THE BRITISH MONARCHY 2022 - THE END?
Murphy Browne © September 14-2022
The recent death of the sixth female ruler of the British Empire (Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II,) has many people mourning. However not everyone is mourning; complicated, conflicted and conflicting feelings have been expressed internationally. While there have been official condolences praising her longevity, there has been anger about the role her government played in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere during her tenure on the throne. Some have chosen to take this opportunity to reflect on the brutal legacy of the British Empire and role of the British Royal family during slavery and colonization. Professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi associate professor of literatures in English at Cornell University is one of several people who have been interviewed by various media and have expressed dissatisfaction/unhappiness with the idea that the whole world should be mourning the death of Elizabeth II. She was on safari in Kenya while representatives of the British Empire were brutalizing Kenyans. She was in Kenya in 1952 when her father George VI, died and she became queen. The newly established monarch
Elizabeth II was in Kenya during the height of Kenyan resistance to British rule and the brutal suppression of the Maumau Uprising. Professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi whose ancestors were members of the people who were brutalized by the British government wrote: “My uncle was deaf. He was asked by British soldiers to stop. Of course he did not hear them. They shot him dead. My other uncle was in the Mau Mau. My grandmother hid bullets for him. Colonialism happened to real people. It is absolute madness to expect us to mourn the queen.” During that interview Professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi also said: “It’s one of the ironies, historical ironies that she became queen of Kenya, but at the same time, when the repression against Kenyans was actually becoming not just visible but also vicious, detention camps, murders, wanton shootings. I think it’s a degree of psychosis, that you can go to another people’s land, colonize them, and then expect them to honour you at the same time. The queen became the queen in Kenya at the same time there were murders, assassinations and just good old-fashioned corruption. And then, at the same time, we are expected to mourn the queen.”
Caroline Elkins is a White American historian whose
research and subsequent publishing of the book “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya” exposed Britain’s brutal suppression of the Mau Mau movement in Kenya in the 1950s. The information in “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya” was essential in a court case that resulted in reparations being awarded to more than 5,200 elderly Kenyans who survived the systematic torture and abuse to which they were subjected by representatives of the British government. Elkins was called as a witness to support the Kenyan claim. There are only 3 copies of “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya” in the Toronto Public Library system of 100 library branches, and 10 holds, although is one reference copy at the Reference library at Bloor and Yonge that can be read in the library. Alice Mugo a Kenyan lawyer shared a photograph of a fading document from 1956 online. It was issued four years into the reign of Elizabeth II, and well into her government’s brutal response to the Mau Mau resistance against colonial rule. “Movement permit,” the document reads. While over 100,000 Kenyans were rounded up in concentration camps, others, like Mugo’s grandmother, were forced to request
British permission to travel in their own country. “Most of our grandparents were oppressed,” Mugo tweeted hours after the death was announced on Thursday. “I cannot mourn.”
These sentiments are not limited to Kenya or Kenyans. In an interview, African Jamaican Pan-African dub poet Mutabaruka expressed similar thoughts. Mutabaruka said: “In 1952, that was when she ascended the throne of England. And if you check the history between 1952 and now, you will see that even though slavery was abolished, they redefined slavery and called it colonialism. And colonialism in this part of the world was represented by the throne of England. We’re not really talking about the individual person; we’re talking about a corporation, an institution, which is called the monarchy of England, that has totally devastated a lot of the progress we could have made if it wasn’t for this, colonialism, interpreted to us as slavery still.”
There are 21 copies and 61 holds of Elkins’ most recent book “Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire” with one reference copy available at the Reference library. In “Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire” Elkins quotes Edward Eyre who
was the British governor of Jamaica during the 1865 Morant Bay uprising led by Paul Bogle. Following a brutally vicious suppression of the 1865 Morant Bay uprising of African Jamaicans, Eyre who represented the British crown in Jamaica, boasted that “the retribution has been so prompt and so terrible that it is likely never to be forgotten.” It has not been forgotten and has been immortalized in the song “96 degrees in the shade” by the group “Third World.”
The death of Elizabeth II and the appointment of her son as the next British monarch, Charles III has caused various reactions from other African Caribbean communities. Dorbrene O’Marde, chair of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Commission, said: “I’m under no obligation, to be mourning her death. And that is simply because of, my understanding of history, my understanding of the relationships of the British monarchy to African people and Asian people, but to African people certainly, on the continent and here in the Caribbean. And so that my response is perhaps to recognize the role that the queen, Queen Elizabeth II, has played, how she has managed to cloak the historical brutality of empire in this veneer of grandeur and pomp
and pageantry, and graciousness.”
Since the death of Elizabeth II there have been growing calls to dismantle the Commonwealth of Nations which was established as the British Empire began to crumble and shrink. There are 56 countries across the world that maintain ties to the royal family as members of the Commonwealth of Nations, an international organization composed mainly of former British colonies. The Commonwealth of Nations was born out of the slow disintegration of the British Empire, which covered a fifth of the world’s surface at its peak in the late 19th century. Its holdings spanned from Hong Kong to the Caribbean to a wide swath of southern and East Africa. Queen Victoria, whose reign was critical to consolidating the empire, became Empress of India in 1877. The empire shrank as British colonies declared their independence. The slow dissolution of the British Empire began in the late 19th century as predominantly white colonies such as Canada and Australia were granted dominion status—meaning they could pass their own laws, which would be subject to royal approval. In 1926, Britain and the dominions formed the British Commonwealth of Nations, agreeing they
would all be "united by a common allegiance to the Crown." When India declared its independence in 1947, it chose not to swear fealty to the crown—opening the floodgate for other countries to join the Commonwealth under the same conditions. The organization officially became the Commonwealth of Nations. Now with the wind of change blowing through much of the populations of the Commonwealth of Nations, that organization is at risk. The legacy of the once “glorious” British Empire which once “ruled the waves” seems to be coming to an end with the death of the longest reigning British monarch.
Murphy Browne © September 14-2022
