Legacy of violence

The book “Legacy of violence” is a scathing indictment of the long and brutal history of British imperialism. Historian Elkins frames her Legacy of violence narrative with two events that actually took the British Empire to task for its violent imperial policy over centuries. The first was the 1788 impeachment trial of governor-general of India, Warren Hastings, during which Parliament demanded accountability for his repressive tactics, shocking the nation. The second is the 2011 case of the survivors of the Mau Mau rebellion. Throughout this tour de force of historical excavation, Elkins confronts the decidedly Western ideas of the social contract, government responsibility and the importance of personal property alongside the enduring belief that White men alone could institute these marvelous liberal gifts. “When 19th century liberalism confronted distant places and ‘backward people’ bound by strange religions, hierarchies, and sentimental and dependent relationships, its universalistic claims withered,” writes the author. “Britons viewed their imperial center…as culturally distinct from their empire….Skin color became the mark of difference. Whites were at one end of civilization’s spectrum, Blacks at the other. All of shades of humanity fell somewhere in between.” Paternalistic attitudes continued to evolve across the empire, and the author provides especially keen examinations of colonies where clashes were particularly forceful and “legalized lawlessness” was widespread—among other regions, India, South Africa, Palestine, Ireland, Malay, and Kenya. Offering numerous correctives to whitewashed history, the author mounts potent attacks against the egregious actions of vaunted figures like Winston Churchill and Henry Gurney, commissioner of Malay. Over the course of the 20th century, Britain was forced to cede many of its sovereign claims to empire at enormous human cost. The author masterfully encapsulates hundreds of years of history amply showing how “Britain was to the modern world what the Romans and Greeks were to the ancient one.” TW