“Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850”, by Linda Colley

 

464 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0385721462, Anchor Books

In Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850, Linda Colley describes a different perspective of Imperial Britain that goes against traditional history – at least up until our modern, damn-it-all present. Although Britain experienced expansion at an unprecedented rate during the late 1600s up until the mid-1800s, it had spread itself too thinly across the globe, and the Royal Navy found itself unable to effectively control the vast number of territories claimed by Britain, whose money and physical presence was never fully effective at dominating the areas they painted British pink; rather, these territories often influenced their colonial governments more than traditional historians care to admit.

In order to better describe her viewpoint, Colley has divided her book into three sections: the first concentrates on Britain in the Mediterranean, a costly venture seldom mentioned in British Imperialism, while the second and third focuses on the relationship between the British and natives in North America and how the fear of captivity influenced those that colonized America for Britain. Oh, and India, the country whose rough relationship with Britain both made and destroyed careers. While the history of African slavery in the West is immense, accounts of British slavery in the Eastern Hemisphere was seldom recorded and receives less research from both older and newer historians.

Colley hides no biases as she uncovers a history that she argues has been neglected for far too long, a history that exposes a dirty secret of the British Empire: that there is an imbalance in the records that exist between the West and the East. Colley suggests that the research is stifled largely because during this time it was legal for the Royal Navy – and, therefore, the English government – to enslave their own citizens who chose to forfeit military service, as slavery was a more viable option than execution – this was the invention of the “Press Gangs”, the taking of men into a military or naval force by compulsion, usually without notice, whenever a Royal Navy vessel needed men to fill out its crew.

And so Colley opens a new phase in British historiography by revealing a glaring failure: how many remember Britain’s occupation of Tangier on the west coast of Africa? Hm? Well?! The city was part of a Catherine of Braganza’s dowry in 1661 when she married King Charles II, giving Britain a control point over the Mediterranean trade routes. With Spain, France and some of the Italian states (not to mention the Dutch) all expanding their sea-going commerce, Tangier was a key location, and the British poured immense sums into Tangier to create a fortified city – but it was lost less than a generation later (no wonder the Brits chose not to remember such a costly introduction into World Empire).

Colley examines “a quarter of a millennium” in an overview of three stages of Britain’s expansionist adventure. From the start, she reminds us, Britain’s miniscule population and limited resources made it an unlikely candidate for global expansion. Contending with nations better prepared or more experienced in empire-building, the founding of the British Empire was typified by false starts and unlikely events. In using the accounts of prisoners – kidnappees, prisoners of war or other captives – Colley is able to point out how both public views and policies changed during the growth of the Empire. Most important, she argues, is the need to dispel notions that the empire was monolithic in concept or development.

Well-written and highly entertaining, Captivity sheds new light on a force of nature that changed the world. Using autobiographies, adventure stories, sermons, written accounts of public speeches and the like, Colley brings to life the fragile truth of British colonization: that Britain was never in full control of the vast lands she acquired. Its 438 pages capture the big picture of Britain’s expansion throughout the world as well personalizing the journeys of those who lived and died in strange new worlds.