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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slavery and empire; two themes that
run right through this countrys history. Britains imperial project
dominated at least the last three centuries of our national life. Its
advocates claim it was a civilising mission by which Britain spread
enlightenment and improvement across the globe. Opponents have long
seen it as a brutal business, with Britons cast as cruel oppressors out to
exploit a conquered world. Is our imperial history so clear cut? What if
Britons were themselves captives, either as prisoners of an imperial
enterprise that sucked them in, generation after generation or, in some
startling cases, as slaves to foreign peoples? Is slavery an inevitable part
of empire: does it come with the territory? And how did Britain finally
shake it off? With Linda Colley, School Professor of History, LSE; Catherine
Hall, Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History, University
College London; Felipe Fernandez Armesto, Professorial Research Fellow,
Queen Mary College London.