A Hanging

The British Empire began in the late 16th and early 17th centuries as Britain started to establish overseas trading posts. From the 19th century to the early 20th century, it was the foremost power in the world and held control over almost one quarter of the world’s population (412 million people). The subjugation and enslavement of colonized peoples during this period was justified through theories of racial hierarchy based on pseudoscientific arguments. The theories of Charles Darwin, particularly the concept of natural selection described in On the Origin of Species (1859), were misapplied to human societies. Social Darwinists argued that certain races were more “fit” or “evolved” than others, and they used this idea to justify their false claims of racial superiority and the exploitation of so-called “inferior” races. By twisting Darwinist principles, the colonial powers suggested that colonized peoples were more “primitive,” or less evolved, than their colonizers and were unfit to survive in the modern world without the paternalistic control of a “superior” Western power.

Burma (now Myanmar) was under British rule from 1824 to 1948. At the time when George Orwell was writing, it was a province of British India, and ethnic Indians played a key role in the government and the economy, as is evident in the predominantly Indian character list of Orwell’s