How Did the British Empire Build the Modern World?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow’s History Hit

Episode: How Did the British Empire Build the Modern World?

Guest: Satnam Sangara (journalist, author of "Empireland", "Empireworld", and "Journeys of Empire")
Date: December 25, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, historian Dan Snow and guest Satnam Sangara explore how the British Empire—once the world’s largest superpower—shaped the modern world. They delve into the Empire’s origins, expansion, and enduring global legacy, touching on its impacts on politics, culture, economics, population movements, and the environment. Throughout, they emphasize the Empire’s complexities, contradictions, and the continuing relevance of its global imprint.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Scale and Origins of the British Empire (01:41–08:54)

• The Empire’s reach was vast: at its height it governed over 400 million people and covered a quarter of Earth’s landmass.
  • Dan Snow: “The British Empire... at its peak governed over 400 million subjects. It covered a quarter of the Earth's landmass.” (01:48)
• The hosts reflect on the peculiarity of two British-descended men in a London studio, underscoring the ubiquity of imperial legacies in modern Britain, from language, ancestry, and even house plants brought over due to imperial “fern mania.”
  • Satnam Sangara: “Fern mania in the Victorian age… to fill Victorian living rooms with ferns. They all came from places like Australia, causing massive environmental damage.” (03:35)
• Origins traced back to Tudor times (late 1500s), with early ventures including Ireland (the “first colony”), and then the East India Company’s charter in 1600.
  • Satnam Sangara: “Arguably, Ireland was the first colony, wasn’t it?” (04:26)
  • The East India Company’s trade ambitions led to more territorial ambitions, out of competition with European rivals, e.g. the Dutch.
  • Anecdote: At the end of a battle over the nutmeg trade, the Dutch swapped Manhattan (then New Amsterdam) for a remote nutmeg island with the British.
    • “It was the hunt for nutmeg which bizarrely ended up with us owning New York, wasn’t it?” (05:20)

2. Drivers of Empire (05:58–08:54)

• Multiple, often contradictory drivers: economic competition, seeking commodities (nutmeg, sugar, tea, rubber, palm oil), religious persecution, the penal colony in Australia, opportunities for settlement, and indentured labor.
  • “Bad English food is such an important motivator of empire…” (05:58, Satnam)
• The Empire expanded due to individual settler ambitions as much as central policy. Frontier actors often drove expansion faster than the government in London could veto or control.

3. Expansion, Scale, and Consequences (08:54–13:10)

• The Empire changed through centuries: early trade outposts to territorial conquest, often precipitated by frontier friction and competition (especially with France).
• By 1923 (empire’s peak):
  • Covered a quarter of the world’s landmass
  • Fifth of the world’s population
  • Seven times larger than the Roman Empire
  • “The British Empire was 150 times the size of Great Britain.” (10:40, Satnam)
• The 1948 Nationality Act created an inadvertent legacy: “made every subject of the Empire a citizen of Britain… 600 million people citizens of Britain.” (10:48, Satnam)

4. Lasting Global Impact (11:05–16:41)

• British influence extended well beyond formal colonies: cultural (football, English language), temporal (Greenwich meridian as global standard), and economic (railways, mining, education).
  • “The majority of countries that play football [do so] directly or indirectly from the British Empire.” (11:33, Satnam)
• British-drawn borders are the root of political/geopolitical issues: Nigeria, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir.
  • “There’s a sort of meme on…US Social media, isn’t there, that the British Empire sort of made everything up with a pen.” (12:11, Dan)
• Enduring demographic legacy:
  • Forced migrations (enslaved Africans, indentured Indians)
  • Refugee movements (Irish famine, Partition of India)
  • Massive British emigration
  • Satnam: “British people are the biggest migrants in history almost.” (15:27)
• Catastrophic impacts: “A million people died in imperial wars in the 19th century.” (09:37, Satnam); millions of deaths from diseases brought by colonizers.

5. Cultural and Environmental Legacy (16:41–18:16, picks up again at 21:13)

• Place names (e.g., Queen Victoria, Jamestown, Birmingham) and even an attempt to name Uranus after King George (rejected by the world).
• Food, drink, sports, dress codes—transformed globally:
  • “The reason Indians drink tea is because of the British.” (12:26, Satnam)
  • “Take something like ganja… associated with Jamaica… introduced by Indian indentured laborers to Jamaica by the British.” (12:44, Satnam)
• Spread and adaptation of the English language, educational systems, and entire corporations tracing their roots to empire.
  • “All the corporations, right? BP was originally Anglo Persian Oil. Shell began as a company importing shells from the Empire. P&O Ferries: Peninsula and Oriental.” (21:17, Satnam)
• British charities’ focus on international work is a legacy of imperial self-justifications.

