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01/20/2006:

"The textbook whitewash of our brutish empire is a lie"

The chancellor wants to reclaim the flag from the right. Far more important is to face up to the reality of its barbaric history


On holiday in Sri Lanka, a Sinhalese friend lent me a book about Britain's conquest of the island just under two centuries ago. Neither of us knew that Gordon Brown was soon to deliver a speech on Britishness, so my reference point at that stage was George Bush's Iraq.

The similarities between April 2003 and British policy in Sri Lanka in 1815 were uncanny. Determined to remove the King of Kandy, who controlled the mountains of the island's interior and was the last bastion of independence, the British conspired with local nobles to topple the autocratic ruler.

But, instead of withdrawing as the nobles had been led to believe, the British stayed on in Kandy. "You have now deposed the king, and nothing more is required - you may leave us," one of them said in polite desperation.

I was reminded of the graffiti that appeared on the pedestal of Saddam Hussein's statue less than a month after US marines pulled it down in central Baghdad: "All done. Now go home."

The Americans haven't, and nor did the British. The result was a guerrilla insurgency that the British put down with enormous savagery. PE Pieris's book Sinhale and the Patriots 1815-1818 is a work of immense scholarship that includes testimony from the then British governor Sir Robert Brownrigg's official papers as well as the reminiscences of army officers.

If we are to celebrate Britishness as the chancellor wants us to do then the lesser-known aspects of our past ought to be thrown into the mix. If one of the elements of Britishness today is fairness then let us remember that the year 1815 saw not only the triumph of Waterloo but also a vicious campaign of colonial brutality much further afield.
guardian.co.uk