Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

“Imperialism is not something that can be erased with a few statues being torn down or a few institutions facing up to their dark pasts,” according to this pointed and wide-ranging survey of how Britain’s imperialist past informs its present. Contending that most Britons remain ignorant of the many ways in which “the experience of having colonized” continues to affect British life and culture, journalist and novelist Sanghera (Marriage Material), calls for Empire Day 2.0, a reimagined version of an annual half-day school holiday from the first half of the 20th century. Among other lessons, students would learn that the expression “I don’t give a damn” originated in British India, where a dam was a low-value copper coin, and that the oil and gas company Shell started as an importer of “oriental seashells from the Far East.” Elsewhere, Sanghera turns to darker episodes in the history of British empire, including the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre that killed an estimated 600 to 1,000 Indian men, women, and children in 1919 and helped bring the British Raj to an end, and the looting of artifacts in Tibet. Ranging across the temporal length and geographical breadth of the empire, Sanghera amasses a devastating catalog of tragedies and injustices, and makes an irrefutable case that “imperial amnesia” hurts all Britons. It’s a cogent and captivating wake-up call. (Feb.)