6. Enduring Political and Legal Structures (21:58–24:29)

• Many countries’ constitutions are based on Westminster’s model (New Zealand, India, South Africa, Nepal, etc.).
• 26 countries still use the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London as their highest court.
• Enduring legacies of colonial law: anti-LGBTQ+ laws in many Commonwealth countries are British in origin.
  • Satnam: “…the majority of countries that have anti gay sex laws got them from the British.” (24:23)
  • “Now you have this bizarre situation where the British are now liberal… ‘you gave us this legislation!’” (24:29, Satnam)

7. Empire in the Environment and Everyday Life (25:05–27:44)

• Botanical imperialism: Kew Gardens was central to colonial extraction and experimentation with useful plants (quinine for malaria, rubber, tea).
  • “Plants changed the world. We’ve lost the idea that plants are technology…” (25:29, Satnam)
• The imperial legacy is in the literal landscape: streets, plants, trees, and the structure of cities worldwide.
  • “It’s literally the surroundings, the plants, the trees around us…” (26:47, Dan)

8. Education and Leadership (26:56–27:44)

• British-inspired education systems trained elites worldwide, shaping the leadership of former colonies.
  • “Majority of our world leaders are either educated in American schools or universities or British ones.” (27:25, Satnam)
  • Indian PM Modi positions himself as “the first truly Indian leader” vs. British-educated predecessors.

9. The ‘Empire Model’ Lives On (27:57–28:43)

• Modern parallels: Chinese investment in Africa, US influence—reminiscent of imperialism. Tech companies as de facto empires.
• “Arguably, a lot of our tech companies are like that [East India Company].” (28:25, Satnam)

10. Why Britons Often Ignore Their Imperial Past (29:03–30:28)

• Other countries are more conscious of British imperial legacies than the British themselves.
• Historians debate how much the Empire entered daily life in Britain; Sangara argues its influence—via goods, culture, wealth—was substantial.

11. Empire and the Industrial Revolution (30:12–31:43)

• Links between imperial profits (especially slavery) and the Industrial Revolution are now being more fully explored. “You need money to make money.” (31:43, Satnam)
• Debate on whether these were parallel phenomena or deeply intertwined.

12. The Contradictions of Empire (31:53–33:25)

• Empire contained contradiction: “It wasn’t intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. It was complicated. It was slavery, it was abolition, it was the free press, it was press censure, it was environmental destruction, it was the birth of environmentalism.” (31:53, Satnam)
• Individual legacies were complicated (e.g., Gandhi, Churchill), not easily hero/villain binaries.

13. Why Understanding Empire Matters Today (33:25–34:53)

• It explains Britain’s multicultural reality and national narratives, including the roles of Empire troops in both world wars.
  • “It explains a very big thing about Britain, which we’ve always struggled with…that we’re a multicultural country.” (33:38, Satnam)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Empire’s Impact and Modern Life

  • Satnam Sangara: “I don't think you can understand modern Britain or the modern world without understanding the British Empire.” (03:38)

• On the Size of the Empire

  • Satnam Sangara: “Quarter of the world, like landmass. A fifth of the world's population. Seven times larger than the Roman Empire. Twice the size of modern day Russia. Same surface area as the moon.” (10:01-10:15)

• On Cultural Legacies

  • Satnam Sangara: “The reason Indians drink tea is because of the British…In the early 20th century, almost no Indians drank tea.” (12:26)

• On Demographic and Economic Shifts

  • Satnam Sangara: “British people are the biggest migrants in history almost.” (15:27)
  • Dan Snow: “Britain lost more people in emigrating than they did in the first world.” (15:34)

• On Contradictions and Complexity

  • Satnam Sangara: “Opposite things can be true at the same time… it was slavery, it was abolition, ... birth of environmentalism.” (31:53)

• On Why It Matters

  • Satnam Sangara: “Why are these people coming? … is because we had a multicultural empire…there's a deep historical reason.” (33:38)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & The Empire’s Scope: 01:41–04:01
• Early Empire Origins: 04:01–08:54
• Expansion and Settlements: 08:54–13:10
• Global Impact – Borders/Culture: 11:05–16:41
• Cultural & Environmental Legacies: 16:41–18:16; resumes 21:13–27:44
• Political and Legal Systems: 21:58–24:29
• Modern Parallels: 27:57–28:43
• Historiography and British Amnesia: 29:03–30:28
• Industrial Revolution Link: 30:12–31:43
• Contradictions of Empire: 31:53–33:25
• Why Understanding Empire Still Matters: 33:25–34:53

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Tone and Style

Dan Snow and Satnam Sangara’s tone is lively, conversational, and frequently humorous, with both showing respect for the subject’s complexities and contradictions. They balance anecdote with fact, offering both sweeping commentary (“the British Empire has its fingerprints on a lot of this”) and fine-grained insights. There’s a strong sense of immediacy and relevance—a call for greater historical self-awareness.

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Conclusion

The episode powerfully illustrates how the British Empire’s legacies—cultural, economic, political, demographic, and environmental—permeate the modern world, often in ways that pass unremarked in contemporary Britain. Sangara advocates for facing these legacies openly: not to foster guilt or pride, but for a richer, truer understanding of who we are and why our societies look as they do.

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Guest's Latest Book:
Journeys of Empire (children’s version of Empireworld)

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For further questions or feedback, the team can be reached at [e-mail]

Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

Hi folks. Welcome to Dan Snow's History. For a long time, for centuries really, the reach, the scale of the British Empire, it was just almost unfathomable. History's largest, probably its most powerful global empire, which at its peak governed over 400 million subjects. It covered a quarter of the Earth's landmass. In this episode we're going to look into how this little island, smaller than Kansas, was able to exercise such extraordinary reach, such extraordinary control. How that empire didn't just rule the world, but just rewrote the course of history. How the British Empire triggered massive diasporas, re engineered the global ecosystem and how the impact, the power of that empire is still being felt so long after its collapse. Today I'm really pleased to be welcoming back to the show. Satnam Sangara, journalist, best selling author of the award winning books Empire Land and Empire World. His new book, Journeys of Empire explores the voyages that changed the world forever. So we're gonna talk all about the legacy of that empire. Let's get into it. Satnam. Good to see you. Good to see you.

[Satnam Sangara]

It's the first time I've seen you in person on a.

[Dan Snow]

Is this in the flesh?

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah. So I've got to deal with the stress of having to summarize my views but also deal with your handsomeness.

[Dan Snow]

Come on. That should be very straightforward. Also, this is not a small subject talking about the British Empire. And you know, as I was thinking about it, I thought, there's two dudes in a room in London speaking English. I've got Irish, Canadian and English heritage. You've got where?

[Satnam Sangara]

Punjabi, Punjabi, Wolverhampton.

[Dan Snow]

Exact English Punjabi heritage. Just this fact that this is happening is reflective of this massive impact that the British Empire's had. Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

And probably some of your plants in the background probably came from Empire.

[Dan Snow]

Interesting.

[Satnam Sangara]

Fern mania in the Victorian age. You know about fern mania?

[Dan Snow]

I don't.

[Satnam Sangara]

There was a craze to fill Victorian living rooms with ferns. They all came from places like Australia, causing massive environmental damage. But I could have been drinking a cup of tea. You could have been having a rum and Coke. Rum, originally from Barbados, could have been having gin and tonic, quinine, invented because of empire. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think you can understand modern Britain or the modern world without understanding the British Empire.

[Dan Snow]

That's extraordinary. Let's try and give people a little overview of that empire.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

We're going to gallop through, do a survey of, I guess, the chronology empire, and then we're going to look at some areas in which it has completely changed the modern world. We could start, I guess with the late Tudors, bit of Queen Elizabeth, I mean, Henry vii, sending people out and exploring the coast of Canada. But I mean, we're getting colonies, we're getting trade by the late Tudor period, Elizabeth I. Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

But in that narrative, people forget Ireland.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, good point.

[Satnam Sangara]

Arguably, Ireland was the first colony, wasn't it?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, totally. Hey, and my Welsh ancestor would say, don't forget the old Welsh here, lads. But yeah, the English, then the British pushing into Ireland and then further afield for Turkey.

[Satnam Sangara]

The textbooks, I guess, talk about it starting in, what, 1600s with the creation of the East India Company, chartered by Queen Elizabeth I. The hunt for spiders to trade textiles.

[Dan Snow]

So trying to take advantage of the huge rewards that come from trading around the world. But how does that interact with empire? That's trade. You're going out, you're sending merchants out to get money. Why do we get bits of the world painted in pink after that? What happens there?

[Satnam Sangara]

There's so many reasons. Partly just competition because someone else was doing it. So the Dutch were doing it. So it became a kind of competition. You had to beat the Dutch to the Banda Islands and take control of the nutmeg trade.

[Dan Snow]

So you can't just turn up with money and buy nutmeg. You, you gotta own the plots that are being grown.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah. And actually it was the hunt for nutmeg which bizarrely ended up with us owning New York, wasn't it Manhattan? You know the story. That story.

[Dan Snow]

But go on, tell everyone that story.

[Satnam Sangara]

I wanna get it right. So basically there was only one island in the world that grew nutmeg. Run island, about four miles long. It was the Dutch and the British fought over it. It was very, very far away. And in the end, at the end of all this fighting, the Dutch, I think, swapped. Was it New Amsterdam?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, a little place called New Amsterdam which is today called Manhattan. Yeah, yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

Is that crazy? And all because of nutmeg, which you could buy on rhode island for £1, say, and sell in London for £600.

[Dan Snow]

Really?

[Satnam Sangara]

So. But also, I mean, you got the factor of bad. English food is such an important motivator of empire because not only is nutmeg, then there's sugar. Imagine if you'd never eaten sugar before and suddenly you have sugar. So that craze for British grown sugar in the Caribbean, that transformed the world and it's transformed Britain to such a degree that until recently, the richest MP in Parliament, apart from Rishi Sunak, was from a family who'd made a fortune from sugar trade and Barbados. There's so many different reasons why empire came about. And I think that's part of the reason why we struggled to talk about it. Another reason it came about is Australia was a good place to send prisoners. I mean, that is completely disconnected from our desire for better food, you know, true. And then indentured labor. And there's so many different reasons and there's so many different factors.

[Dan Snow]

So yes, you're right. So let's get back 1600. They're going out around the world, they're trying to trade. They're discovering they actually have to sort of send a few soldiers, send some officials, own places. You see the growth of that empire and then as you say, the different kind of empire, you're totally right. Settlers, people go out to New England, they go out to Virginia and they go, actually, look, there's a bit of land here. We chase the indigenous people off the land and it's, it's nice. I was penniless back home. But here I'm a prosperous farmer.

[Satnam Sangara]

Totally religious persecution.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

So, I mean, that was a huge factor. And the Puritans, quite a small number of people, but actually their influence over American culture remains. I mean, in terms of their ideas about property law, politics are still influential now. And in terms of their descendants and their numbers, hugely influential. And then you have the indirect influences, like the great potato famine in Ireland. A million people died, but also millions of people leave Ireland. The population of Ireland apparently still hasn't recovered from that calamity. But where do they go? They go to America. So arguably the British Empire then populates America in another way through imperial policies like that.

[Dan Snow]

So we got settler colonies, the Americas. You've got Australia eventually. Well, and settler colonies all over the world. And I guess the empire gets bigger.

[Satnam Sangara]

And bigger commodities as well.

[Dan Snow]

Commodities? Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

Gosh. Palm oil in Nigeria, rubber in British Malaya. Tea. Tea is very big, isn't it? It leads to the Opium wars and arguably also is involved in the. In the loss of America. So commodities are a big factor, too.

[Dan Snow]

And then I suppose you get that interesting thing where you just get the friction on imperial frontiers, as you say, whether it's in India, the British and French competing, and you start conquering great slabs of territory and the Brits conquer Canada. The empires grow because they almost develop their own dynamic on the. I think something you're interesting about this. You've mentioned this before. Sometimes politicians in London are like, will you stop with this? Empire's quite expensive for governments, isn't it? You gotta send troops out there and build a few roads. But it's people on the frontier, like in Africa, Southern Africa, North America. The dynamic's coming from out there, isn't it?

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah. Making up the policies as they go along. Communication is a really important factor because it could take six to nine months to get to India or for a message to get back to. So the man on the ground is making a lot of decisions. And it also shows you how empire changed, because then you have the invention of the telegraph and undersea cables, and suddenly you can get messages very quickly to India. And suddenly Britain does have a bit more control over India. So the flavor of empire, then is very different to the flavor of empire in the 17th century.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, it's always changing. The American colonies break away. Yeah, it's fascinating. So we take that story all the way through. They. Lots of land is conquered in the 19th century. I mean, have you ever tried to take a note of how many wars there are in the 19th century? How many imperial wars? Has anyone ever tottered it up?

[Satnam Sangara]

Yes, I actually, I know how many people die. A million people died in Imperial wars in the 19th century. Some academics did the numbers.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. And that's.

[Satnam Sangara]

That's just war.

[Dan Snow]

Zulu war in Southern Africa, war in Afghanistan, India, mutiny. Lots of wars in Punjab and. Yeah. Okay, so that means by what peak year? 1920. 20. After the First World War?

[Satnam Sangara]

1923.

[Dan Snow]

1923, yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

So how big is it? That's really.

[Dan Snow]

Go on then.

[Satnam Sangara]

Quarter of the world, like landmass. A fifth of the world's population. Seven times larger than the Roman Empire. Twice the size of modern day Russia. Same surface area as the moon. I don't know why I know that.

[Dan Snow]

What? Yeah, the whole of the moon.

[Satnam Sangara]

The whole of the moon, but 7 times size of the Roman Empire.

[Dan Snow]

I felt like we talked a lot.

[Satnam Sangara]

More about the Roman Empire school than the British Empire. And yet I think arguably it's the biggest thing we ever did right as a country.

[Dan Snow]

And I love the way that strange thing, the Romans conquered the known world. They just. They just didn't. Yeah, they knew that they had. They knew that Germany existed. Bits of white. They knew that unconquered stuff existed. Very weird that.

[Satnam Sangara]

It's wild that this country. I mean, I think at one point I've got written down here, the British Empire was 150 times the size of Great Britain. Isn't that wild? And the 1948 Nationality act made every subject of the Empire a citizen of Britain. So it made 600 million people citizens of Britain. Arguably our immigration policy has been trying to undo that ever since. Cause they didn't expect anyone would come.

[Dan Snow]

But they did, actually, in a way that British Imperial impact is bigger because it wasn't felt just within the Empire. I mean, I'm really interested in places like Argentina or even the usa, where British investment, British skills, talent, miners, railway engineers, you know, they're founding football clubs in Buenos Aires. So when we're talking about the British Empire's impact on the world, it actually is even bigger than the land that's formerly owned by Britain.

[Satnam Sangara]

Totally. So the majority of countries that play football directly or indirectly from the British Empire, because British period has turned up the global system of time. Why do we have the Greenwich meridian? Why was it decided in a conference in the 19th century that it should be in Greenwich? Think about it. It's because of the British Empire. And there was a master clock in Greenwich and the other clocks were called slave clocks. That's the mentality of empire, isn't It. But there's all sorts of things in the world that could be explained by the British Empire. English language.

[Dan Snow]

The English language is a big one.

[Satnam Sangara]

Tax avoidance.

