Zack Polanski has been at the centre of some of the most contested political arguments in Britain over the past year. He was called a scumbag and a traitor by Elon Musk for asking for calm during the Belfast riots. The Times published what was described as an antisemitic cartoon of him. A Labour minister asked him whether he supported Palestine Action, knowing a yes could get him arrested. Much of the controversy around him connects to questions of history that most British people were never taught in school.
That is where William Dalrymple comes in. The historian, author and co-host of the Empire podcast joined Polanski on Bold Politics for a conversation that covered how one British corporation conquered India, how Britain created the conditions for the Palestinian displacement, and why none of it appears on the national curriculum.
Why we don’t know this history
“The most important thing Britain ever did, and we don’t learn about it in school,” Dalrymple says of the British Empire. His explanation for why is precise: when the empire ended in the 1940s through 1970s, it became something people stopped talking about. Paintings celebrating empire were moved to attics or regional museums. By the time of Monty Python, the empire had become a joke. And then it just disappeared – leaving most British people entirely ignorant about what he describes as “three to four hundred years of completely upending the flows of global trade and ecosystems which had existed for millennia.”
The result is that people who know every detail about Henry VIII’s wives – or who know about the Nazis, Florence Nightingale or Queen Victoria – have no idea why the Palestinians are in Gaza, why India-Pakistan enmity runs so deep, or why so much of Britain’s country house heritage was built on looted wealth. “99% of people in Britain have no idea why the Palestinians in Gaza are unhappy, why they ended up there, where they’re from, who they are,” Dalrymple says. “And one of the accidents of 1948 is that most Palestinians ended up in Gaza in refugee camps or in Lebanon – very few came to Britain, so there has only been a tiny Palestinian community here with almost no domestic political weight until recently.”
One company, six windows wide
The East India Company section of the conversation is extraordinary. Dalrymple describes how India and China together produced around 70% of global GDP in the classical world – with India alone responsible for up to 35-40% of world GDP in the 18th century. Bengal, in the mid-18th century, was probably the single richest area in the world. And the entity that conquered it was, at its peak, a private corporation with one office in the City of London – six windows wide.
“India was not conquered by the British government,” he says. “It was conquered by one British company occupying one office block in Leadenhall Street, EC1.” The East India Company eventually had 200,000 troops – twice the size of the British Army – while controlling the richest country in the world for profit. By the 1780s, around 75% of British MPs held East India Company shares. Perhaps 20% were former EIC figures who had used their fortunes to buy parliamentary seats.
The parallel to the present is one Dalrymple draws explicitly. “The East India Company, in a sense, invents corporate lobbying,” he says. “The system whereby large corporate entities can give large donations to political parties and an unspoken quid pro quo that is never published of what you get in return – that is the legacy of the East India Company.” He notes that he has spent 25 years writing about the company, and in those 25 years has watched the rise of Meta, Apple, X, and SpaceX. “At its peak, the East India Company not only conquered India – you have one British corporation like an enormous octopus with its tentacles, the first multinational corporation.”
Britain’s role in the Nakba
The most politically sensitive part of the conversation concerns Palestine. Dalrymple’s account of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 is historically detailed: at the time, Palestine’s population was 96% Muslim and Christian Palestinians, with Jewish residents making up only a small minority. The declaration’s consequences, combined with the subsequent Nazi persecution of Jewish people in Europe, created a situation in which refugees had no other place to go – while the Palestinians did not want people who ultimately sought to expel them.
The British role in what followed, he argues, was catastrophic in both directions. British forces trained the Haganah and Palmach – including future IDF leader Moshe Dayan – in military techniques. British anti-insurgency methods involving torture and extreme interrogation, developed during the Black and Tans campaign in Ireland, were exported to Palestine and used to crush the 1936 Arab Revolt, shattering Palestinian society and breaking its leadership. Then, in 1948, facing bankruptcy after the war and desperate to get troops home, Britain simply left – without making any attempt to protect the Palestinian population whose welfare they were mandated to ensure.
“85% of Palestinians end up expelled,” Dalrymple says. “The Balfour Declaration states that nothing should be done which will undermine the status of the non-Jewish communities. Of course, 85% of the non-Jewish communities end up as refugees.” He is emphatic: “We bear a lot of the responsibility for the continuing violence today. The fact that the situation is as it is is our legacy, and we are not taught this at school.”
The Polanski context
Dalrymple’s points connect directly to the political situation Polanski has navigated personally. He condemned Zia Yusuf’s Belfast posts as echoing 1930s antisemitic rhetoric. He joined condemnation of UK bans on US commentators speaking on Palestine. The Westminster Hall debate on pro-Israel lobbying this week – in which MPs who are members of pro-Israel lobby groups accused a 118,000-signature petition of antisemitism – is a direct illustration of Dalrymple’s point about the ignorance that persists at the highest levels of British public life.
