Queen Elizabeth And The Imperial Legacy

 

Queen Elizabeth has passed away. She had been a fixture of the United Kingdom for half a century. While the press in both the US and UK praise the longtime Queen, they  ignore the sordid imperial legacy during the last years of the British Empire. Although a constitutional monarchy, it virtually ruled over Hong Kong, Jamaica, and India. The British Empire was not willing to grant independence to the African and Asian colonies after World War II. Wars had to be fought for the cause of national liberation. Queen Elizabeth put a more tolerable image of empire, when it was not longer acceptable as a political entity. Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, and Yemen people took up arms to fight the British. The Anglo-Jewish War brought an end to the British mandate in Palestine. White settlers refused to acknowledge that times had changed. The exact amount of causalities from the anti-colonial wars may never be known. While there is no evidence that the Queen was directly involved in abuses, she was complicit in them. The stance against South Africa was only taken by Queen Elizabeth when more African states gained independence in the 1960s. Rhodesia was an issue even before the Universal Declaration of Independence. She headed the Commonwealth which was designed to maintain British influence in the former colonies. It was and continues to be more paternalistic and condescending rather than a partnership of equals. Over the past five decades a  public relations campaign was designed  to make he seem like a humanitarian figure. The attempts to sanitize the history of violence by the British Empire has come under new scrutiny. It was reported 10 years ago thousands of documents related to abuses in the colonies were destroyed. Those documents related to colonial abuses remain in the Foreign Office archive. Queen Elizabeth was more so a symbol for those who believed in the myth of benevolent empire. The history exposes how nostalgia distorts  the public's understanding of events. The British Empire has a different meaning to African and Asian peoples. The negative effects are still resonating in global affairs.