The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire

Reviews

Scriptwriter

As you will quickly learn from reading The Blood Never Dried, the British empire made not just some bad mistakes but that baked in to its very essence, violence of the most brutal kind. Covering a variety of countries and locations, from the Caribbean to Ireland, India and others, this book presents evidence from robust sources, that the British empire was about exploitation and any opposition to that project was ultimately silenced with naked violence. John Newsinger has written a thorough expose of the deep corruption of the British empire. Famines, concentration camps, massacres, torture, execution: nothing was off the table but equally important, this was largely and deliberately kept secret from the British public.

This excellent book should be on the national curriculum. The formulation of violence abroad, propaganda at home, is still one that is being maintained by elements of the establishment mainstream media. Author John Newsinger has written, in The Blood Never Dried, a vitally important corrective to the establishment narrative that the British empire might have made some mistakes but they were well meant and ultimately, we gifted to the world parliamentary democracy, industrialisation, transport infrastructure, schools and a martial tradition. Essential.

This is not a left/right political issue, as Newsinger evidences that Labour politicians wereas equally comfortable with the barbarity of empire as any Tory.