🧵1/9 One of the many interesting exchanges in this discussion is about a question that all those trying to engage publicly in British colonial history will hear time and time again: why don't you talk about the Belgian [or substitute any other] empire?
2. Subjecting this question to a process of elimination is revealing. Let's start with a field well outside of History. Do we hear oncologists being asked why they are not epidemiologists? No. Within professional fields, people are 'allowed', indeed encouraged, to specialise.
3. Within the field of History do we hear Tudor specialists being asked why they don't talk about the Mughals? No. Do hear hear historians of WWII asked why they don't cover the Franco-Prussian War? No. Historians are 'allowed' to specialise in themes, places or periods.
4. Narrowing down to historians of imperialism, do we expect an historian of the Russian empire to discuss the British Empire instead? No. It seems it is generally 'permissible' to talk only about one empire.
5. The only thing that some can't tolerate is British historians focusing on the British Empire. @Sathnam and @DavidOlusoga identify the deflection involved in this response; the avoidance of something uncomfortable. But why do so many of us find it uncomfortable?
6. I think the answer is race. Britain has unresolved social fractures, crystallised when protestors drowned Colston's statue. They are caused not by immutable racial differences but by racism.
7. This racism is the product of a version of Britishness forged through centuries of colonialism and associated with Whiteness. It still prevails with Nigel Farage's proverbial 'man in the pub'.
8. Its Whiteness is felt to be superior but threatened by the serious discussion of British history that @Sathnam and @DavidOlusoga are encouraging here. That's why so many Britons would rather talk about other empires.
9. It's why @History_Reclaim and obscurely funded right wing and National Conservative organisations have fought a culture war: to ward off a postcolonial, multiracial version of Britishness, the shape of which is still to be defined.