We Are Still British
This is not the installment I was planning to publish today, but no historian of the British Atlantic could let this moment pass without interrupting regularly-scheduled programming. HM The Queen has died, and thus, in a sense, the era in which most of us—even those of us like me whose hair is white—have lived our entire lives, is over.
The ripple effects of The Queen’s loss may be subtle, but they will be more profound than probably anyone, inside or outside the UK, yet realizes. She was the most obvious constant of the postwar world, when most everything else was changing quickly and often drastically.
That has been said and will be said again countless times. What I want to add here is that for those of us over here, or in the Caribbean, or in Australia, or Aotearoa/New Zealand, or on the Indian subcontinent, or in many parts of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, this event matters, and it matters a lot. One of the main reasons it matters a lot is that, simply, we are still British.
Pundits and entertainers have expressed bemusement at fascination with the British Monarchy outside the UK, especially here in the U.S., which has now been officially politically independent from Britain for 239 years. There is more than one reason for that, and some of it is a bit silly, to be sure, but I think one reason for it gets overlooked, and it isn’t silly. Despite political independence, and significant cultural divergence over the past three centuries, there are deep connections between what many of our ancestors called the home islands and this sprawling continental offshoot that grew from thirteen Eastern Seaboard maritime colonies. Our country, like Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, and indeed the UK itself, is widely and wonderfully diverse; its citizens and visitors come from all over the world, from every ethnic and cultural tradition, and speak all the world’s languages. That is a beautiful thing, and our lives and work are enriched by that beyond measure. It has added so much to what the first settlers, dissenters, soldiers and slavers brought over. Nevertheless, what those people did bring over were ideas and institutions upon which we still depend, and which we hold up as ideals for ourselves and the whole human world—and justifiably so. Constitutional government. The idea that everyone, including the rulers, is bound by the law. The sanctity of human life, the freedom o
f the individual person to pursue their own happiness, as free from coercion as possible. Trial by jury. The right to be represented in government. All these political principles that we hold sacred are British. Anyone who has seriously studied the American Revolution knows that a major casus belli of the Revolutionaries was their conviction that the regime in London had violated the basic “rights of Englishmen”; that the imperial government had betrayed the Britishness at the core of the covenant that held the Empire together. When we set up our own government, we copied so much of the one in London. A bicameral legislature, with an elected assembly fully independent of the Executive. A high court. And we preserved what we had inherited from those who first came over, from trials by jury to the county sheriff. In fact, historian David Starkey argued that in some respects, our Constitution adheres more closely to Magna Carta than does the modern version of the UK’s.
I am not ignoring the tortured legacy of the British Empire here—nor, for that matter, the bloody and cruel history of the United States. There is no space here to delve into all the aspects of Britishness that served the causes of racists and slavers and killers of all stripes. We as a society have long struggled to overcome the idea that only those of British ancestry who adhere most closely to British cultural traditions have a right to dominance in this country, as have other former colonial societies, and the UK itself. All of the societies in the former British Empire are grappling with these uglier aspects of our shared legacy.
But it’s important, as we do so, that we remember those elements of that legacy that have served us well, when we let them, and that we must preserve, if in adapted form, to move into a future world that any of us would want to live in or bequeath to the young ‘uns. Her Majesty spent a long lifetime nurturing the cooperative, non-coercive connections that made up the Commonwealth, because she knew that constructive economic and cultural relationships, and shared liberal values, were the best possible legacy the Empire could leave. I love that word—“Commonwealth”—because I think it encapsulates the organization of human societies toward which we must strive if we are to survive and thrive with all our powers and all our dark impulses. The ability to dominate and coerce fades far sooner than the ability to persuade and to cooperate. That is a lesson we, and every other world power, would do well to learn, sooner rather than later.
One last thing we copied from our former mother country: the peaceful and immediate transfer of power from one head of state to the next. As irreplaceable as she was in so many ways, the moment The Queen died, her son was King, automatically. A foregone conclusion. Yes, we need creative change and adaptability to meet our challenges, but we also need an appreciation for, and a commitment to, continuities and institutions upon which we rely, which give us some sense of an anchor, some loose but abiding sense of identity and shared sense of what is worthwhile. Regardless of what one thinks of a hereditary monarchy, a relic of another age that, understandably, modern people find somewhat perplexing (including, no doubt, those who are in it), there is much to be said for the willingness to devote one’s life and work to the service of something bigger than oneself.
So, I don’t think one needs to be a subject of the Crown, or a theist, to add another sincere God Save the King, and for that matter, may God save the best elements of British civilization for all our benefit.