Empire Gone 

Article by Alex Martin. Edited by Helen Doherty. Additional Research by Liam Geoghegan. Rockall 

The most recent imperial act by the United Kingdom of Great Britain was in 1955 when a flag was implanted on a tiny Islet in between Iceland and Scotland named Rockall. The purpose of this excursion was to ease fears of Rockall turning into a Soviet nuclear silo. The islet, described as ‘the most isolated small rock in the oceans of the world,’ is now a disputed territory. The Faroe Islands, Denmark, the U.K., Ireland, Iceland and Greenpeace have all laid claim to the 784 square metres that poke out of the Atlantic Ocean, and only a UN resolution in 2014 is likely to settle the matter. Imagine this dispute taking place 100 years ago in 1855; the British Empire did not see it fit to even claim the desolate windswept rock; but even if it had chosen to; Ireland and Greenpeace’s claims would have been nonexistent, Iceland and Denmark did not have the military or naval might to challenge Britain and the closest thing to the UN was the British empire. The loss of Empire lead to a loss of identity, and this article through an examination of cultural works and artefacts intends to discover what this means for the identity of those in the post-colonial world. 

Cause and Effect Unclear and Unsure: a brief interlude 

Conscious thought can be like dominos, a spark of prime inspiration pushing one domino into another, where cause and effect are simplified. However cultural zeitgeists emanate from conscious and unconscious thoughts of individuals andgroups, blending cause and effect to the point where they are unidentifiable. Cultural History, for me, has always found itself upon this methodological problem. For example; were the Beatles part of the cause of the youth movement of the 1960’s, or an effect of it? Historians are frequently unclear what the first cause of a cultural zeitgeist was; I assume this is because they are often unsure. To avoid this pitfall, representations of cultures will also be taken as influences on culture as well. 

Identity with Empire: ‘the earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in’ 

Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son’s (1846-1848) second page personifies the Victorian belief in imperial greatness, ‘‘the earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in…A.D. had no concern with anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombei.’ Without attempting to deny the individuals who had ‘lived experiences’ of the British Empire, agency, and accepting that nuance is not easy to convey in 1000 words, I think it would be fair to say that the cultural zeitgeist of the time chose to transfer the imperial success of Britain’s vast navy into the greatness of the individual. Military imperial success went to people’s heads. In almost all aspects of life a belief in a Briton’s superiority, at the time, can be seen. Whether it be in a lesser known Dickens Novel, or the Whig histories of the time, the Great exhibition of 1850 or Elgar and Bensons ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ we can see culture as a general big headedness of English identity. 

A Confession of Sameness 

The lyrics to South Park the Movie’s Blame Canada can easily be recalled in my head, as I myself am Canadian by birth, (the school day after the release of the film was not a particularly fun one). I have dual nationality; both Canadian and British. However this does not make me a (post)colonial ‘other,’ one could argue, as I’m sure some historian has, that the hyper colonisation of places like South Africa, Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, etc make them areas of sameness rather than otherness, this is where the largest shift in identity can be seen. However in the countries where skin colour makes colonial differences more obvious, is where true ‘otherness’ abounds. I do not think it would be difficult to argue that in these places the British notion of superiority, in a world made for the British traders, those notions of otherness were greater and emphasised as not just otherness but inferiority. 

Identity without Empire 

In the 1960’s Colonies became ex colonies: Jamaica became independent, Bechuanaland became Botswana and India was already strong enough to occupy Portuguese India. Was this because in the 1960’s there was a shift in the cultural zeitgeist? If drugs weren’t being experimented with, gay sex was being legalised. If The Rolling Stones weren’t making an album, the contraceptive pill was being invented. But as we all know there was a lot more going on than the Isle of Dogs and LSD. Enoch Powell made a big splash with his ‘rivers of blood’ speech. However the notion of the other was overlapping with the notion of free love, the other was being replaced as Enoch Powell was a major political player on the right but after April 20th 1968 he was at best a pariah, if not left out in the political wilderness. 

The Commonwealth Games and the end of Post-colonialism 

In 2010 Delhi will host the Commonwealth games, whilst some would say that this is proof that Colonialism still has its cultural web to weave as the newer concept of post-colonialism, I think its proof that it’s dead. Reach into your pocket and grab a coin, on the side with heads are the queens title’s, F.D., is one of them, Fidei defensor or defender of the faith was the title bestowed upon Henry VIII for writing a book defending the seven sacraments. Even though the title was inappropriate for Henry to bear throughout his reign it has been maintained into coinage all over the U.K. (and other nations like Canada etc) to this very day. The Commonwealth games are that remnant, an old tradition kept for traditions sake, it has no bearing on us now, we are past post-colonialism (I could not bring myself to type post-post-colonialism). Finally all that remains is sporting events and the way coins are minted, notions of otherness which ultimately help cause prejudice, can be formed or rejected by the individual far less strongly, influenced by an empire.

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