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The Empire at Home: Internal Colonies and the End of Britain
Modern Britain is forged through the redeployment of structures that facilitated and legitimized slavery, exploitation and extermination. This is the 'empire at home' and it is inseparable from the strategies of neo-colonial extraction and oppression of subjects abroad. Here, James Trafford develops the notion of internal colonies, arguing that methods and structures used in colonial rule are re-deployed internally in contemporary Britain in order to recreate and solidify imperial power relations. Using examples including housing segregation, targeted surveillance and counter-insurgency techniques used in the fight against terrorism, Trafford reveals Britain's internal colonialism to be a reactive mechanism to retain British sovereignty. As politics appears limited by nationalism and protectionism, The Empire at Home issues a powerful challenge to contemporary politics, demanding that Britain as an imperial structure must end.
224 pages, Paperback
Published December 20, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 14, 2021
There seem to be quite a few recent publications arguing that the methods and structures found in our past colonization are being deployed in modern Britain in a sort of internal colonization— Kehinde Andrews’ ‘The New Age of Empire’, Sathnam Sanghera’s ‘Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain’ and this one. I get it, and have to say that this is really worth reading as I guess are the other two. The overarching claim, however, comes as no surprise given that we seem to have evolved so little from the nationalistic, racist people of the colonial era who believed in their own superiority and believed that other races were less than human. It makes you cry, doesn’t it? Or at least it should do.
May 28, 2021
Discussions of ‘internal colonies’ in Britain have traditionally focused on the so-called ‘Celtic fringe’ and the idea that Ireland, Scotland and Wales are suppressed and colonised nations, subject to English control. This analysis has led to a strategy grounded in notions of national self-determination in the Irish struggle for independence and the continuing contested status of Scotland, Wales and Ireland’s six counties in the north. This conception of internal colonies is, however, premised on the notion of a distinct island nation: if we shift the focus and frame, in the manner Trafford does implicitly in this valuable discussion, by recognising Britain’s place as part of a continuing imperial and colonial network a very different understanding can emerge.
That is not his only shift. We are used to seeing cases of tactics and approaches developed in empire being deployed in the metropolitan context – senior military and police figures from colonies moving to leading roles in British police forces for instance, or more recently military figures who have worked in counter insurgency acting as consultants and advisors to government on domestic policy. Yet Trafford sees a more subtle process than this linear transference at work in this discussion. While some of this direct redeployment of the tactics of colonial dominance have been introduced, he is also exploring cases where the ideas, ideologies and principles have been brought into play in this metropolitan context. Woven through all of this is a clear sense of Britain as the heart of a complex set of continuing colonial and imperial flows with both socio-cultural and capital accumulation effects.
The opening three substantive chapters explore these questions of power, authority and capital accumulation. He opens by linking spatial configurations of colonial governance and settlement to the access through ‘the market’ to housing and the territorialisation of racial capitalism. From here he looks at the reshaping of state power through the ways that British policing continues to deploy the racial and authoritarian forms that shaped colonial policing. Finally he explores notions of state security as a shift in approach from counterterrorism to counter-insurgency. While these are big concepts at work, Trafford bases his arguments in a solid evidential base to demonstrate the situation on the ground as the consequence of this blending of coloniality’s outlooks and day-to-day state practice.
The outcome of this is therefore, at about 2/3 of the way through the discussion he states:
It is a powerful and compelling analysis that effectively traces the ways that Britain’s myths of self and continuing attachments to coloniality and a matrix of colonial power shape its current condition. It is also not hard to see how this analysis helps explain much of the contemporary politics of Britain.
In the final section of the book Trafford shifts from his analysis of the current condition to explore responses, unpacking through potent critique both ‘progressive left nationalism’ and the ‘extinction politics’ that shape much of the contemporary environmental struggle. Not only does he find these approaches limited, he also sees in them a continuation of many of the problems his opening analysis unpicks. The outcome of this discussion is that he sees part of the problem of decolonisation being that it is not sufficiently anti-colonial. This is more than the common critique the ‘decolonisation’ has been appropriated by Power to become repackaged as equality, diversity and inclusion. Instead he sees nation building, colonial reform and resistance to subordination as insufficient. He concludes by sketching a case of anticolonial abolitionism – sketching because he is not laying out a programme, but outlining dispositions and traits of such an abolitionism.
