On 29 September 1923, the British empire reached its peak, geographically speaking. As the Palestine mandate, administered by Britain, came into force, the empire was at its largest square mileage. That day was significant across the empire for other reasons too: the prime minister of Canada arrived by steamship in Liverpool for the Imperial Conference that began in London two days later. Adelaide Casely-Hayford opened her technical school for girls in Freetown, Sierra Leone – a school run by Africans that aimed to teach an African rather than European curriculum. There were vibrant street celebrations in Lagos after the first election in British West Africa named three members of the Nigerian National Democratic party to the legislative council of southern Nigeria.
A compelling read, Matthew Parker’s One Fine Day uses this single day to capture a snapshot of the sprawling British empire in the early 20th century. The book begins on Ocean Island, also known as Banaba, in present-day Kiribati, a tiny Pacific island whose rich phosphate deposits had been discovered by a New Zealand businessman in 1900. Ocean Island is the starkest example of the empire’s environmental toll. Over the next few decades, a succession of British companies pushed the British government to allow them to strip more and more of Banaba’s land for phosphate mining. Early on, British officials knew what the end would be. Phosphate was an important fertiliser, the only thing that would make large-scale farming possible in Australia and New Zealand. With demand so high, the corporations intended to strip the entire island, leaving its residents, the Banabans, with no place to live.
