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Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections
Green Unpleasant Land explores the repressed history of rural England’s links to transatlantic enslavement and the East India Company.
Combining essays, poems and stories, it details the colonial links of country houses, moorlands, woodlands, village pubs and graveyards. It also explores the links between rural poverty, particularly enclosure, and colonial figures, such as plantation-owners and East India Company nabobs. Fowler, who herself comes from a family of slave-owners, argues that Britain’s cultural and economic legacy is not simply expressed by chinoiserie, statues, monuments, galleries, warehouses and stately homes. This is a shared history: Britons’ ancestors either profited from empire or were impoverished by it. Green Unpleasant Land argues that, in response to recent advances in British imperial history, contemporary authors have reshaped the pastoral writing to break the powerful association between the countryside and Englishness.
Combining essays, poems and stories, it details the colonial links of country houses, moorlands, woodlands, village pubs and graveyards. It also explores the links between rural poverty, particularly enclosure, and colonial figures, such as plantation-owners and East India Company nabobs. Fowler, who herself comes from a family of slave-owners, argues that Britain’s cultural and economic legacy is not simply expressed by chinoiserie, statues, monuments, galleries, warehouses and stately homes. This is a shared history: Britons’ ancestors either profited from empire or were impoverished by it. Green Unpleasant Land argues that, in response to recent advances in British imperial history, contemporary authors have reshaped the pastoral writing to break the powerful association between the countryside and Englishness.
324 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 2020
17 people are currently reading
471 people want to read
About the author
Corinne Fowler
18 books27 followersCorinne Fowler is Professor of Colonialism and Heritage. She specialises in colonial history, decolonisation and the British countryside’s relationship to Empire. Her most recent book is Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections Peepal Tree Press, 2020). Her forthcoming book is The Countryside: Ten Walks Through Colonial Britain (Penguin Allen Lane, 2023).
Professor Fowler directed a child-led history and writing project called Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted (2018-2022, Heritage Lottery and Arts Council). This project was widely covered by the media, including on BBC Radio 4 Front Row, Derby: 300 Years of Making and on ITV News, A Place In The Country: Part 2 - Slave trade legacies | ITV News Central. In 2020 Corinne co-authored an audit of peer-reviewed research about National Trust properties’ connections to empire Colonialism and historic slavery report | National Trust. The report won the Museums and Heritage Special Recognition Award in 2022.
Professor Fowler’s work with the National Trust attracted intense media coverage. There have been over 200 national newspaper articles on the report including in the BBC The National Trust homes where colonial links are 'umbilical' - BBC News, the Guardian I've been unfairly targeted, says academic at heart of National Trust 'woke' row | The National Trust | The Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Times, the Express and Mirror. Corinne’s book Green Unpleasant Land was featured in BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, The Rural Idyll?, BBC Radio 3 New Thinking BBC Radio 3 - Arts & Ideas, New Thinking: Places of Poetry & The Colonial Countryside Project and the New Yorker Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker. Corinne has also written articles for BBC History Magazine and the Telegraph Let’s not weaponise history: let’s talk about shared histories across generations, cultures and political divides (telegraph.co.uk) to make the case for incorporating colonial history into accounts of British heritage sites. She is regularly interviewed for local and national radio including for James O Brian’s Full Disclosure podcast on LBC Radio Professor Corinne Fowler – Full Disclosure with James O'Brien (uk-podcasts.co.uk). Professor Fowler regularly advises institutions on approaches to decolonisation, sensitive histories and the Culture Wars. She receives frequent speaking invitations and has gained an international platform from which she continues to promote compassionate and collective explorations of sensitive histories across cultures, generations and political divides.
Professor Fowler directed a child-led history and writing project called Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted (2018-2022, Heritage Lottery and Arts Council). This project was widely covered by the media, including on BBC Radio 4 Front Row, Derby: 300 Years of Making and on ITV News, A Place In The Country: Part 2 - Slave trade legacies | ITV News Central. In 2020 Corinne co-authored an audit of peer-reviewed research about National Trust properties’ connections to empire Colonialism and historic slavery report | National Trust. The report won the Museums and Heritage Special Recognition Award in 2022.
