The myth of Brexit as imperial nostalgia | Prospect Magazine - 0 views
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The idea that Britain should lead the EU—widely deployed in 2016—has as strong an imperial heritage as the aspiration to leave it; and in loading membership with unrealistic aspirations, it may have contributed to disillusionment with the European experience. By contrast, the anti-colonial left tended to be hostile to membership, and the idea that Brexit marks a liberation from Britain’s own colonial status—however perverse—has a long history in Eurosceptic thought.
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we need a sharper distinction between nostalgia and amnesia: between the longing for empire and the forgetting of Britain’s imperial past. The two are not mutually exclusive: it is probably only possible to be nostalgic for empire if you forget most of its history. Yet there is a difference between the selective remembering of empire and its elimination from the historical record
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In Eurosceptic readings of history, the dominant memory is not of empire but of “our island story”: of plucky “little Britain,” standing alone against overpowering odds. It’s the story of Dunkirk, of Sir Francis Drake, and of Britain fighting “alone” in 1940—a story that reduces empire to an expression of British power, rather than its source. The myth it fuels is not that empire can return, but that it hardly mattered in the first place: that Britain can flex its muscles on the world stage without the sinews of imperial power. For Boris Johnson, the task of Brexit is “not to build a new empire, heaven forfend,” but “to rediscover some of the dynamism of these bearded Victorians,” as if the two were unconnected.