This is a somewhat disappointing and, I suspect, divisive book. None the less, I think it is an important book to the extent that it gets people thinking, talking, writing and, very importantly, listening to each other as to the issues it addresses.

Biggar is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University as well as an historian of some note.

He seeks, by looking at various historical events involving the British Empire, to assess whether the actions involved during what most people will if only for convenience call the colonisation decades, warrant a view that they were, or more relevantly, the British (however that may be defined) of the Crown (again, however that may be defined) could or should be held to be morally culpable.

His assessment is invariably 'no'.

That conclusion seems at odd with many widely held views (which may not of course be validly held) but it is certainly, on one view, 'convenient', but I suggest may not be a complete (or at least an unnecessarily narrow, and irrelevant, viewpoint.

He manages this by 3 methods:

1. Biggar defines his quest by reference to the British Empire, not the individuals that may have acted under the umbrella (thought in many cases without the explicit support or indeed knowledge of the Empire). Thus Biggar is able to conclude, that whatever those other rogues may have undertaken, such was not authorised, sanctioned by or supported by the Empire and in some cases without the prior knowledge of the Empire (whether viewed by the local representatives of the Empire, but certainly by the the equivalent of 10 Downing Street) and in most if not all cases directly against various formal orders, declarations etc for the colonists to have regard to the Indigenous peoples found and to obtain their consent or at least acquiescence to what the colonists were to do.

2. Defining relevant immoral or reproachable acts as being those of the Empire and not by anyone else. This is in part due to the enquiry that Biggar sets up in the beginning ie a moral reckoning of the Empire's actions in undertaking colonisation. On one view that can be explained by the fact that Biggar could hardly make an assessment as to individual's actions, even in one colony eg Australia. But by doing so, it diverts attention away from the issue of whether people adversely affected nevertheless deserve some assistance/ recourse?

3. Emphasising the efforts of the Empire in dismantling eg slavery as well as the benefits that colonisation has brought to colonies eg (western) culture, technology, education, etc. As to the first, moving to dismantling slavery does not of itself negate prior discretions. As to the second, western advantages may not be all they are sometimes be made out to be. Though it is admitted that given where we have got to, the way of the west may well be the dominant mileu. Even so, there is a very sense that western views have been imposed on Indigenous peoples ie without consent and at the very least some views that that has to been to their detriment.

So whilst on a technical level the Empire may not be morally culpable for some of the things that have happened, is it still not possible that people should feel compelled (not by reason of being liable) to assist those who are suffering for whatever reason.

To put that a different way, rather than talking as to whether reparations are due to affected peoples for past injustices (the old saw of a briton saying they are happy to contribute to reparations to peoples colonised in the last 3 centuries once the reparations from the romans invasion of Britain all those years ago start to flow), is not the way to approach this is to consider whether people need/deserve assistance regardless of the reason for such (which may include colonization) and without making it a condition precedent to such assistance being made available that there be a prior moral failure?

Big Ship

8 April 2024 ( )

"To describe British colonial government as simply or generally oppressive and exploitative, as is commonly done, may satisfy certain ideological prejudices but it obscures the complicated historical truth." (pg. 213)

"… those ideas make history no longer an authority that constrains what may be claimed, but merely an armoury to be ransacked in the interest of rhetorical advantage." (pg. 293)

A dry and detailed book about a combative and controversial subject, Nigel Biggar's Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning might not be the book you'd want it to be, but it is, perhaps, the book we need it to be. You would expect, upon cracking open its pure white spine, to encounter a tempest of controversial takes around this subject, as questions of British colonialism have become politically toxic in recent years. The Empire and some of its features, most notably the 18th-century trans-Atlantic slave trade, have become cudgels – Biggar uses the phrase "political ammunition" (pg. 294) – for bad-faith actors to use in political and social debates in the 21st century.

Biggar, however, resists this bait, for better or for worse. On the downside, it means Colonialism is less engrossing, less cutting, less pugilistic or indignant than it should be about the fact that this nonsense is even considered a legitimate question in British society, considering – as Biggar shows – the lengths the British Empire went to in abolishing slavery, building self-governing nations and, in general, taking a sensible and even-handed approach to the navigation of 300 years of difficult historical waters (despite some errors along the way). The blood quickens on the rare occasions Biggar raises a wry eyebrow at the pathetic state of our contemporary debate – I'm thinking of his 'typographical error' statement on page 192 – and it runs hot when he outright demolishes a paltry, partisan and downright vindicate claim of one of his "anti-colonialist" peers, such as his succinct relegation of Caroline Elkins' work in a footnote on pages 383-5. Such moments, alas, are indeed often relegated to the footnotes, and I found myself wanting Biggar to be our Huckleberry more regularly.

That said, Colonialism is determinedly not that sort of book. Biggar is no polemicist – nor, indeed, a historian. He succeeds, remarkably, in side-stepping the culture war almost entirely (not entirely, for it is inescapable) and approaching the debate on British colonialism as an ethicist. He analyses the arguments (more accurately, the presumptions) made in the historical debate nowadays, and roots out the truth of them: how far one can say, for example, that the British Empire was racist as a system, or the legitimacy of violence as a tool of imposing order, or the murky terrain of cultural assimilation versus cultural genocide. Along the way, he tells some plain truths about the nature of the slave trade, along with well-researched and heavily-footnoted explanations of colonial behaviour to wash away our pantomime-villain understanding of this period of history.

Never sensationalist or partisan, Biggar's chapters outlining this colonial reality are painstakingly written and delivered. It may be to the book's detriment as far as readability and entertainment goes – no wonder Biggar mentions he is not a historian, because even an academic historian would thirst for a more structured narrative – but it is so assiduous in its approach that you begin to recognise this is precisely what is needed. Many of the arguments Biggar makes in this book will appear obvious – for example, that we should not judge the people of yesterday by the standards of today, due to the moral and ethical advances made, or the basic fact that the slave trade was an established feature of human existence and the British Empire spent much more of its existence pursuing its outright abolition than it did profiting from it.

But while this obviousness can introduce a note of tedium to the proceedings – surely, we know all this? – we are reminded that there are many out there who, for whatever reason, are determined to beat these ploughshares into swords. Biggar notes that the subject is too vast and generalised to be analysed comprehensively in his pages, but "what forces the challenge upon us is the fact that so many have evidently rushed to judgement" (pg. 275) in condemning what they crudely label as racist, rapacious white domination deliberately and maliciously imposed.

I would have liked Biggar to investigate more into the motives – political, psychological, or otherwise – of the people who choose this vindictive and quixotic path, particularly as there are many more pressing injustices in our 21st-century world that would benefit from the energy and momentum expended on this. Biggar notes that the colonial years even hint at a couple of these, such as ANC corruption in South Africa (pg. 296) and the authoritarian Chinese subjugation of democratic Hong Kong (pg. 288).

Biggar's book, then, is a noble attempt to clean and bandage a wound that should never have been re-opened in the first place; we should have long since moved onto better things. To read Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning is to watch a humble caretaker diligently clean up the mess that others have made in an ideological tantrum, but we still await the seismic, influential book that will bring down this castle of sand altogether. If and when that book does arrive, we will find it has arrived on ground that Biggar, to his great credit, has thanklessly prepared. Biggar concludes that the British Empire increasingly pursued a Christian humanitarianism and a genuine commitment to liberalism, and that while it "contained evils and injustices, some of them very grave", it was "not essentially racist, exploitative or wantonly violent. It showed itself capable of correcting its sins and errors, and of learning from them" (pg. 297). One wonders sometimes where we might find ourselves if we had that same capacity today. ( )