Professor Fowler’s work with the National Trust attracted intense media coverage. There have been over 200 national newspaper articles on the report including in the BBC The National Trust homes where colonial links are 'umbilical' - BBC News, the Guardian I've been unfairly targeted, says academic at heart of National Trust 'woke' row | The National Trust | The Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Times, the Express and Mirror. Corinne’s book Green Unpleasant Land was featured in BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, The Rural Idyll?, BBC Radio 3 New Thinking BBC Radio 3 - Arts & Ideas, New Thinking: Places of Poetry & The Colonial Countryside Project and the New Yorker Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker. Corinne has also written articles for BBC History Magazine and the Telegraph Let’s not weaponise history: let’s talk about shared histories across generations, cultures and political divides (telegraph.co.uk) to make the case for incorporating colonial history into accounts of British heritage sites. She is regularly interviewed for local and national radio including for James O Brian’s Full Disclosure podcast on LBC Radio Professor Corinne Fowler – Full Disclosure with James O'Brien (uk-podcasts.co.uk). Professor Fowler regularly advises institutions on approaches to decolonisation, sensitive histories and the Culture Wars. She receives frequent speaking invitations and has gained an international platform from which she continues to promote compassionate and collective explorations of sensitive histories across cultures, generations and political divides.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 17, 2021
There are some very angry men out there who would like to sink this book. It's worth googling the author's name to get an idea of the nastiness directed at her, largely by males and egged on by the 'popular' press. The male academics in this field, however assertive their 're-interpretations' of British colonial history, haven't been targeted. It is very clear that this is a campaign. Something about this erudite, engaging and accessible publication is proving to be very unsettling to those who hide behind anonymous names and are doing their damnedest to discourage readers from picking up the book. Articles have described Fowler (one of the world's leading academic in her field) as a 'dimwit' and it goes on and on. What is it about this perfectly factual and enlightening book that is scaring them so much? Why don't they seem to want people to read it? I'm honestly mystified. There was one review on Amazon that came out *before* the book was published! There are *three* books on Amazon with the same ironic name and not a blip from the objectors. As someone with a long career in journalism and research, it is appalling to see the lengths that these 'reviewers' will go to destroy a brilliant female academic and her work.
Here's my advice to potential readers: never allow anyone hiding behind anonymity, aggressive posturing and false names to steal your mind and force their toxicity on you. Read the book! At least! Then make up your own mind.
In my view, Green Unpleasant Land is an excellent piece of factual research.
Here's my advice to potential readers: never allow anyone hiding behind anonymity, aggressive posturing and false names to steal your mind and force their toxicity on you. Read the book! At least! Then make up your own mind.
In my view, Green Unpleasant Land is an excellent piece of factual research.
January 1, 2022
This book is an important and impeccably-researched examination of the links between England's rural 'idyll' and Britain's colonial past. It strikes that fine balance between academic rigour and accessibility for general audiences. Reviews that only grumble over it's supposed position on the political spectrum are clearly written by those who haven't picked up a copy, and hate it because they see its existence as challenging their comfortable, privileged ignorance. Those grumbles are proof that this book is needed. It does an excellent job of pulling the curtains back to cast light on part of the Empire's past that has so often been overlooked. Just because a book challenges a romantic nostalgia doesn't mean the book is wrong. When evidence challenges your assumptions, reevaluate your assumptions, don't reject the evidence. That's wilful ignorance. Disrupting long-held myths is often uncomfortable, but in this case, it's important.
April 28, 2024
We never really appreciate the link between Britain's Colonial and Slave-owning past and the British countryside. In this book, Corrine Fowler provides a very detailed look at that relationship and the role played by the wealth generated by Britain's past.
Very informative, with plenty of references for further reading.
Very informative, with plenty of references for further reading.
October 25, 2023
Great theme and extensive research. Very important that its central argument is explored in this way. For me, the literary references are sometimes hard to follow. I would have been more at home if the book treated fewer cases.
January 19, 2021
The problem with academics .... it’s all in the title . What on earth is the author trying to validate here ? That there needs to be a dialogue about colonial England and its heritage with the emphasis on slavery and rural poverty - tell us something we don’t know ! This is a re-hashed conversation that has taken advantage of the zeitgeist and manipulated itself in to some kind of superior view of how we just don’t know what was going on in our colonial past . Please allow us some credence for having intelligence. Every time anyone enjoys a stately home or meanders in to rural lands there is copious amounts of history that is left to the individual to ponder and surmise . The problem with this kind of book and the people who herald it - really believe they are telling and hectoring the average person to wake up to what really happened . Sorry we knew it already . The title tells you everything - these are angry people with an agenda : it’s hard to know why they want to destroy history and re-write it with their own moral hysteria - but it is not positive in the long run as it smacks of guilt and negativity
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 5, 2022
Two of Britain’s great myths of Empire are that it was a humane, civilising empire, and that contemporary critics of its ‘excesses’ are anachronistically imposing views from the now on the past. Both these outlooks are myths, not in the sense of stories we tell ourselves to allow our culture to work (although they do that) but in the sense of being false. Britain’s empire was as murderous an institution as any other empire, practicing oppression, dispossession and genocide as standard operating procedure, justified by contested but dominant hierarchies of race and marked by racist practice. On top of that, while for many years we have been pointing to empire’s colonial critics, in recent times we have seen a growing focus on empire’s contemporary metropolitan critics. This has resulted in a shift in the historical literature, if not the wider public claims and assertions.