This final section is more problematic than the analytical chapters (but not as problematically demanding as parts of the introduction where he outlines his conceptual approaches. I’m not sure why as academic analysts we are so attached to process of setting a dense theoretical discussion as the opening section, but it is almost certainly an attachment to the ‘rules’ of scientific writing where we open with a literature review. To be fair to Trafford much of the introduction traces the shape of colonialism underpinning his analysis, but he does lapse into some dense discussion – and I recognise in my own work that there is the pot-and-kettle risk here. But in doing so we are probably doing a good job to alienate some readers). Part of the problem in this final section is that it is more abstract that the earlier chapters – but more so that his notion of abolitionism is not all that clear, despite identifying some immediate areas for struggle.
Yet, even with this limitation this is a powerful piece helping us make sense of the of Britain’s continuing colonial form and linking the systemic marginalisations of its Others and mounting a powerful critique of some key strands in contemporary oppositional politics. Stick with it, it pays off.
That is not his only shift. We are used to seeing cases of tactics and approaches developed in empire being deployed in the metropolitan context – senior military and police figures from colonies moving to leading roles in British police forces for instance, or more recently military figures who have worked in counter insurgency acting as consultants and advisors to government on domestic policy. Yet Trafford sees a more subtle process than this linear transference at work in this discussion. While some of this direct redeployment of the tactics of colonial dominance have been introduced, he is also exploring cases where the ideas, ideologies and principles have been brought into play in this metropolitan context. Woven through all of this is a clear sense of Britain as the heart of a complex set of continuing colonial and imperial flows with both socio-cultural and capital accumulation effects.
The opening three substantive chapters explore these questions of power, authority and capital accumulation. He opens by linking spatial configurations of colonial governance and settlement to the access through ‘the market’ to housing and the territorialisation of racial capitalism. From here he looks at the reshaping of state power through the ways that British policing continues to deploy the racial and authoritarian forms that shaped colonial policing. Finally he explores notions of state security as a shift in approach from counterterrorism to counter-insurgency. While these are big concepts at work, Trafford bases his arguments in a solid evidential base to demonstrate the situation on the ground as the consequence of this blending of coloniality’s outlooks and day-to-day state practice.
The outcome of this is therefore, at about 2/3 of the way through the discussion he states:
Colonial strategies of regulation, containment and exclusion have attempted to reproduce Britain as a space primarily for white Britons against those whose labour, lands and resistance built Britain from the outset. This has been tangled up with eugenicist approaches to non-white immigration as a threat to the purity of the nation. (p114)
It is a powerful and compelling analysis that effectively traces the ways that Britain’s myths of self and continuing attachments to coloniality and a matrix of colonial power shape its current condition. It is also not hard to see how this analysis helps explain much of the contemporary politics of Britain.
In the final section of the book Trafford shifts from his analysis of the current condition to explore responses, unpacking through potent critique both ‘progressive left nationalism’ and the ‘extinction politics’ that shape much of the contemporary environmental struggle. Not only does he find these approaches limited, he also sees in them a continuation of many of the problems his opening analysis unpicks. The outcome of this discussion is that he sees part of the problem of decolonisation being that it is not sufficiently anti-colonial. This is more than the common critique the ‘decolonisation’ has been appropriated by Power to become repackaged as equality, diversity and inclusion. Instead he sees nation building, colonial reform and resistance to subordination as insufficient. He concludes by sketching a case of anticolonial abolitionism – sketching because he is not laying out a programme, but outlining dispositions and traits of such an abolitionism.
This final section is more problematic than the analytical chapters (but not as problematically demanding as parts of the introduction where he outlines his conceptual approaches. I’m not sure why as academic analysts we are so attached to process of setting a dense theoretical discussion as the opening section, but it is almost certainly an attachment to the ‘rules’ of scientific writing where we open with a literature review. To be fair to Trafford much of the introduction traces the shape of colonialism underpinning his analysis, but he does lapse into some dense discussion – and I recognise in my own work that there is the pot-and-kettle risk here. But in doing so we are probably doing a good job to alienate some readers). Part of the problem in this final section is that it is more abstract that the earlier chapters – but more so that his notion of abolitionism is not all that clear, despite identifying some immediate areas for struggle.
Yet, even with this limitation this is a powerful piece helping us make sense of the of Britain’s continuing colonial form and linking the systemic marginalisations of its Others and mounting a powerful critique of some key strands in contemporary oppositional politics. Stick with it, it pays off.
December 31, 2020
Really fantastic, historically rigorous, and convincing presentation of Britain as it is today, as completely colonially configured. New lines of thinking offered beyond merely reforming or including “others” within it; ending coloniality in total.
July 16, 2023
The content of this book is wrapped up in academic language. Not very accessible for the average reader.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews