For centuries, British monarchs — including Queen Elizabeth II — ruled over vast swathes of the globe as head of the most powerful empire in history.
Even as it has crumbled, its legacy of colonialism lives on in the countries forever changed by British imperialism.
The year is 1901. From this small island on the edge of Europe...
... a sprawling and expansive empire is ruled.
It’s four years after Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
Queen Elizabeth II is not yet born. But there’s not a continent on Earth that isn't touched by her great-great-grandmother's empire.
Victoria's realm covers close to a quarter of Earth's land mass — and the same proportion of the world’s population are her subjects.
But that’s about to change.
By the time of Elizabeth's birth in 1926, the spoils of World War I have seen Britain's influence grow in parts of the Middle East.
Just 25 years later, when she ascends the throne in 1952, the decline of the empire has begun in earnest.
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and their territories, were all self-governed by 1931.
As were Canada and Ireland.
And British India had also achieved independence.
By 1982, Britain no longer controls any territory in Africa …
… nor on the mainland of the Americas.
And in 1997, Britain’s last toehold in Asia is extinguished...
...when Hong Kong is handed back to China.
And that's how it has remained until now. This once-sprawling empire that dwarfed its own mother country many times over is now reduced to a collection of far-flung islands.
The largest island left by far is the one that started it all.
British colonialism touched close to 80 of the 195 countries on Earth since it began in the 15th century.
Each of those countries is still dealing with the fallout of colonialism's legacy today.
Taking over an empire
There is a photograph of Queen Elizabeth in Kenya taken around the time she ascended the throne that captures her standing on a bamboo bridge in a pale cotton dress, her husband Philip beside her pointing thoughtfully into the distance.
The image has a fairy tale quality; the African sunlight glows around the couple and they seem almost to float above the river.
Surely this image is a metaphor? The light portraying them as almost holy figures. Prince Philip pointing to the bright future that lies ahead. The bubbling water beneath the bridge representing the rocky times that their leadership will rise above.
Attempts to recreate Britain's monarchs as icons were typical of the Imperial era, says Jeremy Martens, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Western Australia.
"The figure of the monarch became an important symbol around which Imperial identity was hitched and was particularly powerful in settler colonies like Australia and South Africa," he says.
Just days later, in early February 1952, images of the stoic and benevolent young Queen Elizabeth — grieving the death of her father King George VI, while promising to serve her subjects in the largest Empire the world had ever known — were published around the globe inspiring respect and loyalty.
Yet elsewhere in Kenya a very different story was unfolding.
Kenya's rebellion
Africa was one of the last regions of the world to be explored by Europeans. Its potential as a source of cheap labour and resources made the continent attractive as economic depression gripped Europe.
As British colonialists began arriving in east Africa from the mid-1880s — seeking entrepreneurial adventure and a comfortable life in the sunshine — native Kenyans were kicked off their traditional land and either forced to farm whatever infertile plots they could find, or to work for British plantation owners.
In 1901 the territory was officially named a British colony and a process of rebranding Britain's land grab began: the Empire was not stealing land, but rather "civilising" the natives.
By the time the Queen began her tour of Kenya in 1952, 60 years of British imperialism had sparked rising tension. The visit almost didn't go ahead because of fears for then-Princess Elizabeth's safety.
A guerilla force known as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), dominated by the Kikuyu people, as well as the Meru, Embu, Kamba and Massai from Kenya's centre and east, had begun an armed rebellion against colonisation known as the Mau Mau Uprising.
KLFA members wanted higher wages and better education. They wanted their land returned and African self-determination.
It wasn't to be.
As citizens of places like Australia and Britain watched the Queen began her reign amid pomp and celebration, a state of emergency was declared in Kenya and British-controlled forces began to fight back.
KLFA members were described as savages and fanatical terrorists and the reaction was swift.
"British troops were being sent to Kenya and helping to very brutally and violently suppress the Mau Mau," Martens says.