A more stubborn view, both in public debates and in the historical literature, has been the separation of England and Britain from Empire, where they are often seen as distinct and separate things. Yet, to a large extent, Britain’s metropolitan and imperial/colonial words were one and the same things. The persistence of this view is despite the close cultural links and deeply interwoven economies (it was as long ago as 1944 the Eric Williams argued that British capitalism was the product of slave economies, in Capitalism and Slavery). This distinction between these places and spaces is a powerful one that in the early 2020s has played itself out in debates about historical research by the National Trust looking at the links between the ‘Great Houses’ and estates it owns and slave economies. Woven into the reactionary response to this work are two things: veneration of Britain’s elite and those myths of empire, and a mythologised vision of British landscape as the material of an ancient, pristine place.
This fabulous analysis by Corinne Fowler unpacks that myth of the countryside to explore the many ways that ‘pristine’ Britain – or in this case a specific focus on England – is interwoven with and a product of colonialism and empire. Fowler, also one of those who produced the National Trust report in the link above, is a cultural scholar and historian who has been exploring the presence of colonialism and empire in literature, other cultural and historical narratives. She brings those scholarly skills to his discussion to make a powerful case for a powerful presence of colony and empire in England’s rural world.
It is a multi-layered analysis, in some cases focusing in on literary form and genre, for instance, in her discussions of the pastoral – some of which take on surprising forms. Elsewhere we see the presence of empire in rurality – such as Black servants in country houses – or landscape, especially moorlands – here for instance Fowler explores the powerful in-text suggestions that Heathcliffe was Black (a theme picked up in some recent film versions and interpretations of Wuthering Heights). This is in addition to the more obvious material presence including the wealth that sustained and underpinned many of the great estates being the product of Imperial expropriation. In places the literary and cultural exploration goes beyond the text in significant ways, especially the discussion of plants and gardens as the product and plunder of empire.
We see English poets and novelists, colonial and post-colonial subaltern writers, writing back. Each chapter includes historic authors, novelists, poets, essayists and more exploring the linkages between rural England and colonial worlds, writers from among the colonial subaltern writing from that colonial world or England, and finally those from colonial diaspora settled and often born in England. This is a multi-layered, multi-stranded depiction and exploration of those connections framed by England’s recasting of its place in the world and the shifting historical understandings noted at the outset.
Some of the cases and texts considered might be surprising, either in their presence or in Fowler’s reading of them (she is, for instance, much more generous to Naipaul than I am inclined to be, but then she has a scholar’s eye, I am more a reader than critic), but I was more likely to ponder with a (metaphorical) quizzical raised eyebrow than dispute her texts or readings. It is a compelling case challenging us to think and rethink myths of English landscape and any rigid distinction between that part of Britain in its Isles and that part in its more far-flung colonial and imperial outposts. What’s more, Fowler tops it off with a dozen or so short stories and poems, as part of her analysis of and response to rural England’s colonial connections.
This is a superb, and essential text calling on us the re-evaluate both our myths of nation and our historical practice. Highly recommended.
A more stubborn view, both in public debates and in the historical literature, has been the separation of England and Britain from Empire, where they are often seen as distinct and separate things. Yet, to a large extent, Britain’s metropolitan and imperial/colonial words were one and the same things. The persistence of this view is despite the close cultural links and deeply interwoven economies (it was as long ago as 1944 the Eric Williams argued that British capitalism was the product of slave economies, in Capitalism and Slavery). This distinction between these places and spaces is a powerful one that in the early 2020s has played itself out in debates about historical research by the National Trust looking at the links between the ‘Great Houses’ and estates it owns and slave economies. Woven into the reactionary response to this work are two things: veneration of Britain’s elite and those myths of empire, and a mythologised vision of British landscape as the material of an ancient, pristine place.
This fabulous analysis by Corinne Fowler unpacks that myth of the countryside to explore the many ways that ‘pristine’ Britain – or in this case a specific focus on England – is interwoven with and a product of colonialism and empire. Fowler, also one of those who produced the National Trust report in the link above, is a cultural scholar and historian who has been exploring the presence of colonialism and empire in literature, other cultural and historical narratives. She brings those scholarly skills to his discussion to make a powerful case for a powerful presence of colony and empire in England’s rural world.
