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I hope you enjoy the program. Hello this week on in our time we're discussing

captivity and empire which brings in slavery and empire two of the themes that run

through this country's imperial history. Britain's imperial project played a

major part in the last 250 years of our national life and we've had a hangover

ever since.

Its advocates claim it was a civilising mission by which Britain spread enlightenment and

improvement across the globe.

Opponents have long seen it as a brutal business with Britain's cast as cruel oppressors who set out to exploit a conquered world.

But our imperial history isn't so simple.

What happened, for instance, when Britain's themselves were captives of empire,

either as prisoners of an imperial enterprise that sucked

them in generation after generation, or in some cases as slaves themselves to foreign people.

And is slavery an inevitable part of empire?

Does it come with a territory and how did

Britain finally shake it off and encouraged the rest to follow. With me to discuss

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