The Tribune

THE helmeted Britannia figure, a Corinthian-like female warrior armed with a trident and protected with a shield, is the personification and symbolic representation of Great Britain and the now defunct British Empire.

She personifies the militaristic and conquering spirit of the relatively small island nation in the North Atlantic that came to dominate many regions and continents.

This included: most of North America, much of Africa, many Caribbean islands, Belize in Central America, Guyana in South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian subcontinent, islands in the Pacific and nations in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In 1532, King Henry VIII was the first to declare England an empire. His successors granted royal charters to private interests to exploit and conquer India, swathes of Africa and various colonies in North America.

“It was the Victorian era, with the Queen as empire’s anointed matriarch, that laid the groundwork for the [so-called] civilizing mission of the Empire”, which was often an excuse for brutal repression.

At its apogee, the empire of colonies, dominions, mandates, protectorates and territories was the largest in human history and for a century the pre-eminent global power.

Along with other European colonisers, it enslaved millions of Africans between the 15th and 19th centuries, transporting them to misery and their deaths on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Just over a decade into the 20th century the Empire consisted of 23 percent of the world’s population with over 400 million people. By 1920 it covered 24 percent of the Earth’s landmass.

During the course of its imperial might and reach, Britannic Rule left an indelible and mixed cultural, constitutional, linguistic and legal legacy, which endures.

CONQUEST

UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, in what seemed a fit of his reflexive and often unthinking braggadocio, encapsulated Britannia’s conquering zeal: “I cannot help remembering that this country over the last 200 years has directed the invasion or conquest of 178 countries – that is most of the members of the UN.”

The British Monarch played an essential role in empire as described in a revealing guest essay for The New York Times entitled, “The Imperial Fictions Behind the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee”, penned by Harvard professor Caroline Elkins.

In her essay, Elkins describes the pernicious effects of British colonial rule: “After Britain waged some 250 wars in the 19th century to ‘pacify’ colonial subjects, a contested though coherent ideology of liberal imperialism emerged that integrated sovereign imperial claims with a huge undertaking to reform colonial subjects, often called ‘children’. Britain’s discerning eye judged when the ‘uncivilised’ were fully evolved.

“If Britain’s civilising mission was reformist in its claims, it was brutal nonetheless. Violence was not just the British Empire’s midwife, it was endemic to the structures and systems of British rule.”

Professor Elkins explains: “Colonial officials and security forces wanted their infantilised subjects to see and feel their own suffering, to know that it was deliberate and purposeful. British officials had a term for this: the ‘moral effect’ of violence.

“British security forces deployed ever-intensifying forms of systematic violence, making empire look like a recurring conquest state. A well-oiled repressive machinery emerged, directed from London and transferred from one imperial location to the next by colonial officials and security forces.”

During her long reign, Queen Elizabeth II did not and seemingly could not more fully acknowledge this brutal history.

Because of personal regard for her as a likeable and dutiful monarch, who witnessed the independence of many former colonies, she was perhaps given a pass by some on the role monarchy and empire played in the brutalisation of various peoples.

When Charles becomes the monarch there will not be the same level of regard. He will have to contend with a Britain, Commonwealth and world more intent on greater acknowledgment of and increasing demands for reparation and restitution for centuries of slavery and colonialism.

APOLOGIES

Ritual apologies for slavery and colonial conquest are necessary but insufficient. The recent expression of “deepest regrets” by King Phillipe of Belgium to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for his country’s depraved and violent colonial rule in the African nation was not a formal apology.

Phillipe did not formally apologise for Belgium’s atrocities and the murderous legacy of King Leopold II between 1885 to 1908, vividly chronicled in Adam Hotchchild’s, “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.”

Likely circumscribed by the Belgian Government, fearful of legal repercussions and demands for reparations, Phillipe only went so far. Leopold’s ghost still haunts the DRC and Belgium in myriad ways.

Belgium has formally apologised for the role it played, along with the United States, in the 1961 killing of independence leader Patrice Lumumba, whose body was dismembered and his remains dissolved in acid.