By the time the conflict ended in 1956 more than 11,000 Kenyans were dead, 100,000 had been rounded up and placed in detention camps, and the leader of the Mau Mau Uprising, Dedan Kimathi, had been captured. In 1957 he was executed.
British settlers and loyalists had also been killed, and accusations of war crimes from both sides abounded.
'A very sanitised version'
Stories like this help to explain why many citizens of colonised nations such as Kenya did not mourn the death of the Queen.
While in much of the West she is remembered for her integrity, and duty to her role decades after retirement age, many who were oppressed in the name of the British Empire are critical the Queen didn't do more to acknowledge damage done to her "great Imperial family".
Sipho Hlongwane, a Johannesburg-based writer, has noted that while colonialism was considered history in the West "in our countries, colonialism is now."
"In post-Brexit Britain there is a real amnesia about the underbelly of Empire," Martens says. "The way the Queen's life is remembered is a sanitised version of how loved she was that glosses over the very real role the monarch had in providing a figure around which the Empire was organised."
And while not suggesting the Queen bears personal responsibility for the Empire's violence, Martens says it's impossible to ignore that as symbolic head of the British government in colonial Kenya "her position was invoked all the time to legitimise what was going on there and everywhere else in the Empire."
Thalia Anthony, a legal academic with the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at UTS Sydney, says in Australia some of the colony's earliest legal decisions made clear British rule was justified with reference to the Crown. Even the explorations of Captain James Cook were funded by the Crown, meaning it "profited from the expansion of empire to Australia".
"It dispossessed Aboriginal people of the operation of their laws and it's still part of the skeleton of our sovereign institutions," she says, citing the Mabo decision of 1992 that recognised native title "on the basis that all land is sovereign Crown land and part and parcel of that is that the Crown gets the land because it's considered".
Kenya's Mau Mau uprising, although at first unsuccessful, signalled things were changing. The so-called Scramble for Africa — that saw almost 90 per cent of the continent controlled by seven European nations by 1914 — was coming to an end.
By the close of the 1960s almost every colonised African nation had reclaimed its independence.
The rest of the Empire was taking note.
The largest Empire in history
Britain was far from the first nation to build an Empire. From the Romans to the Ottomans, the Mongols to China's Qing Dynasty: history is littered with eras in which powerful nations ruled vast swathes of the globe, all with their own stories of horror.
Yet the size, wealth and influence of the British Empire dwarfed them all.
The roots of British imperialism began in the 1500s and by 1920 it was the largest in history. King George V — the Queen's grandfather and the great grandfather of the new King Charles III — governed a vast territory of 57 colonies spread across 35.5 million square kilometres, equivalent to 26.5 per cent of the world.
King George V, like the monarchs before him, also held the title Emperor of India.
The steady globalisation of European economies from the late 1400s underpinned the growth of colonialism as European nations rushed to control markets, resources and trade routes using imperial structures.
Britain's success was influenced by the fact that "they were globally active very, very early", says Professor Matthew Fitzpatrick, an expert in international history from Flinders University.
While the Portuguese and Spanish began colonial expansion even earlier, the British were well ahead of countries like Germany, Belgium and even France.
"They asserted themselves in many places around the globe and became enormously wealthy. Later on, much of the globe had already effectively been sewn up," he says.
It took hundreds of years to build the British Empire yet the span of the Queen's life mirrored its comparatively rapid decline.
By the time of her death, Britain's monarch was head of state in just 14 countries, with active republican sentiment — including in Australia — placing the future of even these realms in question.
Even within Great Britain itself, secessionist movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland place in doubt their future within the United Kingdom.
'Everything starts to unravel'
In the early 1950s, it wasn't just Africa showing discontent with British imperialists. Signs of fracture were everywhere.
The British were managing the Anti-British National Liberation War in Malaya, for example, known as the Malayan Emergency — a war in present-day Malaysia to which Australia also contributed troops.
