Britain: Empire of Good Intentions?

While I agree that Africa probably should have been included in Simon Schama's Empire of Good Intentions, I also agree that to do so would invite even more colonized nations into the fray (Australia, Canada, U.S., etc.). Thus, Schama cannot make everyone happy; he cannot even begin get to all the issues (re: countries/nations), and that fact is inherent in the form he chose, a "short" documentary. For him to include everything that we seem to feel is necessary, the documentary would have to be much, much longer, although he could probably cover some of the ground by mentioning these other countries in a sentence or two. However, I think doing this would be detrimental to the documentary's power. "This happened to these countries, too. It was an incredibly violent time." Okay. Examples? Elaboration? Such a loaded comment like this would make us eager to know more, and it would throw off the already fragile balance of the documentary (as we mentioned, the sections on Ireland and India do not get equal "face time" or detail).

With that said, the documentary is adequate but not exceptional; it certainly gets us thinking but does not provide all the answers or talk about all the issues. Perhaps a book form would be better suited for this kind of detail, the kind that some of us on the blog seem to want. On the other hand, I do not think it is realistic to require an historian to get to everything, and as such, I think it is important to note intertextuality as a key concept for this kind of work. Even looking at the title, I do not think this documentary is supposed to be an all-encompassing look at Britain and colonialism. Rather, it is meant to comment on both previous and future documentaries, as well as written texts, and to provoke thought in the viewer; indeed, it ASKS the question "Is/was Britain an empire of good intentions?" It is that simple; it does not ask about or necessarily even point at colonialism, and it certainly does not purport to be the end-all-be-all documentary on Britain. While we posited in class that the short answer to the above question is "no," there is more to be discussed. We are only getting started. Schama gets us interested in whether Britain had good intentions, and in doing so, he plants the seeds of colonialism/imperialism in our heads, and then he invites us to do further research if we are interested.