely balanced way of seeing it if you ask her. “I do believe that huge arrogance and ignorance were shown which was inexcusable”, Rigg says, “but there were good exchanges made as well.”
The different stories in the “We Need to Talk About the British Empire” podcast show that the British Empire offered some grand opportunities like in the case of Diana Rigg’s father. However, while he worked his way up the social ladder, he was at the same time part of a system that upheld a sharp division between the colonisers and the colonised, with painful consequences to the Indians.
Other stories in the podcast tell us how people from the colonies, ‘subjects’ of the British Empire, travelled to the British Isles with pretty much the same agenda as Rigg’s father: A dream of achieving better living conditions than what their place of origin could offer them. Like the mother of the Birmingham-born poet, Benjamin Zephaniah.
Jamaicans arriving in Britain, 1950s.
Around the 1950s Britain urged people from her home country of Jamaica to come to the ‘Mother Land’ to help rebuild the society after the war. And so Benjamin Zephaniah's mother went, got a job as a nurse and created a family. Despite a number of incidents where people lashed out at her because of the colour of her skin, she always felt very grateful to all the possibilities Britain has given her. However, even after the many years she has lived in the UK, she still sees herself as a guest, Benjamin Zephaniah tells us, and he adds that the feeling of ‘fitting in’ is still something he and other children of parents who emigrated to the UK from the colonies struggle with.
The British Empire has shaped the lives of many many people in the UK and all around the world - for better or worse. Still what is often in focus when speaking of the empire is the celebration of the glory of the past, the host Afya Hirsch tells us, and not how the history of the empire looks like when it is seen from a more personal angle. Which is why she made this podcast.
There is not one single story that can cover what the British Empire was - and is - all about. It takes a whole wide range of narratives to get a fuller picture. Hopefully, we will get to hear more of these, ‘cause it truly opens up the perspective of this huge part of world history, which is both relevant and extremely interesting. Certainly, I would think, for people with personal connections to the British Empire, but also to all the rest of us.
See you next time
Majken xx
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Podcast: “We Need to Talk About the British Empire”, 6 episodes á 30-40 minutes. Find it at Audible.
Photos: Wikipedia, Reconnecting Asia, Underwood & Underwood, British Pathé/Youtube.
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