SHAPIRO: How does the range of reactions that we've seen to her death reflect the queen's place in the history of the British Empire and the nations that it colonized?
And that came with all sorts of historical sort of, you know, aspects to it, antecedents that she very much supported because that was her job to support it. But at the same time, she had a commitment to her job, and her job was a reigning monarch of Britain. One of the things that's striking about Queen Elizabeth to me is how worldly she seemed to have been, how knowledgeable she seemed to have been. SMITH: I think the queen was quite well aware of it. SHAPIRO: Do you think the queen did enough in her lifetime to acknowledge or to repair the harm that was done to people in these countries? It may not have had explicit violence, but it had scars nonetheless that were borne by many people during that transition. But, you know, much of these sorts of struggles may not all have involved armed conflict, but they did involve very sort of guided and a heavy hand by the British colonial powers at the time. Perhaps a pronounced example which has been well-documented has been the case of the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya that were fighting for independence there. SMITH: Much of the sorts of associations with violence that have happened outside the Caribbean region, particularly in parts of Africa, which are very well-known. SHAPIRO: And can you tell us about some notable instances of violence against anti-colonial movements during the queen's reign? So she came to the throne at a period of remarkable transition in the Commonwealth Caribbean. By the next decade, though, when she would have been in her first decade of her reign, you began to see some very powerful stirrings that would manifest in independence in many of the islands by then.
In fact, there were just very few that were fully independent. Well, by then, most of the islands in the Caribbean were still colonies. and the Commonwealth of Nations when the queen began her reign 70-plus years ago. SHAPIRO: Briefly remind us what the relationship was between the U.K. Smith is a professor of history at University College London and director of the school's Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. And as some critics have pointed out, remembrances may not feel complete without acknowledging the impact of British colonialism, especially on countries in Africa and in the Caribbean.
The queen reigned through many global upheavals, including the end of the British Empire.
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