What the crown jewels reveal about Britain’s colonial past

“KOH-I-NOOR” means “Mountain of Light” in Persian. “Mountain of Misery” might be a better name for the infamous diamond. Its story is one of marauding and empire-building across Central Asia: Mughal emperors, Persian shahs, Afghan rulers and Sikh maharajahs all spilt blood to possess the bauble. The East India Company (EIC) seized the diamond in 1849 from its last Indian owner, a ten-year-old maharajah called Duleep Singh, and gave it to Queen Victoria. The Koh-i-Noor has glittered in Britain’s crown jewels ever since. Over the years Afghanistan, India and Pakistan have called for its return—and been ignored. For many in India, in particular, the diamond is a reminder of the pain inflicted by the colonisers.

A new exhibition at the Tower of London tells part of this saga. In the first new display about royal bling for a decade, the Koh-i-Noor is identified as a “symbol of conquest”. Its journey across the Indian subcontinent is mapped out on a large screen. Beneath that, the arm bracelet that the EIC took from the young maharajah glistens in a case. The label explains that the boy was made to surrender his Punjabi kingdom to the British along with the Koh-i-Noor (see picture below). It omits Britain’s litany of other depredations: the child was removed from his mother, who was thrown in prison, and he was carted off to live with a Scottish couple. The aim was to focus solely on the stone, says Charles Farris, the lead curator. This story needed to be told concisely, he emphasises, otherwise the busy museum would become congested if people lingered for long.

The exhibit about the Cullinan diamonds also tiptoes around the violence of Britain’s colonial past. (The two largest stones are set in the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross and the Imperial State Crown, pictured.) In 1905, in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war, a miner in what is now South Africa dislodged the original diamond—the biggest in the world—from which a jeweller cut nine smaller stones. The Transvaal government, a Boer republic run by white settlers, bought the fist-sized jewel and gave it to King Edward VII on his birthday. The sign rather poetically says that this gift symbolised “the healing relationship between England and South Africa”.

Some historians would argue otherwise. Britain wanted to control the riches that lay beneath the red soil: deposits of gold and diamonds. During the war, imperial troops fought Boers and black South Africans alike. The Cullinan was used as “a gesture of a new whites’ project to subordinate black South Africans again, but this time with British and Afrikaners united,” contends Alan Lester, the author of “Deny and Disavow: Distancing Britain’s Imperial Past in the Culture Wars”. The story of the diamond is “the story of modern South Africa” he says.

The past is now catching up with the present. Ahead of the coronation, The Economic Freedom Fighters, a left-wing opposition party in South Africa, demanded that Britain return the diamonds. Various activists have echoed this sentiment.

That the exhibition stops short of acknowledging British colonial brutality reflects how politically sensitive the topic is. That is particularly true for the monarchy, in whose name many of these acts were committed. King Charles III needs to convince Britain that the country is better off with a royal family than without. Publicising the bloodshed associated with these jewels would make his job that much harder.

As arguments about Britain’s colonial past simmer, King Charles’s instinct has been to modernise. He has agreed to let historians poke around in the royal archives to study the monarchy’s links to slavery. And at the coronation earlier this month, Queen Camilla chose not to wear the crown in which the Koh-i-Noor sparkles. It seems there is a limit to royal empathy, however; Buckingham Palace recently rejected calls to return the remains of an Ethiopian prince buried at Windsor Castle.

Modern attitudes towards the legacy of colonialism are shifting. Younger Britons are more sceptical than their parents about their country’s role in world history. And as historians scrutinise sources from former colonies, hard truths about Britain’s historical empire are emerging. People are eager to know more. Community groups who were consulted during research for the exhibition said they wanted to learn about the Koh-i-Noor and Cullinan diamonds, explains Mr Farris. In a similar vein, many Western museums are becoming increasingly transparent about contested objects in their collections.

Yet even this “retain and explain” policy can meet resistance. Professor Lester says some politicians are preventing meaningful discussion of the British Empire, branding any critical discussion as “anti-British wokery”. That is short-sighted. These dazzling jewels are part of Britain’s cultural heritage; embroiling them in the culture war detracts from their importance both to Britons and people around the world. Better to hold them up to the light, flaws and all. ■