Commemorating the Russian conquest of Central Asia

Few places feel more utterly English, more serenely metropolitan, than the nave of Canterbury Cathedral. The key historical events associated with it, notably the martyrdom of St Thomas a’Becket, are often violent and highly political, but at first glance wholly domestic. A closer look reveals a different story, however, one that is intimately linked with the history of empire, and above all of imperial conquest and warfare. The chapel of the Royal East Kent regiment (The Buffs), with its rows of regimental colours and battle honours from Tel-el-Kebir, Sudan and the Boer War is the most obvious reminder, and a quick glance at the elaborate memorials that line the walls reveals many more. A memorial to eight officers, 27 NCOS and 264 private soldiers of Prince Albert’s Light Infantry who fell in the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839–1842; to Frederick Mackeson, Lt Col. of the Bengal Army and Commissioner of Peshawar, who died “of a wound inflicted by a Mahometan fanatic,”1 and others commemorating those who died in battles of the Anglo-Sikh Wars, or the Boer War. Canterbury is just one of the grandest examples—almost every parish church in Britain has memorials commemorating individuals and groups who served a now vanished empire, usually as soldiers, but also in many other capacities—the tiny church of Hubberholme in the Yorkshire Dales, for instance, commemorates George Andrew Hobson, who designed the Victoria Falls bridge over the Zambezi.