The power of the few

Uncivilised: Ten Lies that Made the West by Subhadra Das

Hodder & Stoughton, 304 pages, £20

Subhadra &as’s first book catches two particular waves in current publishing. Firstly, it explains a large and complex issue through a number of objects, ideas or themes. Secondly, it addresses the politically contentious topic of decolonisation, through a coruscating critique of western civilisation.

&as describes herself as a historian, writer, broadcaster and stand-up comedian (her wit suʘuses this book . A $ritish citi\en born in Abu &habi to +ndian parents, she is a former curator of science collections at 7niversity %ollege London. She has also worked as a researcher into critical eugenics – the discredited 19th-century theory of ‘racial improvement’ and selective ‘breeding’ of peoples. This personal and academic background makes her uniquely qualified to call out the ‘lies’ that underpin the west.

The book’s chapters each take a central tenet of western culture and scrutinise in whose interest they each operate. As befits a curator, &as begins and ends in the museum, starting in UCL with a ‘hair colour gauge’ designed by a 0a\i race scientist, and concluding in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum and its African and Oceanic objects.

In between she skewers slogans such as ‘Art for art’s sake’ (which, she argues, disguises the rapacity of the western art market, eZemplified in the theft of the $enin bron\es by a $ritish colonial force in . She even trains her sights on the very edifice of western democracy – implemented, as she sees it, “not by the people for the people, but through power exercised over the many by the few”.

There are deft pen portraits of the history of the creation of modern clock time, colonial education, the invention of psychoanalysis and justice, and a recurring concern with rational science, which, she contends, has always acted in the interests of western colonial power.

&as is at her best when writing in the first person about racial and gendered injustice within western institutions. But not everything sticks. Later chapters on art and death feel undeveloped (issues such as the discovery that many of the Benin bron\es are themselves ‘fakes’ complicates the argument around repatriation . She also ignores the fact that commentators have been documenting the decay of ‘western civilisation’ (whatever that is) for at least a century – even before the German historian 1swald Spengler produced his infamous Decline of the West (1918–23).

&as is clearly a talented writer with much to say. But her canvas here feels too large to convert those who are sceptical about decolonising western civilisation.

Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance studies, Queen Mary University of London and author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps (Penguin)