Summary:
Operation Legacy was a official program carried out by the British government from the 1950s through the 1970s to systematically destroy or hide documents detailing war crimes, torture, and racial discrimination before granting independence to former colonies.
Key Points
Systematic Destruction: Across the British Empire, officials destroyed vast amounts of records to avoid post-independence embarrassment and exposure.
India (1947): Document burning created visible smoke plumes over Delhi.
Malaya (1957): Truckloads of records were incinerated in Singapore.
Egypt & Trinidad: Records were burned on embassy lawns during the Suez Crisis or dumped into the ocean.
The Kenya Discovery: Instead of being destroyed, 307 crates of documents from Kenya were secretly flown to a undisclosed facility in Buckinghamshire to bypass public oversight and Freedom of Information requests.
Exposure in 2011: The hidden Kenya files were publicly released in 2011 following legal pressure, revealing state-sanctioned torture during the Mau Mau Uprising and explicit orders to destroy embarrassing archives. The surviving files are now housed at The National Archives in Kew.
Impact on Public Perception: The destruction of records contributed to widespread public ignorance in Britain regarding imperial atrocities (such as the Bengal Famine and Amritsar Massacre). However, public sentiment has shifted over time: YouGov polls show the proportion of Britons who feel proud of the empire fell from 59% in 2014 to ~33% in 2020.
QUESTIONS:
What sort of exposure would the US face if its “Empire” were to fall?
What percent of Americans (are aware of the scope of the US “Empire” and what percent are proud of it?
Will digital tools change the way the compromising evidence is saved and accessed?
Fifty years from now, what will Americans attitude be towards the US “Empire”?
How much more will be know about the US “Empire” in 50 years?
More Information:
Cobain, I. 2020. Lying about our history? Now that’s something Britain excels at. https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
Dahlgreen, W. 2014. The British Empire is “something to be proud of”. https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/9954-britain-proud-its-empire
Jasanoff, M. 2020. Misremembering the British Empire. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
Milmo, C. 2013. Revealed: How British Empire’s dirty secrets went up in smoke in the colonies. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...
Sato, S. 2017. “Operation Legacy”: Britain’s Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017...
Smith, M. 2020. How unique are British attitudes to empire? https://yougov.co.uk/international/ar...
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