MP Shashi Tharoor on the consequences of Britain’s imperial past

Trans-Atlantic slavery was just one aspect of the process of European colonialism, and a new book by Indian MP Shashi Tharoor has been described as a “blistering critique of our colonialist past”. The themes of ‘Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India‘ are said to have echoes today. In this interview with Channel 4 News and in this article Tharoor speaks of the legacy of empire as a British problem because of “historical amnesia about what the empire really entailed”. Colonial history is not taught in schools and there is “no real awareness of the atrocities, the fact that Britain financed its Industrial Revolution and its prosperity from the depredations of empire.”