essay on the british empire

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BRITANNIA: Review/Essay of The Rise & Fall of the British Empire (L. James)

This book is the definitive history of the Rise and Fall of the British Empire-by one of England's most admired historians. Although this book does cover the Fall in its final 19 chapters, its emphasis is on the Rise (1600 to 1914: 23 chapters); so, initially, I thought I might supplement the Empire's decline with another fine history: "After the Victorians: the Decline of Britain" by A. N. Wilson (2005). However, I discovered that Wilson's book focused more on England than its empire, so I restricted myself to the principal book that actually does do a better job on the positive Rise than the negative Fall, as readers might have guessed. This book presents a very interesting story. This is the tale of the world's greatest empire between those of Rome and the United States of America. This is a fascinating blend of risk-taking merchants and aristocratic militarists that developed an Empire, (with minimal design) that evolved into a spread of people (colonies) and culture (laws and language). This essay will quickly alert readers to the major social movement of the last 400 years, still impacting today, all over the world.

Related Papers

Garabet K Moumdjian, Ph.D.

For almost four hundred years Britain ruled substantial areas of the world outside Europe. In the first 150 years, from 1600 to 1750, expansion was a matter of setting up small but prosperous trading posts and settlements very close to the sea, supported by naval strength and close contact with friends in England. After 1750 imperial rule began to move inland and for the next 170 years, up to the end of the First World War, a steadily increasing part of the earth's surface was ruled from London. The naval and industrial power which made this possible also meant that Britain could exert a great deal of influence in the world outside the empire, but this was a matter of diplomacy rather than direct rule. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century British expansion can be seen as an important but secondary part of the overseas expansion of Europe which began with Columbus's discovery of the route to the Americas in 1492. Spain took the lead, closely followed by Portugal; France, England and the Netherlands became involved about a hundred years later. Until 1800 these five European countries all ruled overseas empires. Between 1790 and 1830 all of the other European empires were seriously weakened so that by middle of the nineteenth century the British Empire was not only the largest empire the world had ever seen, it was the only flourishing and functioning empire in existence.

Journal of The Economic and Social History of The Orient

Spencer Leonard

Paul Mulvey

From the founding of the colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. British domination of indigenous peoples in North America, Asia, and Africa can now be seen more clearly as part of the larger and dynamic interaction of European and non-western societies. Though the subject remains ideologically charged, the passions aroused by British imperialism have so lessened that we are now better placed than ever to see the course of the Empire steadily and to see it whole. At this distance in time the Empire's legacy from earlier centuries can be assessed, in ethics and economics as well as politics, with greater discrimination. At the close of the twentieth century, the interpretation of the dissolution of the Empire can benefit from evolving perspectives on, for example, the end of the cold war. In still larger sweep, the Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study helps us to understand the end of the Empire in relation to its beginning, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history.

Sidrah Rehman

Tony Ballantyne

Melissa BARRY

The British Empire occupies a central place in the history of the world. Indeed, at the height of its expansion, it covered more than a quarter of the earth's surface, and its political, economic and cultural aspects have exercised a great influence on the shaping of the modern world. More importantly, it also helped shape British identity and civilisation. Indeed, the possession of an overseas Empire fostered national pride and even today, tales of the British Empire have the power to conjure up memories of former British glory, when Britain was the greatest world-power on earth. Many memorials erected to commemorate the heroes of the Empire are still visible today all around Britain. However, the way Europeans consider their imperial past today is marked by a profound sense of post-colonial guilt, as we have come to question and reject racial hierarchies and the moral right of a 'superior' and more-civilised nation to rule it over peoples reputed as 'inferior', 'backward' and in need of European support and guidance. Moreover, we now recognise that every nation should be able to decide for itself and shape its own destiny. That idea already played a major role in the final dissolution of the Empire in the 2 nd half of the 20th century. Today, many aspects of the history of the British Empire, such as slavery, are very shocking to us and hurt our modern sensibilities. Since the fall of the Empire, Britain has been striving to find a new role in world politics. This can be shown by its connection with the United States, sometimes ambiguous and tinged with apprehension, but also by its membership of and relationships with the European Union, although this attempt came to a brutal end with the outcome of the 'Brexit' referendum. According to the journalist, Britain's former imperial status is still determining its foreign policies (such as its involvement in Iraq), its economy and its sense of identity. Use of the word 'Britons' to designate the British people: original Celtic inhabitants of Britain, was part of George III's propaganda during the Seven Years' War, found its way into the famous patriotic song 'Rule Britannia' (brochure, p. 8-9) and was also used to express a sense of British descent at the outset of the American War of Independence, for example by Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut who remarked that the Americans were the 'descendents of Britons'.

