History of British empire can be looked at afresh following debates over toppling slavers' statues, the Commonwealth and art ownership – Laura Waddell

I’ve been doing some reading around the British empire and art recently, leading me to reflect anew on reading I did in the study of English literature.

When I reached university, how equipped was I to understand the wider contexts around the colonial-era literature and postcolonial theory on my reading lists fresh out of high school, one that expected few of us to go on to higher education? Not very. I was barely aware of the empire, its history and ongoing concerns, how its merchants shaped Glasgow. I had rarely contemplated ‘Britishness’, nevermind questioning it.

I did the assigned reading (well, most of it) in a succession of draughty tenement flats, occasionally huddled over a pot of hot tea in Tchai Ovna, but my understanding of the British empire remained exceedingly basic for a long time. When we read Tess of the D’Urbervilles aloud in high school English (an experience which completely united my class in mutual hatred; in my mind’s eye, I associate that book with staring at flecks of dust caught in afternoon light, willing the bell to ring), the message of questioning Victorian morality, particularly as it related to women, was fairly lost amidst how bloody dull and dead the book felt in our hands.

More recently, I’ve come to confront the reality that I have been intimidated by history as a genre for a long time. Offputtingly weighty tomes, so often authored by grown public school boys, is a realm I’ve long felt decidedly outside: the grandiosity of the titles, the swollen spines; the price of these gold-foiled hardbacks. The very fixtures and fittings of such books shout triumphalism and nationalism.

Public conversations in the last few years around toppling statues of slavers, the legacy of the Queen’s commonwealth, and about ownership of art have opened the door, I believe, to a more widespread scrutiny of history than that written by the self-satisfied. While narcissism runs riot in today's politics, it's not a bad thing to think of our own place in the grand scheme of it all. As I chip away at my ignorance now, filling in the gaps in my knowledge, piece by piece, by picking up the books and articles that intrigue me, I feel dots connecting in all kinds of ways about the patterns of power.