With the Writer Spotlight Series’s , conversations with different writers and illustrators. This month we have been doing Q&As with many writers, to get to know more about them and their work. Here, we are showcasing all the questions we have asked author Sathnam Sanghera. We discuss his new book, Journeys of Empire.
Hello Sathnam, welcome back! Congratulations on your second children’s book Journeys of Empire. The title “Journeys of Empire” suggests movement and transformation. What do you hope is the key takeaway for young readers at the end of the book?
If there’s one thing I hope children get from reading thebook, it is the courage to argue against simple statements. If someone says something very basic about the British Empire – such as ‘it was all good’ or ‘it was all evil’, I hope they’ll be able to challenge them. I hope they’ll be able to offer some nuance, or say: ‘Opposite things can be true at the same time.’
How did you decide which ten journeys to include? Was there a thematic or chronological logic behind your choices?
The British empire covered a huge period of time – more than 400 years – and large portions of the planet – one quarter of the land surface, at its height. So it’s impossible to cover everything. But I wanted to touch upon a good range of areas and a good chunk of time. I’m glad we managed to get chapters on the expected regions – India, North America, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand – but also regions like Iraq, Tibet and Guyana that often get excluded in discussions of British empire.
How does this book relate to your previous books (e.g., Stolen History, Empireland, Empireworld) in scope and purpose?
I guess it is probably a children’s version of Empireworld, in the way that Stolen History was a children’s version of Empireland. It’s an attempt to explain how this history shaped the world, and daily lives around the world, in all sorts of ways.
When writing for a younger audience, what challenges did you face in addressing complex and potentially dark aspects of the Empire?
The complexity is a challenge. The contradictions are a challenge. And yes, the violence, massacres, violent racism and slavery are challenges too. When it came to the Middle Passage I felt it was important to not water down the brutality. The fact is that it involved taking Black men, women and children, who had been kidnapped from their homes, and shipping them across the Atlantic Ocean to force them to complete gruelling work on farms, for free.
To be on those ships meant that, whether you were a child or an adult, you had most likely been separated from your family forever, and were being taken to a strange country where, unless you were extremely lucky, you would be forced to do back-breaking work in terrible heat for no pay until the day you died.
The description mentions figures such as a rebellious pirate queen, Pocahontas, and Gandhi’s Salt March. How did you approach weaving together stories from such wide-ranging historical contexts?
I think you don’t have to weave them together actually – they exist as independent, discrete stories, and often the situations and contexts were entirely different. One of the important things to understand about the British empire was that it was not particularly coherent… there was no master plan, policies and attitudes could vary by village, let alone by country, over huge periods of time.
Empire is barely taught in schools, as you note, how do you envision this book could complement or influence educational curriculum?
I feel that teaching is improving: it’s on the national curriculum to a small degree, but academies and private schools don’t have to follow the national curriculum anyway, and history teachers everywhere are coming up with interesting ways of conveying this essential history. It’s a delight that Stolen History and Journeys of Empire are part of this process.
Was there a journey or story you felt particularly drawn to or one that challenged you most during the writing?
Joseph Banks and Cook’s Voyage to the South Pacific(1768–71) was both compelling and a challenge. Because there are so many contradictions within it. In some way both men were scientific in their approach, the work they did was important and Cook could be compassionate, kind, deeply thoughtful towards the indigenous people he came across (and towards his men). But then at other times he could be callous, impetuous and cruel and the long-term effects of his journeys were catastrophic. It’s a challenge to get all of this in into one short chapter.
About the author
Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but went on to graduate from Christ's College, Cambridge, with a first class degree in English Language and Literature. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir The Boy With The Topknot and his novel Marriage Material. Empireland has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He lives in London.