It is a multi-layered analysis, in some cases focusing in on literary form and genre, for instance, in her discussions of the pastoral – some of which take on surprising forms. Elsewhere we see the presence of empire in rurality – such as Black servants in country houses – or landscape, especially moorlands – here for instance Fowler explores the powerful in-text suggestions that Heathcliffe was Black (a theme picked up in some recent film versions and interpretations of Wuthering Heights). This is in addition to the more obvious material presence including the wealth that sustained and underpinned many of the great estates being the product of Imperial expropriation. In places the literary and cultural exploration goes beyond the text in significant ways, especially the discussion of plants and gardens as the product and plunder of empire.
We see English poets and novelists, colonial and post-colonial subaltern writers, writing back. Each chapter includes historic authors, novelists, poets, essayists and more exploring the linkages between rural England and colonial worlds, writers from among the colonial subaltern writing from that colonial world or England, and finally those from colonial diaspora settled and often born in England. This is a multi-layered, multi-stranded depiction and exploration of those connections framed by England’s recasting of its place in the world and the shifting historical understandings noted at the outset.
Some of the cases and texts considered might be surprising, either in their presence or in Fowler’s reading of them (she is, for instance, much more generous to Naipaul than I am inclined to be, but then she has a scholar’s eye, I am more a reader than critic), but I was more likely to ponder with a (metaphorical) quizzical raised eyebrow than dispute her texts or readings. It is a compelling case challenging us to think and rethink myths of English landscape and any rigid distinction between that part of Britain in its Isles and that part in its more far-flung colonial and imperial outposts. What’s more, Fowler tops it off with a dozen or so short stories and poems, as part of her analysis of and response to rural England’s colonial connections.
This is a superb, and essential text calling on us the re-evaluate both our myths of nation and our historical practice. Highly recommended.
March 20, 2021
An absolutely brilliant book, so thoroughly researched and beautifully written. I enjoyed every bit of it, and have learned so much about the English countryside and it’s connection to empire. The creative responses at the end are the perfect way to round the literary analysis and historical research off - such a satisfying end to an incredible reading journey. I’d thoroughly recommend this to anyone.
December 24, 2025
Corinne Fowler was one of the academics who co-edited the National Trust's interim report into the legacies of colonialism that surround many of its properties, (available here :
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-... ).
Her subject is postcolonialism and "England's Green and Unpleasant Land" (2020) is addressed to what she calls a "nation at the crossroads", as she opens with the 2012 Olympics,and Aiden Burley' MP's notorious tweet after Danny Boyle's opening ceremony:
".....Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap...."
(In 2011 he was sacked as a ministerial aide by David Cameron for "offensive and foolish" behaviour at a Nazi-themed stag party, and he is now a member of Reform UK.
(see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk... ).
Corinne Fowler has drawn together a study of rural England and its countryside, to show how the UK's colonial connections, and its links to the slave trade meant that much of the countryside is far from being the romantic pastoral idyll it was claimed to be.
Her original report identified over a third of the National Trust houses have links to colonial administration,and slave ownership. Following such classic approaches such as Raymond Williams, ('The Country and the City') she shows how the English ruling class was able to sustain an influential world-view that papered over the realities of race and colonial conflict.
The question of what Englishness is still very much to the political fore, and not just in the National Trust. Blake's words in Jerusalem are still misrepresented and it could be argued that Danny Boyle didn't go far enough in its responses to an historical black presence in England.
This is an excellent student primer and also has a critical bibliography at the end of each chapter. My only criticism is that the last section - that of "creative responses" to the subject -in the shape of poems and short stories, is uneven and comes across as too well-meaning.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-... ).
Her subject is postcolonialism and "England's Green and Unpleasant Land" (2020) is addressed to what she calls a "nation at the crossroads", as she opens with the 2012 Olympics,and Aiden Burley' MP's notorious tweet after Danny Boyle's opening ceremony:
".....Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap...."
(In 2011 he was sacked as a ministerial aide by David Cameron for "offensive and foolish" behaviour at a Nazi-themed stag party, and he is now a member of Reform UK.
(see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk... ).
Corinne Fowler has drawn together a study of rural England and its countryside, to show how the UK's colonial connections, and its links to the slave trade meant that much of the countryside is far from being the romantic pastoral idyll it was claimed to be.
Her original report identified over a third of the National Trust houses have links to colonial administration,and slave ownership. Following such classic approaches such as Raymond Williams, ('The Country and the City') she shows how the English ruling class was able to sustain an influential world-view that papered over the realities of race and colonial conflict.