Journal of World-Systems Research

Thomas D Hall

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

Georgi Derluguian

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A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Shooting an Elephant’ is a 1936 essay by George Orwell (1903-50), about his time as a young policeman in Burma, which was then part of the British empire. The essay explores an apparent paradox about the behaviour of Europeans, who supposedly have the power over their colonial subjects.

Before we offer an analysis of Orwell’s essay, it might be worth providing a short summary of ‘Shooting an Elephant’, which you can read here .

Orwell begins by relating some of his memories from his time as a young police officer working in Burma. Although the extent to which the essay is autobiographical has been disputed, we will refer to the narrator as Orwell himself, for ease of reference.

He, like other British and European people in imperial Burma, was held in contempt by the native populace, with Burmese men tripping him up during football matches between the Europeans and Burmans, and the local Buddhist priests loudly insulting their European colonisers on the streets.

Orwell tells us that these experiences instilled in him two things: it confirmed his view, which he had already formed, that imperialism was evil, but it also inspired a hatred of the enmity between the European imperialists and their native subjects. Of course, these two things are related, and Orwell understands why the Buddhist priests hate living under European rule. He is sympathetic towards such a view, but it isn’t pleasant when you yourself are personally the object of ridicule or contempt.

He finds himself caught in the middle between ‘hatred of the empire’ he served and his ‘rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make [his] job impossible’.

The main story which Orwell relates takes place in Moulmein, in Lower Burma. An elephant, one of the tame elephants which the locals own and use, has given its rider or mahout the slip, and has been wreaking havoc throughout the bazaar. It has destroyed a hut, killed a cow, and raided some fruit stalls for food. Orwell picks up his rifle and gets on his pony to go and see what he can do.

He knows the rifle won’t be good enough to kill the elephant, but he hopes that firing the gun might scare the animal. Orwell discovers that the elephant has just trampled a man, a coolie or native labourer, to the ground, killing him. Orwell sends his pony away and calls for an elephant rifle which would be more effective against such a big animal. Going in search of the elephant, Orwell finds it coolly eating some grass, looking as harmless as a cow.

It has calmed down, but by this point a crowd of thousands of local Burmese people has amassed, and is watching Orwell intently. Even though he sees no need to kill the animal now it no longer poses a threat to anyone, he realises that the locals expect him to dispatch it, and he will lose ‘face’ – both personally and as an imperial representative – if he does not do what the crowd expects.

So he shoots the elephant from a safe distance, marvelling at how long the animal takes to die. He acknowledges at the end of the essay that he only shot the elephant because he did not wish to look like a fool.

‘Shooting an Elephant’ is obviously about more than Orwell’s killing of the elephant: the whole incident was, he tells us, ‘a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act.’

The surprise is that despotic governments don’t merely impose their iron boot upon people without caring what their poor subjects think of them, but rather that despots do care about how they are judged and viewed by their subjects.

Among other things, then, ‘Shooting an Elephant’ is about how those in power act when they are aware that they have an audience. It is about how so much of our behaviour is shaped, not by what we want to do, nor even by what we think is the right thing to do, but by what others will think of us .

Orwell confesses that he had spent his whole life trying to avoid being laughed at, and this is one of his key motivations when dealing with the elephant: not to invite ridicule or laughter from the Burmese people watching him.

To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

Note how ‘my whole life’ immediately widens to ‘every white man’s life in the East’: this is not just Orwell’s psychology but the psychology of every imperial agent. Orwell goes on to imagine what grisly death he would face if he shot the elephant and missed, and he was trampled like the hapless coolie the elephant had killed: ‘And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.’

The stiff upper lip of this final phrase is British imperialism personified. Being trampled to death by the elephant might be something that Orwell could live with (as it were); but being laughed at? And, worse still, laughed at by the ‘natives’? Unthinkable …

And from this point, Orwell extrapolates his own experience to consider the colonial experience at large: the white European may think he is in charge of his colonial subjects, but ironically – even paradoxically – the coloniser loses his own freedom when he takes it upon himself to subjugate and rule another people:

I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

So, at the heart of ‘Shooting an Elephant’ are two intriguing paradoxes: imperial rulers and despots actually care deeply about how their colonised subjects view them (even if they don’t care about those subjects), and the one who colonises loses his own freedom when he takes away the freedom of his colonial subjects, because he is forced to play the role of the ‘sahib’ or gentleman, setting an example for the ‘natives’, and, indeed, ‘trying to impress’ them. He is the alien in their land, which helps to explain this second paradox, but the first is more elusive.

However, even this paradox is perhaps explicable. As Orwell says, aware of the absurdity of the scene: ‘Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.’

The Burmese natives are the ones with the real power in this scene, both because they are the natives and because they outnumber the lone policeman, by several thousand to one. He may have a gun, but they have the numbers. He is performing for a crowd, and the most powerful elephant gun in the world wouldn’t be enough to give him power over the situation.

There is a certain inevitability conveyed by Orwell’s clever repetitions (‘I did not in the least want to shoot him … They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant … I had no intention of shooting the elephant … I did not in the least want to shoot him … But I did not want to shoot the elephant’), which show how the idea of shooting the elephant gradually becomes apparent to the young Orwell.

These repetitions also convey how powerless he feels over what is happening, even though he acknowledges it to be unjust (when the elephant no longer poses a threat to anyone) as well as financially wasteful (Orwell also draws attention to the pragmatic fact that the elephant while alive is worth around a hundred pounds, whereas his tusks would only fetch around five pounds).

But he does it anyway, in an act that is purely for show, and which goes against his own will and instinct.

Discover more about Orwell’s non-fiction with our analysis of his ‘A Hanging’ , our discussion of his essay on political language , and our thoughts on his autobiographical essay, ‘Why I Write’ .

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8 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’”

Absolutely fascinating and very though provoking. Thank you.

Thanks, Caroline! Very kind

One biographer claimed that the incident never took place and is pure fiction created to make the points you mention. Is there any proof that it actually happened ?

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Circuses – it still goes on, tragically. https://robinsaikia.org/2021/04/04/elephants-in-venice-1954/

Hmm now I make another connection here. A degree of the hypocrisy of human society. In a sense, the Burmese were ‘owned’ by their imperial masters – personified by Orwell – but the Elephant was owned by the Burmese. the Burmese hate Orwell for being the imperialist and yet they expect him to shoot their elephant who is itself forced into a role it clearly didn’t like. I know it is all very post-modernist to consider things from a non-human point of view, but there seems a very obvious mirroring here.

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The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction

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The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction explores how the British Empire became so powerful and far-reaching. From the eighteenth century until the 1950s the British Empire was the biggest political entity in the world. What was the British Empire and what were its main constituent parts? How was the Empire ruled? What were its economic effects? What were the cultural implications of empire, in Britain and its colonies? These questions are answered in this VSI and the life of the people living under imperial rule is examined. The legacies of the Empire and how it should be viewed in world history are also explored.

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Influence of the british league of nations union in promoting the league of nations, history of marketisation on british policies, discussion of relation between india and the british empire, british empire: its beginning, downfall and success, british abolitionist campaign: the fight with immorality and sins, european colonization of africa: war with the indigenous population, poems in honor boer wars, arthur griffith's ideology and influence: nationalist figure in ireland, topics in this category.

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79 British Empire Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best british empire topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy british empire essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on british empire, ❓ british empire essay questions.

• History of British Empire Well, as exposited in this paper, the Second World War, anti-colonial movements, the United States, the United Nations declaration, the Cold War and the USSR were the main forces behind the decolonization while the end […]
• The Presence of the British Empire on Tibet The article ‘”Truth”, Perception, and Politics: The British Construction of an Image of Tibet by Alex McKay focuses on the presence of the British Empire on Tibet and the perception of the latter. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• British Empire and Imperial Culture The British Empire was the largest in the entire world and its power and influence were universally felt. The desire to gain more power and become the most powerful nation in the world led to […]
• Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire The act of alienating Ireland in the development process brought the distinction in the collaboration. Slave trade contributed to the growth of the economy of the British Empire via the production of the raw materials […]
• Rising to Prominence: The History of the British Empire The British Empire was the strongest empire between the 16th and the 20th centuries. The British Empire was the biggest empire at its peak, between the end of the 16th century and the 18th century.
• British Empire in India and the Far East Cody traces the emergence of British imperialism to the East to its mercantile trade decline in the late 19th century when the abolition of slavery and the labialisation of trade that greatly diminished its wealth.
• The British Empire and International Affairs Even though, Britain lost most of its colonies during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, its economic policies rose above the United States as well as other European powers in the international affairs. This […]
• British Empire Adventure Fiction – Cosmopolitanism/Citizenship The Boys’ Literature and the Idea of Empire, 1870- 1914, one of the adventures literatures tried to argue that; boys as the role model of Britons “are you proud to be a Briton?”. Overtime, the […]
• “Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth Slavery has for a very long time attracted the attention of many history scholars.”Morgan Kenneth, in his book Slavery and the British Empire gives a deep in site of how the British came to embrace […]
• Trade and Commerce in the Development of the British Empire
• Colonial Revenue Extraction and Modern Day Government Quality in the British Empire
• British Empire Industrial Revolution
• Prime Minister Robert Borden and Canada’s Role in the British Empire
• Symbiosis: Trade and the British Empire
• Historical Development of Education in the British Empire
• Financial System of the British Empire Fail in the Face of Adversity
• The Idea Behind the ‘Taxation Without Representation’ in the British Empire
• The Most Important Factors in the Growth of the British Empire
• Imperialism: British Empire and Imperialist Powers Spheres
• The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
• British Empire and the Union of South Africa
• British Empire’s Influences and Actions in Africa – Good or Bad?
• The British Empire and the British Industrial Revolution
• Patriotic Trade, Ethnicity, and Market in the 1930s British Empire
• The British Empire and the War for North America
• The British Empire Against the Emperor of Ethiopia
• British Empire and East India Company
• Technological Advancements During the 18th Century of the British Empire
• Significance of Slave Trade In the Growth of the British Empire
• Conflict Between the Colonies and British Empire
• British Empire and Winston Churchill
• The Anglo Cluster: Legacy of the British Empire
• Large Scale Institutional Changes: Land Demarcation Within the British Empire
• The Second World War as a Catalyst for the Loss of Colonial Power in the British Empire
• The British Empire and the Colonial Crisis
• The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire – A World Map in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
• Queen Victoria’s Influential Reign Over the British Empire
• The Reason the British Empire Gave up Imperial Control
• British Empire and American Revolution
• Preparation, Assimilation, Force: Education in the British Empire
• British Empire and Central American Slave
• The Benefits and Harms Caused by the British Empire
• American Colonists and the British Empire
• Taxation, Authority, and Social Conditions in the British Empire
• British Empire’s Origins and Demise
• The Ancient Roman Empire and the British Empire: Diffusion of Roman and English Law Throughout the World
• Imperialism: British Empire and Small Islands
• The British Empire in 1870-1914: A Waste of Money
• Comparison Between the British Empire and the Roman Empire
• Why Did the British Empire Fall?
• How Did the British Empire Impact the World?
• Do You Agree That Britain’s Imperial Defence Strategies Provided Only ‘The Illusion of Security’ for Her Eastern Empire in the Two Decades After 1921?
• What Was the Most Important Factor in the Growth of the British Empire?
• How Did America Win Her Independence From the British Empire?
• Did the British Empire Improve Lives in Africa?
• Why Was the British Empire So Successful?
• How Did the British Empire Consolidation and Its Consequences up to 1774 Affect the American Colonist’s Way of Life?
• Was Losing the American Colonies a Failure of the British Empire?
• How Did Trade and Commerce Contribute to the Development of the British Empire in 1680?
• Was the British Empire a Force for Good or for Evil?
• How Was Significant Slave Trade in the Growth of the British Empire?
• Was Trade the Most Important Factor of the British Empire?
• How Did the British Empire Try to Enforce Obedience Through Taxation?
• Were the British Empire’s Influences and Actions in Africa Good or Bad?
• What Was Rudyard Kipling’s Attitude Towards the British Empire?
• Why Was the British Empire Unique History?
• Was the ‘New Imperialism’ of the Late Nineteenth Century a Symptom of British Strength or British Weakness?
• Were Britain’s Relations With Her Colonies and Dominions Fundamentally Transformed in the Inter-War Period?
• To What Extent Did Domestic Considerations Affect British Policy Towards Empire and Commonwealth Lands?
• What Effect Did the Empire Have On British Policy in the Two World Wars?
• Was the British Empire Lost on the Playing Fields of Haileybury?
• In What Ways and to What Extent Did Changes in the Domestic Political Arena Affect the Process of British Decolonisation?
• Why Did Most British Colonies Not Follow India Into Independence Until the 1960s?
• How Was the British Empire Controlled?
• Has There Been Any Significant Difference Between the Attitudes of Labour and Conservative Governments to the British Empire and Commonwealth?
• Was the Falklands Conflict of 1982 an Imperial War?
• What Significance Does the Commonwealth Possess?
• Has the End of the British Empire Provided for the End of Great Britain?
• What Countries Were in the British Empire?
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I came to Britain from India, fulfilled a dream, and I say this: we’re a great country, but a work in progress