The American colonies had long ago won independence from Britain, and after 200 years as a jewel of the British Empire, India had also been lost. It gained independence in 1947 after a campaign championed by Mahatma Gandhi.
"Personally, I crave not for ‘independence', which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke," he said.
Once India became independent the logic of maintaining other colonies "starts to fall away", and it is impossible to avoid the fact that "once India is gone everything starts to unravel", Fitzpatrick says.
The Suez Canal in Egypt and the position of Iran as a safe route to India begin to have less strategic importance. Yet Britain struggles to hold on, reflecting "the pressure points of Empire", Fitzpatrick says.
In 1961 the Queen undertook a very public display of soft power after Ghana's leader Kwame Nkrumah voiced a desire for independence. The Queen flew to visit him, taking part in a widely photographed dance that was seen as a personal attempt to ensure Ghana stayed within Britain's orbit.
"Queen Elizabeth II is a very good example of ceremony and grandeur softening the appearance of British power around the world whether that be in Africa, Asia or elsewhere," says Fitzpatrick.
Yet he points out the role of Britain in a coup that overthrew Nkrumah a few years later "remains a bit murky". Was Britain involved alongside the United States in replacing Nkrumah with a more compliant leader?
And of course, Britain's swift military response in the Falkland Islands in 1982 to squash Argentina's ambitions to take the territory was neither murky, nor soft, and a striking anomaly in Britain's steady divestment of its colonial acquisitions fought in the name of the Queen.
Fitzpatrick describes this war as "imperial nostalgia" and argues it foreshadows contemporary debates over Britain's place in the world: an attempt to offset the growing power of the European Union, an ideology that "comes into its own during the Brexit debate".
The jewel of the British Empire
When it came to it, Britain did not resist India's independence.
Following World War II, exhausted by war, the British had little appetite to control brewing dissatisfaction among Indian soldiers under the Empire's command fearing mutiny could spark widespread violence. The large number of Britishers, British settlers in India, intensified that fear.
"Britain finds itself unable to maintain its position as before and the voices of those colonised places became more insistent," says Fitzpatrick.
As in Kenya, reaction in India to the Queen's death has been mixed, says Meera Ashar, the director of the South Asia Research Institute at Australian National University.
She argues Britain's retreat from India was less about post-war fatigue and strategic planning and more because "there was little left to exploit".
The last generation born into Empire is still alive: those who were children or young adults when India gained independence in 1947. These people grew up hearing stories of Empire's legacy — not just economic exploitation, but of Indians coerced into labouring for British business and violence against pro-independence activists. Most notable was 1919's Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which up to 1,500 people were killed and many more seriously wounded.
"After about 200 years of exploitation, plunder, theft, the Empire unleashed economic devastation on India," she says, referencing Scottish author William Dalrymple who's latest book notes the word "loot" was one of the first to be absorbed from Hindi into English. "Lut" is the Hindi word for spoils of war.
"That tells you something about what the Empire was all about," Ashar believes.
One of the most graphic examples of lost wealth and royal complicity is the crown jewels including the priceless Kohinoor diamond, believed to have been found in southern India in the 13th century.
The Imperial State Crown sitting on top of the Queen's coffin as she lies in state features the Cullinan II diamond, which along with Cullinan I, came from the largest uncut rough diamond ever found at more than 3,100 carats. It was discovered in the Transvaal Colony in what is now South Africa, and given to Edward VII in 1907.
"It's a parade of the legacy of the Empire," Ashar says, referring to the displays of wealth accompanying the Queen's funeral commemorations.
Both South Africa and India have asked for these priceless gems to be returned.
Ashar argues destruction of the economy was one of the great tragedies of India's colonial era, as it "crippled India's ability to revive itself".
"By leaving it in a completely ravaged state, with a loss of skill, loss of livelihood, loss of life and life expectancy, there has been a long-term impact on the subcontinent," she says.
Yet Ashar points to the division of India following independence into what is now three nations — modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — as an even greater tragedy.
