Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning

William Collins 480pp £25

The Week Bookshop £19.99

Many people today see the British empire as an “exploitative, racist project akin to the Third Reich”, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. In his new book, the Oxford moral philosopher Nigel Biggar begs to differ: the empire, he admits, was terrible in some respects, but that shouldn’t stop us from also recognising that it did good. While critics lament the fact that “our ancestors plundered”, Biggar points out that they also “laid railways and built schools”, and improved medical care. Yes, the arrival of British rule and Christianity eroded local cultures, but it also meant a “war” on practices such as widow burning in India or female genital mutilation in Africa. On slavery – perhaps the most controversial facet of empire – Biggar argues that much of later British imperialism was “motivated in part by the effort to eradicate the trade”. With a title like Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, this book is clearly “spoiling for a fight” – yet it proves a “thoughtful, compelling text”.

A “balance sheet of empire” is certainly needed, but Biggar’s has a disturbing tendency to give imperialism a “virtuous spin”, said Pratinav Anil in The Times. In his telling, Cecil Rhodes becomes an “unrecognisable reformer, an altruist among entrepreneurs, rescuing African men from a ‘life of sloth’”, whereas the “facts of his life” suggest that he was a rapacious capitalist who “deliberately provoked war with the Matabele people”. Most of Biggar’s assessments struck me as objective, said Jonathan Sumption in Literary Review. And the questions he asks are surely important. Would India be better off if it had not inherited a constitutional government from British rule? Would sub-Saharan Africa be better off if Europeans had left it to itself? The modern tendency is to suppress such questions. That’s why Colonialism is an “important” and “courageous” book.