The question of what Englishness is still very much to the political fore, and not just in the National Trust. Blake's words in Jerusalem are still misrepresented and it could be argued that Danny Boyle didn't go far enough in its responses to an historical black presence in England.
This is an excellent student primer and also has a critical bibliography at the end of each chapter. My only criticism is that the last section - that of "creative responses" to the subject -in the shape of poems and short stories, is uneven and comes across as too well-meaning.
January 17, 2021
Very informative and enlightening.
August 29, 2022
Excellent and thought provoking read which has left my to be read book list even bigger!
June 2, 2021
Took me a long time to get through this book, but was well worth it. It's a mind changer by stacking up the detail, page by page and chapter by chapter, and all supported by the endnotes detailing the sources. I guess I'm not used to this academic approach which is why I found it difficult. I know the author has had horrible responses both to the book and to her work with the National Trust documenting the slavery and colonial connections of their stately homes. I was horrified to see some vile comments even on the this site's reviews - especially since the contents of the book are almost completely uncontroversial in the details themselves. It is the piling up of evidence that eventually lays bare the need to revisit how we think about, present and legislate about the rural countryside and how much action now is needed.
And I enjoyed the poems too. Particularly 'Pubs - The Saracen's Head'.
And I enjoyed the poems too. Particularly 'Pubs - The Saracen's Head'.
October 25, 2021
An Eye Opener
Loot from conquest, profit from trade—the lines between them often blurred—brought wealth to England over centuries, and in the process changed the land. Humans were often part of the loot, part of the profit. These people, slave or free, helped shape England. Their descendants and newer arrivals are part of the country’s multi-coloured fabric, though some would wish to deny it. As one child put it as they viewed the evidence, “You can turn away your head, but you can’t stop me studying our history.”
Loot from conquest, profit from trade—the lines between them often blurred—brought wealth to England over centuries, and in the process changed the land. Humans were often part of the loot, part of the profit. These people, slave or free, helped shape England. Their descendants and newer arrivals are part of the country’s multi-coloured fabric, though some would wish to deny it. As one child put it as they viewed the evidence, “You can turn away your head, but you can’t stop me studying our history.”
July 1, 2025
DNF’d this one. So boring, was not for me. It was more like reading someone’s masters thesis that they have turned into a book. If I wanted to read 3 chapters of literature review I would go back to uni.
It’s about how a lot of the wealth of Britain comes from colonialism and slavery. I guess it’s good to interrogate this but does it have to be so boring whilst doing so? I kind of feel this would have been much better as a long-form essay and dragging it out really detracted from the readability. As it is it feels incredibly niche.
It’s about how a lot of the wealth of Britain comes from colonialism and slavery. I guess it’s good to interrogate this but does it have to be so boring whilst doing so? I kind of feel this would have been much better as a long-form essay and dragging it out really detracted from the readability. As it is it feels incredibly niche.
December 29, 2022
Took a long while to read but some really interesting connections between the countryside and black history which I hadn't considered and will be useful for teaching black history to students in a rural area who don't always see the relevance of the subject to them.
January 7, 2023
I thoroughly enjoy this but I would suggest if you are easily offended by British history not being all Churchill and Green fields stay away from this book…. In fact better stay away from the history book genre in general….. and Art…. And libraries…… and museums
December 23, 2023
Very interesting and well-researched book that links our countryside with the slave trade and the attitude of white superiority within the former. It challenges popular myths about a range of subjects connected to Britain's countryside. And it mentions Chumbawamba.
December 27, 2023
I think if I'd not read Olusoga's Black and British this year I might have got more into this but I felt I was covering similar information and then that info, being incredibly niche, did not keep me hooked. I'm not a fan of a mixed fact/fiction book either so this wasn't for me.
January 20, 2022
Interesting but a hard read, more of a long academic dissertation than a book
Good topic that I am really interested in but it is slightly relative and doesn't 'flow easily '
Good topic that I am really interested in but it is slightly relative and doesn't 'flow easily '
Read
October 14, 2022Long essays - read some but have more to read
October 31, 2022
i want everyone to read this book :)
January 8, 2024
took some interesting things to go away and research from this! but it was a lot more academic-y, and therefore less accessible, than i had expected
June 25, 2025
Work of genius.
January 31, 2021
If you are anti-british, (and anti-brexit, I suspect), have no idea what the word 'nuance' means, have a skewed knowledge of world history, and obtain your total worldview from the Guardian or New York Times, this is the book for you! However, if you are a reasonable, even tempered, logical human being who knows about nuance and world history, swerve like the proverbial Owen Jones/Sarah Jeong column.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews