Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's

bestselling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Corporn.

How much is contemporary Britain shaped by its imperial past?

Well that's a question that journalist and author Satnam Sanghara interrogates in his

new book Empire Land, in which he examines everything from the objects in our museums

and the subjects on our curriculum to the ways that we think about race and multiculturalism.

I spoke to Satnam to find out more.

So thanks so much for joining me.

So a new book of course looks at how modern Britain is shaped by the legacy of the British

Empire and we'll get on to some of those legacies in more detail through the interview.

But to start us off, I wonder if you could just give listeners a sense of what we're dealing

with here.

Where are some of the places that we can still see the influence of imperialism?

Well, my argument is that Empire is absolutely everywhere.

So for example, you can feel it in our language and that a lot of English words actually come

from the Empire, so the word dam actually refers to a copper coin that existed in India.

The word juggernaut comes from India, the word zombie comes from West Africa and so on.

But more than that, I mean a lot of our businesses come originally from the colonial days.

I mean liberties of London began by selling silks and cashmere shores from the east.

And actually the building itself is built from an old boat which is called the HMS in

Dostan and the building was called East India House when it was first launched.

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