Known as Partition, the division of historical India displaced up to 20 million people along religious lines with up to 2 million dying during one of the largest mass human migrations and refugee crises in history. Millions of families were split as members were forced to decide which side of the new national border they would live.
The tensions that exist between what became Pakistan and India have contributed to one of the most dangerous military flashpoints in the world. Bangladesh, which separated from Pakistan several decades after Partition in 1971, is one of the poorest countries in the world.
The region is not alone. The division of colonial spoils has redrawn historical national boundaries and inflamed tensions in many parts of the world, contributing to contemporary wars in the Middle East and Africa.
Ashar argues the Indian Partition was done too quickly and with insufficient care, proving yet again "the callousness of the Empire".
While the Queen was not Monarch during this period, Ashar believes she was a "symbol of that legacy".
"She had a long reign. She had plenty of time to think about and act on the legacy of the British Empire yet she made no attempt, even symbolically, to deliver any kind of apology," she says.
Ashar believes the crisis of identity the Empire imposed on its post-colonial subjects is "the most insidious evil of the Empire".
"For several generations in India, this was all they had had known: ruthless, condescending British rule," she says. "That continues to have an effect on the way in which the people of that region think and imagine their past and future."
She dismisses the common argument that British infrastructure, governance and legal systems continue to benefit India: "The thing to reflect on is that they've been sold this by breaking down systems that already existed. Moreover, there is no reason to assume former colonies would not have developed infrastructure and modern institutions in due course."
Australia's violent conflict
As Britain went about establishing its colonies, part of the strategy for success, Fitzpatrick says, was partnering with local elites "who decided, given the balance of power, it was in their best interests to collaborate".
This was done "very artfully", he says. "Only where this strategy failed did they have to intervene militarily as a kind of primary measure."
Yet in Australia, from the very earliest contact with Aboriginal people, the British colonialists dehumanised and then murdered the population, later adding the concept of terra nullius to strip Indigenous people of power to collaborate, or negotiate.
Historians estimate around 300,000 people were living in Australia when Captain James Cook sailed down the east coast in 1770 and proclaimed the land in the name of King George III.
At that time, with the recent loss of 13 colonies in North America to independence, the British were seeking a new penal settlement. And as the First Fleet sailed into Sydney on January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Philip of Britain's Royal Navy raised the British flag in Sydney Cove and proclaimed the colony of New South Wales less than two weeks later.
By May that year the first conflict between Aboriginal people and First Fleet arrivals is recorded and soon after Indigenous leaders including Arabanoo, Bennelong, Colebee and Pemulwuy became well known to the colony.
It is impossible to accept British colonialists and settlers did not understand that this land was already taken, and that the society had leading personalities to negotiate with.
In Tasmania, where Trawlwulwuy woman Emma Lee's ancestors thrived on Tebrakunna country in the north-east of the island, the colonial massacres of Indigenous people were so extensive that an extinction myth was widely promoted. Settler colonialists no longer felt the need to negotiate with the original land owners because they had been declared to no longer exist.
"The British system was legitimised by its action of colonising others. It got its power and wealth from taking from others [but] it's not legitimate to steal other people's countries," says Lee, an associate professor of Indigenous Leadership at Swinburne University of Technology.
In fact, Indigenous Tasmanians did try to negotiate with the British Empire — then led by the Queen's great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria.
In the early 1830s, around the same time as a decade of violent conflict between British settlers and Aboriginal Tasmanians was coming to a close, the colonial government declared Australia terra nullius.
About 130 members of Tasmania's Aboriginal population who had escaped the colonial massacres that had destroyed Tasmania's original 15,000-strong population, negotiated the Wybalenna Petition, or The Promise. Led by Elder Mannalargenna, Aboriginal people agreed to move from mainland Tasmania to Flinders Island as part of an agreement that they would eventually return.
