Empire with David Olusoga
The Spin
Left narrative
Olusoga’s "Empire" arrives as a bracing antidote to resurgent nationalist nostalgia and culture-war myth-making. Drawing on archives, archaeology and artifacts, it carefully dismantles flag-waving fantasies of imperial virtue and exposes how plunder, enslavement and genocide underwrote British power. By linking Britain’s story to the 2.5 billion people shaped by empire, Olusoga presents a measured, even-handed history that mirrors modern Britain itself. In an era of anti-immigrant rhetoric and calls to sanitize the past, the series is a humane corrective no honest curriculum should ignore.
Right narrative
"Empire" is presented as history but functions as a one-note indictment, curated to confirm the BBC’s longstanding bias. Olusoga selects the empire’s darkest episodes while stripping away context, sidelining positive achievements in science, law, infrastructure, abolition and self-government. Wars with clear causes are framed as motiveless brutality, while panels of vague commentators cue moral outrage rather than inquiry. By ignoring rival empires, strategic competition and reforming impulses, the series swaps balance for activism, ultimately doing a disservice to viewers seeking proportion, evidence and nuance.
Cynical narrative
Olusoga’s "Empire" positions itself as urgent, but its framing feels stranded in the political moment of 2020. Opening with the Colston statue’s fall, the series leans on a Black Lives Matter-era moral register that once felt disruptive but now reads familiar and blunt. The question it poses is serious, yet the answer offered — Britain having been built on little more than plunder and enslavement — reflects a debate that has already moved on. By recycling that moment’s assumptions, the BBC looks less like it’s leading the conversation than lagging behind it, mistaking yesterday’s outrage for lasting insight.
Establishment-critical narrative
Despite its critical tone, Olusoga’s "Empire" stops short of confronting the forces that still structure imperial harm. The series recounts violence but keeps it safely historical, avoiding analysis of capitalism, whiteness and white supremacy as active systems. Genocides are softened into “wars,” exploitation into “revolutions,” and empire is sealed off from the present. By clinging to a cautious, cowardly neutrality, "Empire" offers representation without rupture — popular history that names injustice yet refuses to follow it into today’s material realities, leaving deeper truths unexplored and power comfortably intact.
