In the UK and across the old empire and the new Commonwealth, Elizabeth performed for her peoples a role of decency and moral effort. I think it means finding in the Queen, since she assumed the throne in 1952, the best parts of an ideal national self. So in order to love their country, the British have to do some hard and mature thinking about their past. Just as Americans are grappling with their own histories of racism and oppression and the long shadows of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, so the British must “come to terms with” or “reckon with” their national historical wrongdoing. Indeed, the United Kingdom is now having its own “Black Lives Matter” experiences, with calls for apologies and reparations, particularly to the Caribbean islands where slaves toiled under the British monarchy until 1834 followed by indentured labor and imperial neglect that produced dreadful conditions for generations. The “white settler” colonies of Kenya and South Africa, also, were notably racist constructions, with brutal British suppression of the Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s.
These unpleasant truths are vividly laid out, most recently in Caroline Elkins’ 2022 book “Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire.” The British empire was a racist, oppressive and sometimes cruel and violent institution. Elizabeth was famously devoted to this organization, forming strong personal relationships with many leaders of former colonies. Watchers of “The Crown” will know that Elizabeth promoted economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa and that in 1961 she danced with Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah in what was then a rather shocking display of black and white closeness.īut all the Queen’s horses and all the Queen’s men cannot purify the history of the British empire and its aftermath. The British Commonwealth of nations, now just the Commonwealth, emerged. This break-up gathered speed in the 1960s, with African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Kenya leading the way. In its early years, her long reign over the United Kingdom as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and “other realms beyond the seas,” unfolded during the rather brisk dissolution of the old British empire. The Queen’s public persona of quiet virtue, religious devotion, sense of duty, self-control and stoic resistance to the allure of fickle public opinion made her much admired, and now, much mourned. I wonder again about why this woman was so significant, and have come to believe it’s because she enabled her subjects to find a way to love their rather troubled country. The death of Queen Elizabeth II encourages me to consider the interesting topic of Great Britain, a country I left more than 40 years ago.
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