[Dan Snow]

Tax avoidance, yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

The existence of entire nations. Nigeria, Pakistan, just wouldn't exist.

[Dan Snow]

That's a good one. There's a sort of meme on, especially on US Social media, isn't there, that the British Empire sort of made everything up with a pen. Jordan, Niger, India, Pakistan. I mean, the British Empire has its fingerprints on a lot of this. The political geography of the world today.

[Satnam Sangara]

And the way people dress, diet. I mean, the reason Indians drink tea is because of the British. There's an idea that Indians have always drunk tea. In the early 20th century, almost no Indians drank tea. The British realized they could make a lot of money out of it and sold it, marketed tea to Indians. So now that even Indians don't realize that. Take something like ganja we associate with Jamaica. Intrinsic to Jamaicans, it seems. No, it was introduced by Indian indentured laborers to Jamaica by the British. Because ganja is an Indian word. If you think about it, it's an Indian herb. And now it's so associated with Jamaica. When you start thinking about that, you're like, actually, there's a lot of Indian phenomena in Jamaica, like goat curry, rotis, and it's because of the British, and you just can't escape it.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so modern countries that are sort of descended. Well, so many of them. But from the usa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sudan, Sudan, Myanmar.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Israel, Palestine, Jordan, you name it. So the world's map is just shaped by the British Empire and the decisions made in London, elsewhere. But what about the people? I mean, what about this movement, this great global movement of people? People will be familiar with the trade in enslaved Africans that many Europeans are practicing. But the British Empire became a particularly big player in the 18th century. And so the movement of Africans to places in the Caribbean, north and South America, that's a huge demographic.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah. And the world would look entirely different if it wasn't for the British Empire. So you have 3 million enslaved people being transported in British ships. 12 million overall in the transatlantic slave trade. 3 million is quite a lot. All their descendants. But people then forget about indenture, because when we abolished slavery, there was a mission to replace those enslaved people with Indians. Indentured laborers.

[Dan Snow]

And the word indenture means what?

[Satnam Sangara]

Which means they were contracted for between three and five years and sent to places like Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica. That's one million people and their descendants. And this is one of the main reasons why wherever you go in the world there's Indians.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

And I never understood that until I looked at it. And actually even the people in places like Mauritius don't understand the history. They say things like, oh, when my grandfather came here as a slave and it's like, no, he wasn't a slave, he was an indentured laborer. It's a different system. So you've got those million people and the millions of descendants. Then you've got things like partition, 15 million people displaced, between what, 1 and 2 million people killed. You got the famine in Ireland, a million people die. Then the millions of people who migrate. And then you got something that British people never discuss is a number of British people who emigrated and on your family did, didn't they?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, my Scottish family went to Canada.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And they're all these, we think of that migration. You don't think also all those white European people is white. They're not supposed to be in New Zealand and Australia and north. And that itself is a mind blowing distances to travel historically for those and huge numbers.

[Satnam Sangara]

Something like 5% of British people emigrated between 1900 and 1914.

[Dan Snow]

Really?

[Satnam Sangara]

Isn't that amazing number 5%? Because we were obsessed with immigration. But British people are the biggest migrants in history almost.

[Dan Snow]

It's that amazing fact that Britain lost more people in emigrating than they did in the first world. We think the first world is massive tragedy lost, but actually more people just picked up sticks and migrated to the colonies and elsewhere.

[Satnam Sangara]

And then you got all the death, you got the millions of people who died in 19th century imperial wars. You've got all the disease that we sent. The puritans arrived and 90% of the indigenous people around them died within a few years. And they saw that as a gift from God, a sign from God that this was meant to be their land. But they were spreading disease. And millions of indigenous people died across the British Empire just because white people arrived. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Because they had resistance to things like smallpox and other disease that hadn't yet made their way to Australasia, to totally.

[Satnam Sangara]

To North America and vice versa.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, yeah. So you end up in a world where the populations are very distinctive, where the map of the world looks the way it does. A lot of that is down to the British Empire and decisions that are made. What about culture? Whether it's sport, food, dress, fashion, politics, law, religion, Those areas are also transformed.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah, so many areas. It's a very banal example, but one of my favorite cultural legacies is place names. I mean, I was driving around Mauritius, and I found myself driving through a village called Queen Victoria. Not Victoria, Queen Victoria. And there are. I started counting the number of places in the world named after Queen Victoria, and I stopped about 120. I mean, there's probably thousands, right? Then you've got Jamestowns. How many Jamestowns are Georgetown, Birmingham, Charlottes.

[Dan Snow]

A lot of Charlottes around. Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

It upsets me that my hometown of Wolverhampton was never replicated, was it not? It's because it's unique. That's what I'm telling myself. Well, pretty much every other town in England has been replicated. My favorite fact is at one point, the planet Uranus discovered by William Herschel, he named that after King George. It was actually called Georgium Siddharth, George's star. Until the rest of the world were like, no, thanks. We're gonna name it after a Greek God instead. But it extended to space. This obsession, naming everything after small British towns or big ones.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history hit the best is yet to come. Stick with us. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway.

