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/136/ Banana Monarchy ft. David Edgerton
🕑 Added 2020-07-21 07:01:01 +0000 UTCOn British decline.
Much ink has been spilled over the Britain’s fate since the end of its empire. Could it be that decline has been overstated? And what will happen to Britain as it leaves the European Union? We discuss how the history of the Industrial Revolution and Cold War militarism still shapes British politics today, as David Edgerton joins us to talk about the his latest book, 'The Rise and Fall of the British Nation'.
Readings:
- A misremembered empire, David Edgerton, Tortoise
- Britain’s 20th-century industrial revolution, Colin Kidd, New Statesman (review of Edgerton's book)
- Britain's persistent racism cannot simply be explained by its imperial history, David Edgerton, The Guardian
Comments
Paul Brewer
I found this a very stimulating episode. As a "colonial" living in Britain during 1978-2008, I always felt the "decline" narrative was overstated, which was very damaging to the "national morale". One comment about Correlli Barnett -- although the Audit of War came up, I thought his earlier book, The Collapse of British Power was perhaps more significant in capturing the essence of "decline". Here he presented a Britain that had won 1914-18 at the cost of its old alliance system. Attempts to reconstruct it in the interwar period also failed. Barnett ends by saying Britain was as defeated as France was in 1940, but was spared the effects of defeat by its geography. I think this is overstated, but is more true than when Barnett bangs on about the educational shortcomings of the British elite. I could go on and on about themes raised in this episode, but that one perhaps is most aligned with my USP.
wilhelm
I found this episode sadly uninformative: 30 minutes in, and in no sense are any empirical measures discussed that would prove or disprove the "decline" narrative. After all, countries can do better or worse across many different dimensions. To talk about decline or lack of it, criteria must be made explicit, and for many criteria that left-wing people would espouse there has been significant decline in Great Britain over the past few decades (e.g. wealth inequality).
