The five-part documentary series EMPIRE travels to India, the Middle East, Canada, Africa, the Caribbean and the Far East to trace the rise and fall of the once-vast British Empire, revealing the extraordinary characters, burning ambitions and surprising principles which created an empire four times the size of Ancient Rome’s. Along the way, host Jeremy Paxman examines how the Age of Empire continues to affect political, technological and social developments in the modern world.
Episode 1: "A Taste for Power" repeats Monday, Dec. 21 at 11 p.m. - The premiere of EMPIRE examines the ways in which Britain took and held power in the Empire: from naval might and the use of local troops to a calculated display of imperial pageantry and the cult of monarchy. Jeremy Paxman asks how such a small country got such a big head, and how a tiny "island" in the North Atlantic came to rule over a quarter of the world's population.
Paxman travels to India, where local soldiers and maharajahs helped a handful of British traders take over vast areas of land. Spectacular displays of imperial power dazzled the people, developing a Queen Victoria cult of sorts, focusing upon her as Empress, mother and virtual God.
In Egypt, Paxman explores the bit of Empire that never was, as Britain's temporary peace-keeping visit turned into a seventy-year occupation. He travels to the desert, where Lawrence of Arabia brought a touch of romance to the grim struggle of the First World War. Paxman surmises that Britain came to believe it could solve the world's problems, telling the story of the triumphant conquest of Palestine by imperial troops,and discusses Britain's role in a conflict that haunts the Middle East to this day.
Episode 2: "Making Ourselves At Home" repeats Tuesday, Dec. 22 at 11 p.m. - This episode follows Jeremy Paxman as he looks at how the British created a particular idea of "home" wherever they conquered and settled. He shares how many of the millions affected by imperial expansion learned to see Britain as their home. Paxman's journey begins in India, where early British traders wore Indian costume and took Indian wives. According to Paxman, their descendants still cherish their mixed heritage. Though, as interracial mixing became taboo, Victorian values put a stop to that practice.
In Singapore, Paxman visits a club where British colonials gathered; in Canada, he finds a town whose inhabitants are still fiercely proud of the traditions of their Scottish ancestors; and, in Kenya, he meets the descendants of the first white settlers - men whose presence came to be bitterly resented as pressure for African independence grew. Paxman even traces the story of an Indian family in Leicester whose migrations have been determined by the changing fortunes of the British Empire.
Episode 3: "Playing The Game" airs Wednesday, Dec. 23 at 11 p.m. - This third installment describes the growth of a peculiarly British type of hero – adventurer, gentleman, amateur, sportsman – and, a peculiarly British type of obsession: sport. Britain spread the gospel of sport throughout the Empire, particularly through its public schools. This "gospel" created the foundation for nearly all of todays' major sports.
Jeremy Paxman traces the growth of the singularly British sports hero. He travels to East Africa in the footsteps of Victorian explorers in search of the source of the Nile; to Khartoum in Sudan to tell the story of General Gordon - a half-crazed visionary who 'played the game' to the hilt; to Hong Kong, where the British indulged their passion for horse racing by building a spectacular race course; and, to Jamaica, where the greatest imperial game of all - cricket - became a battleground for racial equality.
Episode 4: "Making A Fortune" repeats Thursday, Dec. 24 at 11 p.m. - Jeremy Paxman looks at how the Empire began as a pirates' treasure hunt, grew into an informal Empire based on trade, and, ultimately, developed into a global financial network. He travels from Jamaica, where sugar made plantation owners rich on the backs of African slaves and to Calcutta, where British traders became the new princes of India.
Paxman then heads to Hong Kong, where British-supplied opium threatened to turn the Chinese into a nation of drug addicts, leading to the brutal opium wars, in which Britain triumphed and took the island of Hong Kong as booty. He discovers how unfair trading helped spark the independence movement in India, led by Mahatma Gandhi. In a former cotton spinning town in Lancashire, Jeremy meets two women who remember Gandhi's extraordinary 1931 visit.
Episode 5: "Doing Good" repeats Friday, Dec. 25 at 11 p.m. - The final episode of EMPIRE tells the story of how a desire for conquest became a mission to improve the rest of mankind, especially in "darkest" Africa, and how that mission shaded into an unquestioning belief that Britain could — and should — rule the world.
In Central Africa, Paxman travels in the footsteps of David Livingstone who, though a failure as a missionary, became a legendary patron saint of the Empire, launching a flood of missionaries to the so-called 'Dark Continent.' In South Africa, Paxman tells the story of Cecil Rhodes, a man with a different sort of mission. Rhodes believed in the white man's right to rule the world, laying the foundation for apartheid. The journey ends in Kenya, where conflict between white settlers and the African population led to bloodshed, torture and eventual withdrawal.