[Satnam Sangara]

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[Satnam Sangara]

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[Satnam Sangara]

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[Satnam Sangara]

On items like Hall's Menthol cough drops, Tylenol cold and flu, and Mucinex Fast Max products.

[Dan Snow]

Offer ends December 30th.

[Satnam Sangara]

Restrictions apply and offers may vary by location. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.

[Commercial Voice]

Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.

[Satnam Sangara]

Zoe.

[Dan Snow]

This thing weighs a ton. Drew, Ski, lift with your legs, man.

[Commercial Voice]

Santa.

[Satnam Sangara]

Santa, did you get my letter?

[Dan Snow]

He's talking to you, Brittany.

[Satnam Sangara]

I'm not.

[Commercial Voice]

Of course he did. Santa.

[Dan Snow]

You know my elf, Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three.

[Satnam Sangara]

What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile, you can get it on them.

[Dan Snow]

That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies.

[Satnam Sangara]

Right, Mrs. Claus?

[Commercial Voice]

I'm Mrs. Claus's much younger sister. And at T Mobile, there's no trade in needed when you switch, so you can keep your old phone or give.

[Dan Snow]

It as a gift.

[Commercial Voice]

And the best part, you can make the switch to T mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.

[Dan Snow]

Nice. My son. The tree is slipping.

[Satnam Sangara]

Kimber, the holidays are better. AT T Mobile, switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us.

[Dan Snow]

With no trade in needed and now.

[Satnam Sangara]

T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 device connection charge credits and imbalance too if you pay off earlier. Cancer financing agreement 256 gigs $830 eligible for it in a new line $100 plus a month plan with auto PayPal taxes and fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line.

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[Dan Snow]

So we covered things like tea drinking, but there's the English language.

[Satnam Sangara]

All the corporations, right? BP was originally Anglo Persian Oil. Shell began as a company importing shells from the Empire P and O ferries. What's it mean? Peninsula and Oriental. That goes back to Empire. So many corporations, so many charities have their because a lot of British imperialists saw what they're doing as being intrinsically good. So Save the Children was set up by imperialists who were continuing the work of Empire. The Tier Fund, Anti Slavery International grew out of the abolition campaign. And why is it that so many British charities do so much international work? It's because of the British Empire. It's because that's what the British have always done.

[Dan Snow]

You can all help me answer the question. When I turn on the radio in the morning, I'm listening to the news and the Foreign Secretary is being asked to make a statement about something going on that I love this country. But the Brits have got absolutely no control over Sudan. Goodness knows what it might be. Venezuela. And here's the British Foreign Office going, we're really monitoring this situation. Does that happen in Austria and Italy?

[Satnam Sangara]

That reflects the Christian empire.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, exactly. But do they do that?

[Satnam Sangara]

But also when they do that, there's almost never any reflection on how we created that situation.

[Dan Snow]

Well, of course not.

[Satnam Sangara]

I don't want to in the first place. Like, so many of the biggest problems in the world are British created. So Kashmir, basically, we sold that part of the world to a tyrannical Hindu monarch. It was a Muslim majority. That wasn't gonna end well. Israel, Palestine, I recommend your incredible series on that. It's very complicated routes, but essentially the British promised that part of the world at the same time to the Zionist Jews and to the Arabs. I mean, it got more complicated than that. But even at the time, people were saying, this is going to end in war. Nigeria. Even at the time as we created Nigeria, the people who created it, people like Lugard, were saying, this is not going to end well because these are people who have nothing in common with each other. They're very different. You've got Islamic kingdoms, you've got Christians. It doesn't really make sense as a country. And guess what? Civil war. Sudan civil war. Because you're putting together groups of people who don't really belong together. And so these disputes which continue to shape our news, often have British imperial roots.

[Dan Snow]

What about international trade, legal mechanisms, parliamentary democracy, Those concepts?

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah. This is wild. Cause it's so abstract, people don't. Often don't register them. But like a phenomenal number of countries have the Westminster constitution as their constitution. So New Zealand, South Africa, India, Nepal, often one particular guy called Sir Ivor Jennings was the consortium encouraging them to take on the Westminster constitution. Even Today, I think 26 different countries have a British court as their final court of appeal. So it's called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. So lots of territories in the Caribbean and so on, they come to London as their kind of Supreme Court. But on top of that, you've got the legacy of homophobic Legislation. The majority of countries that have anti gay sex laws got them from the British.

[Dan Snow]

Is that right? Yeah, because we got. We got our knickers in a right twist about homosexuality in the 9th century.

[Satnam Sangara]

Often didn't understand what was happening on the ground, introduced these. But now you have this bizarre situation where the British are now liberal. They're going around the world telling countries like Uganda to get rid of their homophobic legislation. They're like, hold on. You gave us this legislation, and suddenly they're quite into it. So it's a real crazy paradox. And you've got this. Another very strange legacy where the most vibrant churches in Britain today, in London, are Nigerian churches. They're trying to convert people who converted them who now have no interest. Cause we're a secular country now. Right. I find that wild. It's wild, isn't it?