A continent away, beginning in the 19th century, thousands of Indigenous Canadian children were taken against their will and that of their parents from their communities and families. They were sent to Christian-run residential schools, where all manner of abuse occurred. Canada was still a British colony at the time.

Dozens of the schools were run by the Anglican Church – of which the British Monarch is the head – until 1969. Hundreds of unmarked graves have been discovered of those who were separated from their families.

This past May, the heir to the British throne and his wife visited Canada. He acknowledged the pain and suffering of Indigenous families and communities:

“I know that our visit here comes at an important moment – with Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Canada committing to reflect honestly and openly on the past and to forge a new relationship for the future.

“I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss with the Governor General the vital process of reconciliation in this country – not a one-off act, of course, but an ongoing commitment to healing, respect and understanding.”

Last month, Prince Charles addressed the 54 leaders of the Commonwealth of Nations in Rwanda. Addressing the heads in Kigali, Charles continued a theme he has spoken of on several occasions, including the ceremony in Bridgetown marking Barbados becoming a parliamentary republic.

PLEDGE

He pledged that the Commonwealth must “find new ways to acknowledge our past. Quite simply, this is a conversation whose time has come.

“As we look to our collective future, as one people sharing one planet, we must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past: acknowledging, reconciling and striving to do better. It is a process that starts with listening.”

What must Britain hear and understand? Genuine dialogue on colonial history must include a fuller acknowledgment of the past. But acknowledgment is more than recognition. It must also include restitution and reparation, both of which must be more clearly defined.

Earlier this year, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Chair of Caricom’s Prime Ministerial Committee on Reparations, pressed: “We have to also recognise that when our countries became independent, there was no development package left for us to finance education, healthcare or any of these issues.

“But when the slaves were emancipated, £20m was paid to slave owners and then by reason of a four-year apprenticeship scheme, another £27m of free labour was given.”

“We have to ask ourselves, can we accept that the Industrial Revolution was financed by the blood, sweat, tears and money of developing countries and at the same time causes a climate crisis today? We had wealth taken from us and now we’re facing the consequences of that wealth impact on the earth’s climate. It is wrong.”

Ms Mottley spoke of Haiti, “perhaps the most egregious example there is.” The Haitian Republic was forced to pay unsustainable customs’ duties to France for many years after independence, bankrupting Haiti and unjustly retarding its development.

What reparations might look like should be debated by different countries and regions. While it is up to the British Government and others, such as the Anglican Church, to enter into dialogue and negotiations on restitution and reparation, what role might Charles as the future monarch play in this dialogue?

General acknowledgment of the past and ritual apologies will seem patronising and insincere without restitution and reparation.

At CHOGM, climate change was a core issue, and will continue to be so. Just over 30 Commonwealth members are small states. Twenty-five are classified as vulnerable to climate change.

While these countries contribute little to our ever warming planet, they remain vulnerable to the climate crisis, largely caused by larger nations, including those of former colonisers.

Prince Charles has spoken consistently on the urgency of addressing climate change and environmental degradation. What role might he play as the monarch in pressing for assistance for smaller states to build greater climate resilience and adaptation in our quest to survive as nation-states?

In Kigali, the Prince of Wales also spoke of constitutional development and change: “I want to say clearly… that each member’s constitutional arrangement, as republic or monarchy, is purely a matter for each member country to decide.”

It is embarrassing for Great Britain, in a country, world and Commonwealth more decisively reckoning with the legacies of slavery and colonialism, as well as reparations and environmental justice, to still have the British monarch as head of state.

In his CHOGM remarks, he appeared to be nudging these countries to become republics. It is likely that Britain would prefer countries like The Bahamas, to become republics as soon as possible.

Regrettably, embarrassingly, The Bahamas may only move toward republican status because the former coloniser and the future monarch – rather the Bahamian leaders and people – realise it is time for us to grow up and to become less colonised in our minds and constitutionally.

To demonstrate his “commitment to healing, respect and understanding”, Prince Charles, as heir to the throne and future monarch, has an extraordinary historical responsibility and obligation to exemplify these aspirations and values on vital issues such as reparations, climate change and racial and economic justice.