Empire with David Olusoga

Episode
Episode Three
Broadcast Info
2025 (60 mins)
Description
In this episode David Olusoga explores the contested histories and modern hybrid identities that were left behind when after four centuries the British Empire finally came to an end. And he reveals how members of his own family were connected to the Empire - as both colonisers and colonised - showing that this controversial and complex story is in many ways a messy and shared history. It was in the early 20th Century that the British Empire reached its peak after the First World War. A victory assisted by millions of people living under British colonial rule. In Alberta, Canada, David Olusoga travels to take part in a ceremony conducted by a Kainai tribal leader to bless an extraordinary artefact created by one of their ancestors - Mike Mountain Horse - who fought for Britain on the Western Front and documented his wartime experiences for posterity. Mike Mountain Horse was just one of 4000 indigenous Canadians who served in the First World War. India had provided more manpower than any other colony during the War, with over one million fighting in the name of the British Empire. But in the aftermath, there were increasing calls in India for political independence. David Olusoga meets Swapna Liddle, an Indian historian, to discover the story of the building of New Delhi in the inter-war years. New Delhi was designed to be the new capital for a new phase of British Imperial rule. Fifty miles of roads were cut across a city of ministries, homes and shops that covered 62 square miles. The final cost was the equivalent of almost a billion pounds in today’s money. The project was completed in 1931, only eight years before the onset of another World War. But by the time the Empire emerged from that conflict the call for Indian independence was irresistible. In 1946 Partition created two new independent states, India and Pakistan, but in the ensuing turmoil of civil war and mass migration over 2 million people died. Britain itself faced multiple crises at home after the Second World War, including continuing rationing and a catastrophic national debt run up from the war years. Shortages of basic foods - like milk and eggs - were worse after 1945 than they had been during the war years. The nation that had been the world’s banker - now had colossal debts. To generate income to pay off those vast debts - and to produce food for a British population desperate for better times, politicians turned their attention to the most neglected part of what was left of the British empire - Africa. In the late 1940s thousands of agriculturalists, mechanics and engineers were sent to Africa to launch an agricultural revolution. Travelling to East Africa, Olusoga tells the story of one of these ventures - the Groundnuts Scheme - a plan to produce cooking oil from peanuts. WWII tanks were adapted and deployed to clear millions of acres of land, only to be stopped in their tracks by dense scrub and the ancient Baobab tree. In 1951 the British government admitted defeat and the Groundnuts Scheme was abandoned. Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War also faced a labour shortage as the country tried to rebuild. At Tilbury Docks on the River Thames, David Olusoga examines official documents which reveal how, despite the need to rebuild, Britain encouraged some people to emigrate in the belief that this movement of British people would maintain power and influence on the World stage. Into the 1950s the era of decolonisation gained pace as African and Caribbean nations followed India in becoming politically independent. Across the World in former colonies the British flag was lowered and that of a new nation took its place. While many of these nations transitioned to independence peacefully, that often wasn’t the case where large numbers of white colonists had settled such as in Kenya. The British military were deployed, and tens of thousands were killed during the Mau Mau Emergency. David Olusoga meets Kenyan historian Anthony Maina at a high school for boys in rural Kenya which was originally built as a detention centre for insurgents. Today the cells that once held detainees, and where some were tortured, are now used as classrooms. At the National Archives, historian Riley Linebaugh tells Olusoga how British governments engaged in an operation to shape how the story of colonisation and decolonisation would be told. Codenamed "Operation Legacy" this was an attempt to destroy evidence of abuse and mistreatment in dozens of former colonies right up until the 1990s. And in the final scene of the series Olusoga reveals how documents connect his own family history to the story of Empire, through the lived experiences of two sets of his ancestors - Nigerians who were attacked by British colonial forces and a Scottish soldier who served with the East India Company. In an extraordinary end scene Olusoga shares these very personal stories to demonstrate how it is we understand this complex and often contradictory history today.
Genre
History

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Empire with David Olusoga". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/254575 (Accessed 30 Mar 2026)