There is still a misrepresentation of the colonial past. Without the truth of what we have been, how can we move forward?

I thought I knew Britain in 1969, when I came to this country from India to study at Loughborough University. But I quickly realised that was not the case. For me, the last half-century has been a long process of learning. At times this was very painful. Once, I even feared for my life at the hands of football racists. I have also seen the UK reinvent itself as a much more caring, welcoming place. However, we still have some way to go to become a truly diverse society.

My initial surprise was to discover that, on their little island, the British did not live as they had done in India during the Raj. Not only were bathrooms not en suite, but many homes even had outside loos. The dinner jacket that had been specially tailored for me before I left Mumbai proved redundant, as I found the British no longer dressed for dinner. The only people I saw wearing dinner jackets were waiters in Indian restaurants.

Not that this made Indian food acceptable, as I discovered when, in the spring of 1969, fellow Loughborough students and I came down to London to see the musical Hair. All of London seemed to be taken up by this story of multiracial, multicultural love. After the show, as I headed to an Indian restaurant, I saw two police officers rush past me and grapple with a burly white man. The windowpanes of the restaurant were shattered, and an Indian waiter in a bow tie held a towel to his badly cut forehead. Despite this, he could not stop the blood trickling down his white dress shirt, colouring it crimson. When I inquired of a passerby, he said: “Some drunk had a fight with an Indian waiter. But then only drunks go to these curry houses. Dreadful.”