But poor conditions allowed disease to flourish and by 1847 only 47 of the original group survived. Trucanini, who died in 1876, and Fanny Smith, who died 1905, are wrongly suggested the last of the Tasmanians.
"The sad thing for me to consider in the context of our history of genocide, is that we still wrote and recognised Queen Victoria," says Lee. "She was wrong in what she did, yet we recognised her but we never got that [recognition] back. It's been such an unequal relationship."
Lee believes the story of Tasmania's Indigenous people became a warning from the British Empire. The message?
"You're either with us, or we wipe you out," says Lee. "And so that action of creating the extinction myth is just as influential as the industrial revolution. This was a show of power: Look at the power of the British when they can [wipe out] an entire group of people."
Lee says that while many expressed sadness over the death of the Queen it remains important to remember the legacy of the monarchy that underpinned the Empire's atrocities.
"That perspective can then open discussions and understanding about why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples feel so deeply hurt," she says. "We've never been able to have those discussions."
Repairing the damage
The Queen came close to apologising to the Irish in 2011, Fitzpatrick says, and in the 1960s pointedly refused to back factions of the Rhodesian government and instead adhered to a belief that independence was not possible without enfranchisement of the African majority.
She was also active in distancing herself from Margaret Thatcher's refusal to support sanctions against South Africa at the height of the Apartheid movement.
Yet there's little argument that more must be done, he says.
As King Charles III takes the throne how should he address the legacy of the monarchy's role in the British Empire and the damage left behind?
It's human impulse to want to draw up a ledger of good and bad, says Justin Martens. "But I'd like to resist that."
"The British, whether we like it or not helped to shape the world in which we live. Personally, I think about how the legacies of Empire continue to have negative impacts on all sorts of people depending on who you are and where you live," he says. "Obviously African people, for example, have since been agents in their own change but you have a set of circumstances which makes it very difficult for those places to prosper. You can't at the same time pretend that the legacy of Empire is not still with us. That amnesia is a blind spot."
Matthew Fitzpatrick agrees: "There's no way to return to the status quo ante, the thing that was before," he says. "That's broken. It's gone forever."
Yet he emphasises memory of Britain's actions in its colonies remains deeply felt, pointing out the protests that accompanied the royal tour by the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to the Caribbean earlier this year need to be understood.
"The memory of slavery is not just a textbook thing," he says. "It's felt very deeply as a kind of a lived history."
Ashar believes this theme of reparation and acknowledgement is something Charles needs to consider closely as he begins his reign.
"For one, I think he should make some kind of formal apology for the Empire and to back that apology with symbolic reparation," she says. "At least the narrative should be set right, and this is important for understanding these post-colonial nations in the present."
And for Australia, the impact of Empire on Aboriginal people remains visceral politically, as well as culturally.
Emma Lee says the damage done by British colonialism is "immeasurable".
"No apology, no reparation can make up for that but we can reduce the trauma by beginning open, equitable discussions and seeing each other in the same spaces," she says.
Anthony from UTS's Jumbunna Institute says from a legal perspective while Australia remains a constitutional monarchy there will always be questions over sovereignty of the Crown.
"A parallel debate is whether we move towards a Republic and give the parliament sovereign status," she says. "I don't have faith that Charles can be a better sovereign than Elizabeth. The problem is the fundamental issue of who should be ruling Australia and the place of Indigenous people within that framework."
Editor's Note (September 19, 2022): An earlier version of this article stated that Queen Victoria was Queen Elizabeth II’s grandmother. In fact, she was her great-great-grandmother. The ABC has amended the story to reflect this.
Notes
The sources used for the historical British Empire maps were:
- Nigel Dalziel, Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire, 2006
- Maps in time from 1900 to 2000, UK National Archives
Credits
- Reporting: Catherine Taylor and Matt Martino
- Development: Joshua Byrd
- Design: Georgina Piper
- Digital production: Leigh Tonkin
- Editors: Cristen Tilley, Matt Liddy and Leigh Tonkin
