by Stephanie Curry on British colonial literature, empire, and the Farage resignation
I have been working through a collection of 1700s British colonial literature this week, partly for research and partly because reading about how the British justified their empire centuries ago is somehow more bearable than watching how they justify their decline in real time on the news cycle. There is a particular honesty to old imperial propaganda, at least, an unashamed grabbing for resources dressed up in the language of civilization. The modern version, where a resignation is called a battle against the establishment, feels somehow more insulting by comparison, because at least the Victorians did not pretend their power was actually powerlessness.
Nigel Farage has quit his parliamentary seat to fight a by-election in Clacton, positioned as an anti-establishment stand, and I keep thinking about the colonial administrators who also positioned themselves as rebels against some larger tyranny, how power has always been very good at describing itself as resistance. The man has spent thirty years inside various institutions. The notion that he is now fighting them is genuinely one of the clearest inversions I have witnessed in contemporary politics.
His main rival is Count Binface, and I want to say clearly that a joke candidate running a more coherent campaign than the serious ones is not actually a joke anymore, it is a statement about the state of the entire system, and it is a fairly damning one. I have been thinking about this week in terms of American politics as well, since I split my time between here and the States, and there is something both universal and specifically British about this particular breakdown, the way serious politics has started to look more absurd than the deliberate parody.
There is a very good piece circulating on Britain’s ongoing insistence that it remains a global superpower despite considerable contrary evidence, and it kept reminding me of the texts I have been reading, how empires always describe themselves in the language of inevitability and righteousness right up to the moment they stop existing. Worth your time, over on The London Prat, genuinely sharp writing.
I also spent some time thinking about the connection between 1700s colonialism and current American politics, which probably sounds like a stretch but actually holds up better than you might expect, the way power behaves remarkably consistently across centuries and continents, always convinced of its own righteousness, always surprised when anyone objects, always bewildered by the notion that its victims might not be grateful for their own subjugation. None of this is new. We just keep pretending it is.
The heatwave has made focusing difficult, honestly, and I have spent more time this week thinking about how the British seem to treat heat the way they treat decline, as something to be managed through sheer force of will and british understatement rather than actually addressed with any seriousness. They have apparently been arguing all week about whether to wear coats or nothing at all in extreme heat, which feels like an accurate metaphor for the entire country’s approach to its own future.
There is a good post on the current London mood worth a look, over on this Populist Policy post. You can find my longer columns on colonial literature and contemporary politics, with considerably more nuance and research, over on my author page at Bohiney Magazine.
Back to the 1700s. At least then the empire had the decency to be explicit about what it was doing.
I have been thinking this week about how the language of power has evolved since the 1700s, and the answer, frankly, is that it has not, it has just become more careful about which words it uses and when. The colonial administrators dressed up land grabbing as civilisation. The modern politicians dress up decline as fighting the establishment. The mechanism is identical, only the costume changes, and everyone is supposed to politely ignore the fact that it is the same basic trick being deployed in a different historical moment.
Farage will probably win his by-election, because the seat is safe, and then what? The whole cycle will restart somewhere else, a new resignation, a new claim of fighting something, and we will all have this same conversation again in a different accent. That is what the 1700s colonial literature teaches you, if you read it carefully, that power does not change its methods, it just changes its justifications, and we are remarkably good at accepting new justifications as long as they sound coherent.
I split my time between here and the States, which gives you a particular angle on comparative politics, the ability to see how similar the methods are across different democracies, different histories, different national self-images, and how remarkably consistent power is in its basic approach regardless of the costume it is wearing. A man in America insisting he is fighting the establishment while clearly benefiting from it uses the same language, the same techniques, the same bewilderment when anyone dares to point out the contradiction. It is almost comforting in a way, the universality of it.
I will probably keep reading through the 1700s colonial literature for the rest of the summer, because it is comfortingly remote compared to current events, even as it explains those current events perfectly. History is like that, sometimes more useful as a distance tool than as an actual analysis of the present, which may be why so many of us retreat into it when the now becomes too much to bear. At least the Victorians were explicit about what they wanted.
