A Short History of the World in 50 Lies

by Natasha Tidd

As the British Empire crumbled into the abyss in the twentieth century, from the 1940s onwards, several decades of decolonization programmes took place. Inherent to the handover of power was the passing on of governmental records, both past and present. Theoretically, Britain would hand over every document to incoming governments, but realistically, Britain didn’t want to. To do that would mean handing newly independent nations evidence of every dark deed that had been committed against them during colonial rule. And so began a process of separating the so-called ‘embarrassing’ records to be smuggled back to Britain. The problem was that sending so many documents back was incredibly time-consuming and most of the colonial offices lacked the manpower to do it with the secrecy it necessitated. So, a plan B quickly came into effect – send back what you can and just destroy the rest, or as one officer put it: ‘What’s burnt won’t be missed.’ To begin with, these burnings were ad hoc and often poorly thought out and executed. In 1947, over-eager officials at the Delhi colonial office burned so many records that a fog of smoke clung to the city for days.