"But our academic colleagues could."
How could - or how dare any group academics or otherwise, of people speak on behalf of an entire nation - ?
Sure - some people supported the Empire, some people did well under it (others came away with Stockholm Syndrome) - nobody in their right mind can claim that any nation benefited by being ruled by another, culturally or economically.
Empires were based on suppression and exploitation - none more so than The British Empires.
These nations made their voice known by demanding independence, and more often than not, those voices were suppressed by military force until they became so loud, they had to be listened to.
The detrimental effects of empire are written into the history books - ten million dead Congolese and countless maimings in the pursuit of rubber for 'Gallant Little Belgium, one million dead and an equal number forced to emigrate (and a legacy of an economy based on permanent immigration) in Ireland, Palestine, India/Pakistan..... and many other examples they are the scars left by Empire.
It is simple robbery to take the national wealth of a country and use it to empower and enrich another, and it is gross, cultural arrogance to impose one culture on another - that is what Empire is about.
The Empire idea is as dead as Capital Punishment (another of your fond memories), but its memory lingers on in the form of civil wars, national poverty and oppression brought about by what and who it left behind.
When Britain pulled out of the 26 counties of Ireland, they immediately left a bloody civil war in the South and nearly a century of violence and cultural, political and economic inequality in the six counties they hung on to.
In Africa and Asia, they left similar examples of bloodshed, and economies based on near slavery exploitation which still fills British shops like Primark with sweat-labour produced cheap goods.
We have spent a long time here recording people, not just singing, but talking about their lives under the period following British rule - in this area in particular, though most have a fondness of and respect for the British people, there is virtually none for the good old days of British rule, only memories of The Black and Tans, or the Rineen ambush, or the sacking of Miltown Malbay, Lahinch and Ennistymon, or the Famine memories - that is their fondness for Empire, whatever your Sierra Leonese academic friends might have told you.
JIm Carroll