[Dan Snow]

You mentioned the plants earlier. I'm very interested in that. So I didn't really know enough about that. Kew Gardens is a huge botanical gardens here in London. And it was founded really to sort of showcase plants around the world and be an early, you might call it, seed bank, I don't know. But it was a way of bringing the world to Britain and showing off that. So was that something that was going on, whether it's different strains of cereal crops? Was there a big global movement in that as well, enabled by the Empire?

[Satnam Sangara]

Absolutely. And we tend to think of Kew Gardens as this nice place to take your mother. But it wasn't that. It was a central part of colonialism. I mean, they changed the world. So plants changed the world. We've lost the idea that plants are technology, but say planned flight cinchona, which is the bark that produces quinine. Right. The British and the Dutch spent decades trying to work out how to produce quinine. Because that quinine allowed British and European people to survive from malaria. When they mastered that, it meant they could colonize Africa. Before that, you were dead within three months. In Mali. After quinine, you could survive. So that plant changed the world. Rubber, I didn't realize came from a plant, but it does. But that also changed the world and led to the war in Malaya. The malayan emergency of 1948 was basically about Britain trying to hold onto this very valuable rubber colony and led to some of the worst violence in the history of the British Empire. Then you got tea. Led to the opium wars, led to the change of diet, led to the exploitation of labor around the world. It goes on. A lot of our golden plants, like rhododendrons we kind of think of as intrinsically English, but they're not. They're from empire. So the botanical legacy is really profound. We've just lost that connection.

[Dan Snow]

So it's not just the people on our streets and many streets around the world. It's literally the surroundings, the plants, the trees around us without us knowing we're walking through.

[Satnam Sangara]

And it's even more intangible than that. It's also education, because one of the great legacies of the British Empire is education. I mean, everywhere. You go into Lagos and found the most English school I've ever walked into, really, you know, and that's why someone like Kemi Badenoch, who grew up in Lagos, can come back here and then espouse quite imperialist views because she was educated in a system that is more colonial than our own. Even today, the majority of our world leaders are either educated in American schools or universities or British ones. And like someone like Modi weaponizes it in India, he calls himself the first truly Indian leader because all the ones before him were educated at Oxbridge or went to British schools and so on. And so he calls them colonial.

[Dan Snow]

The nature of history is that time passes and there are changes and these legacies slowly fade. The world in 200 years time, I suppose, inevitably the reach that empire will be less than it is now.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yes, but arguably there are new empires, aren't there? What are the Chinese doing? They're buying up large parts of Africa, echoing what the Europeans did. What is Trump doing? I mean, he wants to invade Greenland, Canada. He wants to deny indigenous Americans their rights. So the way he approaches tech companies, I would say there's a big parallel there with the East India Company, Eastern economy. The first really powerful corporation. What did it do? It bought up lobbying power. It behaved terribly, became too big to fail. Arguably, a lot of our tech companies are like that. And when you saw them lined up, the leaders of Microsoft and X and so on, lined up at the inauguration, I thought, oh, that exactly what happened in Britain, where they became too powerful, they became part of the state.

[Dan Snow]

So for many people around the world, they owe their biological makeup, whatever the right word is, for our own selves, their language, the political system, the legal system they live under, the dominant religions in their country, the physical architecture of their capital cities. They owe that to the British Empire. Hundreds of millions, not billions of people around the world.

[Satnam Sangara]

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's odd that the rest of the world understands this much more than we do. They have a reason to understand it, because they have to, because they remember what happened when the British came in their ships. But we're an island. Even during the Empire, arguably the British were not very aware of what they were doing. Cause we're an island and it's quite easy for us to be oblivious.

[Dan Snow]

It's all a long way off.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

There's studies, aren't there, 19th century families and how much empire comes up and just. It was not important.

[Satnam Sangara]

Well, it's a debate. Historians argue about this. There's a bunch of historians that argue that empire barely touched upon the average Britain. And there's other historians that argue that actually it was quite big. I think I'm with the latter group. Cause even if they didn't know what was happening, their daily lives, everything. Sugar, tea. I mean, arguably sugar drove the Industrial Revolution. Where were the workers getting their calories from? Food and culture and Queen Victoria and as the Empress of India and so on.

[Dan Snow]

Relatives going and serving in the navy or the army on some dishonestly. Yeah. Frontier.

[Satnam Sangara]

And also the wealth that fueled the Industrial Revolution, the commodities, the cotton. Right.

[Dan Snow]

Well, that's interesting. So that's one of those historical debates that I am way out of my depth, but I find fascinating. You've got the British empire in the 18th century. You've also got a British Industrial Revolution. Now some historians say they are almost distinct. It just happens that a country that was busy conquering lots of chunks of the world also experienced a domestic industrial revolution because of accessibility of coal, iron ore deposit. That feels unlikely to me. I've always thought instinctively, surely it's got to be joined up. There are people making money from the sugar plantations who are then angel investors into railway projects. I mean, where are you on that? Because the Industrial revolution changed the lives of every single person on this planet.

[Satnam Sangara]

We're in the realm of economic history.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, that's why I'm looking at you.

