Chatter: The British Empire's Territorial Peak, 100 Years Later, with Matthew Parker
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2023
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The British Empire was already buckling under its own internal tensions in the 1920s. One hundred years later, historian and author Matthew Parker uses stories from across the globe to fill his new book One Fine Day, centered on the territorial peak of the empire on September 29, 1923. It reveals much about the limits of empire, the effects of liberation movements on colonized peoples around the world, and the dynamics of strategic transition.
David Priess and Matthew chatted about his globally mobile upbringing; the experiences driving him to this topic; the state of the British Empire on and around September 29, 2023; the story of Ocean Island (Banaba); how the First World War affected how colonized people viewed imperial rule; the emergence of social anthropology and its impact on racist views underlying colonialism; the influence of sport in the empire; George Orwell's experience in Burma; the activities of Marcus Garvey; Ian Fleming's time in Jamaica at the house he called Goldeneye, where he wrote all of the James Bond novels; and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book One Fine Day by Matthew Parker
The book Goldeneye by Matthew Parker
The book Panama Fever by Matthew Parker
The book The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker
The book The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan
The book The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
The book A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair, that's patreon.com slash |
| 0:16.9 | LawFair. Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.1 | Welcome to chatter. I'm David Prius. This week, historian and author Matthew Parker on the |
| 0:39.2 | British Empire's territorial peak 100 years later. You know, you think of empires, you think |
| 0:46.5 | of the land empires of Russia, the Romans, the Persians, and they were sort of contiguous, |
| 0:52.3 | but Britain wasn't. They're closest allies with the other side of the world in Australia |
| 0:55.7 | and New Zealand, and it's because it was so global, it just made no strategic sense, and |
| 1:00.9 | it meant that the different parts of the empire would have different strategic priorities. |
| 1:06.0 | Lots of the certain tees that the empire had been built on, they're sort of, you know, |
| 1:12.3 | manly virtues. All of that was in tatters after the First World War. |
| 1:18.3 | The idea of white supremacy is a key part of the empire. It justifies it. Why are we here? |
| 1:27.3 | Why are we running these people's lives? Because we're better, and that's the excuse to be there |
| 1:32.3 | and be in charge of ordering people around. |
| 1:39.3 | Matthew Parker, welcome to chatter. Great to be here David. I'm especially glad to talk to you today |
| 1:46.3 | because we are combining two of the things that we love to do on chatter in our many conversations. |
| 1:53.3 | One of them is dig into history and find the lessons of history for today, and you've just |
| 2:01.3 | written a massive work, which does that in a beautiful way. But we also love to talk about pop culture |
| 2:09.3 | around national security issues, and those two don't often overlap. But you've also written a book |
| 2:16.3 | called Golden Eye about in Fleming's residence in Jamaica, and use that as a window into Jamaican society |
| 2:25.3 | and politics as well as into understanding in Fleming and the James Bond franchise. So in a sense, |
... |
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