In outlining the agency of the colonised in resisting the incursions of imperialism and the influence this resistance had on British dissidents, the book hoped to enable present-day descendants of the colonised, Britain’s Black and Asian denizens, to find a way to reposition themselves as contributors to the making of Britain and not simply as beneficiaries of historical white benevolence who must learn to ‘integrate’ with an unchanging British ‘norm’. Priyamvada Gopal is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. By doing so, it tackles the whole premise of British liberal imperial progress and benevolence which remains so pervasive to this day. Gopal ends her book where she began, in Oxford, with Margery Perham, the distinguished colonial expert, whose life journey is retold as a passage out of Africa, with Mau Mau as the turning point in her rejection of Britain’s imperial mission. It also shows how a pivotal role in fomenting dissent was played by anti-colonial campaigners based in London at the heart of the empire.

Sudhir Hazareesingh, TLS Books of the Year, 2019 Gopal has a sharp eye for forgotten characters and lost histories. It argues convincingly that, when it did occur, British anti-colonialism in the metropole was forged through exposure to imperial insurgency. For myself this book taught me a great deal about African struggle against British dictatorships in African lands. Using some two dozen case studies, Gopal investigates a century of dissent, from the Indian “mutiny” of 1857 through to the Mau Mau uprising in 1950s Kenya.Her account begins with the Chartist leader Ernest Jones, whose sympathy for the Indians crushed by the British suppression of the 1850s sepoy rebellion so influenced Karl Marx. Polemic there is, but her battles with the empire denial lobby come in the opening pages and towards the close, and do not detract from a rigorous, persuasive revisionist history. Gopal takes Blunt more seriously than most historians, who seldom get beyond his philandering and passion for Arabian horses. Much has been written on how colonized peoples took up British and European ideas and turned them against empire when making claims to freedom and self-determination. View image in fullscreen The battle at Cawnpore (Kanpur) where a British garrison was wiped out during the Indian ‘mutiny’ of 1857.

Insurgent Empire demonstrates how often critics have hacked at the pedestals of imperial pieties, and how consistently voices outside Britain have inspired them. Gopal shows very successfully that the colonies - British relationship was not a one way street where only colonial peoples learnt from the British. She contends that historians should not give as much credit to liberal and progressive voices from the centers of colonial power - as in fact these folk were inspired by resistance figures from among the colonized peoples themselves.Since 2016, campaigners have been trying to “decolonise” Britain’s history by removing memorials to imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes and the Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston, among others. Priyamvada Gopal is University Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge and Fellow, Churchill College. From there, he made his way to India, witnessing a “white” mutiny as the Europeans of Calcutta vetoed the viceroy’s attempt to open up the courts to native Indian magistrates. Remarkably, there are very few counterweights to this kind of account, let alone ones with grand narrative ambition. In addition, a pivotal role in fomenting resistance was played by anticolonial campaigners based in London, right at the heart of empire.

While formerly colonial societies have to reckon with the ways in which they continue to benefit from the spoils of enslavement and colonisation, ‘decolonisation’ should not become an excuse for postcolonial states to enact their own forms of oppression. Professor Gopal traces the dynamic relationship between anti-colonial resistance (from the Indian Mutiny in 1857 to the Mau Mau in Kenya in the late 1950s) and the few, often isolated individuals and groups in Britain who broke ranks and challenged the idea of Empire. It was a revelation to me that many 19th century British intellectuals, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, John Tyndall, Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens, Tennyson and J. She is the author of Literary Radicalism in India: Gender, Nation and the Transition to Independence; The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration and Insurgent Empire – Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent.But I was glad I persisted - once the author starts writing in her own voice, the language becomes much clearer, the style is engaging and the subject matter is of great interest. Insurgent Empire sets the record straight in demonstrating that these people were much more than victims of imperialism or, subsequently, the passive beneficiaries of an enlightened British conscience-they were insurgents whose legacies shaped and benefited the nation that once oppressed them. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.