As a Jewish man himself, Polanski’s engagement with this history is personal. He notes that the Balfour Declaration is rarely explained in terms of its internal Jewish politics – the fierce opposition from figures like Edwin Montagu, who argued it would put Jewish people in Britain in an impossible position, versus the Zionist case made by his first cousin Herbert Samuel. Dalrymple recommends a forthcoming book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, noting that “Jewish people have always been very divided on the issue of Zionism – that’s not a new thing.”
Dalrymple closes by noting that he is writing a history of the Palestinian people as his next book – “who are these people that Golda Meir says do not exist?” He says he is in a privileged position to say these things because he has his own podcast, no academic job that can be pulled from him, and has spent many years in the region. “I do feel it is a kind of duty.”
You can watch the view episode below:
21 responses to “Why aren’t Britain’s colonial history and the Balfour Declaration taught in schools? Historian William Dalrymple joins Zack Polanski to explain what we’re missing”
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The statement “The declaration’s consequences, combined with the subsequent Nazi persecution of Jewish people in Europe, created a situation in which refugees had no other place to go – while the Palestinians did not want people who ultimately sought to expel them” is not accurate. Regarding “no other place to go”, there were Canada and the USA, but both closed off their doors to fleeing Jews. As for “the Palestinians did not want people who ultimately sought to expel them”, those Palestinians did accept escaping Jews at the start, from a humanitarian perspective, despite the Balfour Declaration and the declared goals of the Zionist movement.
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Darymple is a gem and a great historian with deep knowledge and excellent researcch of his chosen subjects.I have read all his books and learned so much.
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Actually 11% Jewish, 50% in Jerusalem. It was also envisaged that as the Ottoman empire broke up Jews would be expelled amd needed somewhere to go. Indeed the 800,000 Jews expelled seem to be forgotten.
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I knew all this and about the opium wars. Not sure if I learnt all.of it at school but I am a voracious reader and have read lots of books. My dad was also in what he called Palestine during the war as well as the western desert with the 8th Army. I think we were taught about the East India company at school.
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Highly selective choice of facts that paints a very one sided view of Israel and the British intervention under the Balfour declaration.
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Read Amitav Gosh trilogy Sea of Poppies,River of Smoke,Flood of Fire Historical novels that explain in depth the East India Company’s depravity and the results in India China and the formation of HongKong.
Also shocking is that the history of England in Ireland is barely touched in UK history education.
However it is wrong to assume all the countries England colonised were peaceful harmonious without huge injustices of their own making.
It is good to study history not to resurrect grievances but to understand everybody’s viewpoint and attempt to build a better future.-
They also should teach the Scottish history which would make people understand the dislike of the English in Scotland
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In all my young schooling in Dundee in the 70s and 80s I learnt not a jot about Scottish history . I did learn about Henry the 8th and the tolpuddle martyrs . All by design . A fact many in Scotland a completely ignorant about . The erasing of our entire history
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Would just say that in 70s Irish History up to the Partition was covered at GCSE O level standard. It is a myth to say that it was never taught.
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My Dad was the least political person I knew but, having been in the Middle East during WW2, he used to say “where did this Israel come from? When I was there everyone knew it was just Palestine”
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And who was there before the Palestinians? Palestinians haven’t been around for very long, especially around that time.
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Whenever I try to explain this exact situation to anyone online I get inundated with comments calling me out as a “traitor” to the United Kingdom and a lover of terrorists.
There is still a nucleus of people who refuse to accept that the British Empire has gone although it has to be said that its influence remains even to this day.
The current crop of who I would characterise as neofascists seem hell bent on returning to what they would call the glorious days of empire and I find that very disturbing. They rely on their followers lack of curiosity and,largely,education to continue with their divisive and often racist views. -
It is amazing to find out that the world is not what you were told or you believed it was. It is fascinating and a relief to learn anew. Only the truth will make us free.
Thank you both!-
When i was in my teens I was travelling all over the place , my mum was hesitant but dad encouraged me all the way ….one day I said I was heading for Israel to work in a kabutz and he hit the roof , said you go nowhere near that bloody place , there’s no such country as bloody israil ….I never knew why , never learned it in school , but by god i know now 😢
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What a dilemma, it’s almost impossible to talk about this subject without knowledge of British history and the sheer bloodiness involved. If I try to bring up the subject of Palestinian genocide, everyone goes quiet and says there’s nothing we can do about it, making me feel guilty about troubling them ! The only solace I find is at marches and protests where I’m with thousands of others who are just as frustrated at the lack of government urgency. The mainstream media never reports them
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“Nothing we can do about it…” is objectively a false statement.
All signatories of the Genocide Convention are mandated to intervene militarily to prevent and stop genocide.
The British government just need to to recognise a genocide and intervene militarily.
Military intervention by the UN requires the Security Council approval, but military intervention by individual countries under the Genocide Convention does not.
Basically Britain just need to recognise a genocide, and declare war with Israel to stop the genocide.
If there’s only country in the world who should bear the cost of colonial mistakes in Palestine, it’s Britain.
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When will the book be published please ? I need to have better knowledge of the history of the region and its people.
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From the Holy Mountain by Dalrymple is quite good also, although trailing the movements of a monk from Mt. Athos into Syria, it gives nice history of that (nearby) region
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