That opinion was reinforced a few months later by a white woman in my crummy Paddington hotel, who said to me: “I must tell you, we can’t stand your food. It’s the smell. It infects everything and you can’t get rid of it.” Back then, anybody suggesting that chicken tikka masala would become a symbol of a harmonious multiracial Britain would have been dismissed as a fantasist, if not somebody trying to subvert British society.

It may seem surprising, but I had not expected to be marked out solely by my colour. It really shook me and I did not know how to handle it. During that first summer, I had worked in a Leicester factory where the foreman was unable to pronounce my name, so he called me “Mick”. This made one of the workers exclaim: “Bloody hell, we’ve now got a coloured Irishman, have we?” His mates fell about laughing. Landladies in London refused to rent me a room. One in Hampstead, on learning I was Indian, said: “I am dreadfully sorry, my husband would not like that.” The most traumatic moment came when a young lady, whom I thought I was getting on with very well, said to me: “I cannot have a relationship with you. I want white babies.”

The summer before I came to England, I had been sent to represent India at a youth city event held by Israelis in Haifa, to convince the young people of the world of their desire for peace. I had met the Israeli president wearing my Nehru jacket and felt proud to be Indian. By the end of my first year in this country, I was trying to deny my Indianness and ended many an evening consumed by self-hate.

At that stage, I could not have imagined that I would fulfil my dream of becoming a writer. The novelist Shiva Naipaul mocked me, saying I had come to England for the “colonial lash”. In fact, I actually received colonial dividends. Unlike in India, where the only job I got was through nepotism, here total strangers, many of whom could not even pronounce my name, opened doors in the written and broadcast media. In 1974, I became the first cricket correspondent of the radio station LBC: Ian Marshall, the then sports editor, had no hesitation in giving a novice the chance. The only problem was my name. I was sometimes referred to as Richard Rose.

So – thinking it through to write a memoir – I know I have a positive story to tell, but still I feel Britain is a work in progress. And just when I feel this work is heading in the right direction, we hear from equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, who suggests the battle for diversity has been so comprehensively won that any further steps towards it are wasteful of resources and that the idea of unconscious bias is “outmoded” . And the net result is that many on the right portray anything that promotes diversity as “anti-white”. But then, that is pretty much what I heard back in 1969 when many white people complained legislation outlawing racism, which had become law a few months before I arrived, made them foreigners in their own land. Badenoch may feel that sounding like a Hyde Park Corner rabble-rouser – and speeches downplaying the wealth Britain extracted from its colonies – will help her to get to No 10. And she may be right. But it will not help Britain make the changes that are still necessary.

Because it seems to me that to become a truly diverse society, this country must come to terms with its less than glorious imperial past. Back in 1969, my professors at Loughborough told me that nobody cared for the empire. Today, such is the nostalgia that the empire is presented as a sort of Victorian NGO, with books making the moral case for colonialism. This makes me wonder whether I am expected to feel grateful that my ancestors were conquered by the British.

This divide over the past has fuelled the culture wars; I would be labelled a woke warrior for saying that William Wilberforce was keener on abolishing Hinduism than slavery. As he stated , missionary access to India was “the greatest of all causes, for I really place it before abolition [of the slave trade]”. Comparing Christianity with Hinduism, he told the House of Commons in 1813: “Our religion is sublime, pure and beneficent [while] theirs is mean, licentious and cruel.” Wilberforce described Hindu deities as “absolute monsters of lust, injustice, wickedness and cruelty” .

When defenders of the empire talk of the past being nuanced, they cherrypick the parts that show Britain in the best light. They conceal or find excuses for the horrific acts. But unless they stop editing the past, how can we become a truly multicultural nation, with people of different colours and creeds understanding where we have all come from? Those who argue they are defending this country with tall tales and tired narratives actually do it a disservice. They stop us becoming our future selves – an aware, mature, self-confident country. Given how far Britain has progressed since 1969, and how far it could go, that’s a pity.

Mihir Bose is the author of Thank You Mr Crombie: Lessons in Guilt and Gratitude to the British, published by Hurst

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