November, 1855. East Africa. The great Victorian explorer, David Livingstone, is troubled. ‘I say, you fellows look jolly thirsty.’ ‘Dreadfully, Bwana,’ the gathered Africans croak. ‘Want me to go off and look for some water for you?’ ‘Would you? That’s awfully kind…’ ‘Not at all. That’s what we British are for.’
Followed shortly after by ‘I’ve discovered a huge waterfall just over those hills!’ ‘Gosh! Thanks ever so!’ ‘Think nothing of it. D’you mind if I name it after our Queen?’ ‘Absolutely not! The least we can do…’ ‘Fancy becoming her subjects? I could put in a word for you.’ ‘Would you? Too kind…’ OK, I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
That really is pretty much how, in my youth, I’d thought Dr Livingstone discovering Victoria Falls played out. In my adolescent imagination everyone spoke like characters in a PG Wodehouse novel, with the odd ‘Bwana’ or ‘Saheb’ thrown in for verisimilitude. Probably because in films of the time such characters were either portrayed by English thespians heavily made up or the occasional, expensively educated Oxbridge undergraduate from the Colonies of similar elocution, moonlighting as an Extra at Pinewood Studios.
Imagine my disappointment when it finally dawned on me that in the good doctor’s case ‘discoverer’ just meant ‘first foreign visitor’. How did I ever get it so wrong? The same way everyone else does. By assuming our stories and our images reflect some truth. And that we are somehow special.
Another example: A painting of two small boys in flowing robes on either side of a rotund, elderly Englishman. As he leads them by the hand, one skips with joy whilst the other gazes up adoringly. Who are these people? The benign grandfather is Lord Cornwallis. The boys, princes of Mysore, held against payment of the indemnity imposed following their father’s defeat in 1792. Who’d ever have imagined foreigners taking child hostages look so noble?
But then there’s the alternative narrative. Perfidious Albion. Divide and conquer. The British as wicked schemers, infinitely cunning, capable of hatching Machiavellian plots that take decades to play out, always to their advantage.
To ascribe to any one nation, creed or race, consistent and competent evil is as simplistic as to believe that within it resides true virtue. Negativity is little better than naivety. For both of these, fictions spring from the same poisoned source: Exceptionalism.
A conviction that somehow your kind are unique and superior. Held to a higher standard perhaps, but also untrammelled by the rules others must obey. The hardest lesson of all, the sad tragedy of history but the true hope for the future, is that we, whoever we may be, are really not that much different from everyone else on this planet.
By invitation
Neil McCallum
Author of five novels, Mrs A’s Indian Gentlemen* being the latest
Twitter: @dawoodmccallum *Writes as Dawood Ali McCallum