Amongst several flagrant historical distortions the exhibition has a photograph of a British ship full of black slaves, alongside the caption, "East African slaves taken aboard HMS Daphne from a dhow, 1 November 1868".

What the caption fails to say, however, is that the event occurred several decades after the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, and that in fact Daphne was one of many Royal Navy vessels policing the Indian Ocean with the aim of stopping slave trading between the Arab world and East Africa.

HMS Daphne was not trading slaves, but rescuing them!

Major civilising achievements of the British empire, such as the construction of railroads and infrastructure, and the spreading of the British judicial and educational systems across the world, are barely given a mention. Commenting on these omissions, Dr Ashley Jackson, a Senior Lecturer at King's College London and an expert on the British empire, says: "It is a fact that certain subject peoples benefitted materially from British rule".

By contrast with the exhibition, the website of the National Archives contains effusive coverage of "Asian and Black History in Britain". Here, for example, is an excerpt describing the vibrantly multicultural Tudor period:
"The Tudor period was significant for Black settlement in England (although Black settlement began before this). In 1501, for example, we know that Catherine of Aragon landed at Deptford with a multinational and multicultural entourage of Moors, Muslims and Jews".

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