Professor Corinne Fowler, of the University of Leicester, walks through Cumbria’s colonial past in her new book Our Island Stories where she explores William Wordsworth’s connection to the East India Company and opium trade, as well as Whitehaven’s legacy as the second biggest tobacco port in Britain.
Looking at the countryside’s connection to the British Empire helps us to see the familiar places around us “a little bit differently” by adding a layer to our understanding of how these areas developed.
Professor Fowler said: “It reminds us that our countryside, it doesn’t just have a local domestic story, it has major connections to the British empire and that affected local labouring people.
“We can’t acknowledge our colonial histories, which are multiple and multilayered, and we definitely can’t address those histories if we don’t know what they are in any detail.
“I think it helps us to understand from the outside in many ways what our local history is.”
For Professor Fowler, having conversations about the role of colonialism in shaping our history and countryside shouldn’t be something riddled with guilt and shame.
It’s about understanding the global connections that our towns and villages have as well as respecting the memory of formerly colonised people and their descendants.
“We don’t need to look at this history through a lens of guilt and shame,” she said.
“All nations have histories that they would rather not focus on, ones which are not particularly things to celebrate.
“I think the main thing is just to try to understand and not to be afraid of it and to understand that these are stories about real people with real feelings. They really mean something.”
There’s a rich source of information surrounding this topic that researchers are only beginning to explore, so Professor Fowler encourages local history enthusiasts to dig deep into archives to see what they can find.
“If they put together enclosure maps with things like the Legacies of British Slave Ownership database, they will find some interesting new facts which may not have even been researched yet.”