[Satnam Sangara]

It's like trying to take an egg out of a baked cake and saying there's the egg. It's impossible. Cause it all gets mixed up together, isn't it? I mean, there's lots of interesting books being written on this. And there's definitely a very interesting argument now that a lot of the Industrial Revolution and the angel investing, a lot of that money came from slavery. And you. Because the slave owners were compensated for losing their slaves. So you can follow the money, but that's work that's only really started in the last few years. So it's incredible that no one really thought about it until now.

[Dan Snow]

So the argument is that in the 18th century, British people Are getting very rich making lots of money from this global. They're making money from slavery, sugar, other things, trade with India, all sorts of things. And therefore there's money swilling about to build those factories, to tinker about with inventions. It's a place that's ripe for innovation.

[Satnam Sangara]

You need money to make money. I heard someone said once.

[Dan Snow]

Someone said that. Exactly. God, that's amazing. So you must be cursed with just traveling through the world, seeing the hand of empire everywhere.

[Satnam Sangara]

Yeah, it's a bit tragic really. I've become that guy who spoils every visit. Yeah, don't go around London with me. Yes, but also, you know, I mean, one of my main arguments is that it wasn't intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. It was complicated. It was slavery, it was abolition, it was the free press, it was press censure, it was environmental destruction, it was the birth of environmentalism. It was opposite. Things can be true at the same time. And that is something the world struggles with, Especially in the world with culture wars. People want to take sides, but actually I just see contradictions and ambiguity.

[Dan Snow]

Well, also that's the nature of history. And if there had been a giant French empire, we'd be talking about other wars and other famines and other. Or a giant Inca empire. We're just saying what did happen. And it's had a massive impact on our present. But we could be living in a very different present.

[Satnam Sangara]

Totally. And just look at all the imperial figures involved in the British Empire. Almost all of them were deeply contradictory. I mean, look at Gandhi. Okay, obviously an incredible guy. Even the British have a statue of him in Parliament square. But equally had some pretty racist anti black views when he was in South Africa. Winston Churchill, savior of liberal democracy. Absolutely. Also a massive racist, even by the standards of his time. His own colleagues were frequently outraged by some of the stuff he said. Opposite things can be true, but you don't hear that being said. All you do. I mean, someone could clip what I just said and make me sound like someone who hates Winston Churchill. Right. That might well happen, but you just don't hear it. And it makes me depressed, I guess.

[Dan Snow]

Let's finish up on why does it matter that people need to understand that they are the product of this empire. That you're a product. I'm a product. Why our kids are. Why does that matter?

[Satnam Sangara]

Well, it explains a very big thing about Britain, which we've always struggled with. The biggest thing there is, which is that we're a multicultural country, isn't it? And every day in the news, you see people struggling with that fact. Why are these people coming? Why did they come in 1948 or on the Windrush? Why did my parents come in the 60s is because we had a multicultural empire. And, you know, there were black people in Elizabeth I's court. She was complaining about there being too many black people in London in the 1600s. And there's a reason for that. There's a deep historical reason. And also our national narratives. World War I, World War II. There's an Imperial element to those now. Millions of soldiers fought from empire.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah.

[Satnam Sangara]

And it doesn't mean deleting those narratives. It actually makes them more interesting and explains a lot of things about ourselves.

[Dan Snow]

Now, that's true victory in first and Second World War. Those wars would look very different if Britain hadn't had a gigantic empire at her back.

[Satnam Sangara]

Your resources as well. And people.

[Dan Snow]

Resources and people. That's it. That's the message of this podcast. Resources and people. Satnam, thank you very much for coming on. You've got a new book out. What's it called?

[Satnam Sangara]

It's called Journeys of Empire. It's for kids, and it's a kid's version of Empire World, which is about how Britain shaped the world.

[Dan Snow]

Thanks for coming on.

[Satnam Sangara]

Thanks for having me.

[Dan Snow]

Well, thank you so much, folks, as ever, for listening today. And if you want to hear more, please go. And brother Satnam's new book, Journeys of Empire. See you next time.

[Commercial Voice]

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[Satnam Sangara]

Zoe, this thing weighs a ton.

[Dan Snow]

Drewski, lift with your legs, man.

[Commercial Voice]

Santa.

[Satnam Sangara]

Santa, did you get my letter?

[Dan Snow]

He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not.

[Commercial Voice]

Of course he did.

[Dan Snow]

Right, Santa, you know my elf, Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three.

[Satnam Sangara]

What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and.

[Dan Snow]

At T mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies.

[Satnam Sangara]

Right, Mrs. Claus?

[Commercial Voice]

I'm Mrs. Claus's much younger sister. And AT T mobile, there's no trade in needed when you switch. So you can keep your old phone or give.

[Dan Snow]

Does it give?

[Commercial Voice]

And the best part. You can make the switch to T Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.

[Dan Snow]

Nice. My side of the tree is slipping.

[Satnam Sangara]

Kimber the holidays are better. AT T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 vice can action charge credits and imbalance 2 if you pay off earlier, cancel finance. We're in a 256 gigs $830 eligible for in a new line 100 plus a month plan with auto payments, taxes and fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit t mobile.com.