We now come to my final post in my book analysis of Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. In this post, I am going to fly through chapters 6-8 and then give my reflections and thoughts on the book as a whole, as well as what I feel are the underlying issues that have made it so controversial. Now, the reason I’m going to cover the final three chapters in one post is simple—the chapters all started running together, and I found myself getting bored. Remember, the basic premise of Biggar’s book was to push against the current “anti-colonialist” accusation that the British Empire was all about racism, white supremacy, exploitation, and brutality. His response to that accusation is simple: It’s not that simple. Of course, there are many black spots in the history of the British Empire, but there were plenty of good things as well. And, when it comes to those various black spots, Biggar looks at the historical circumstances of those things and shows the complexities of those situations. He never excuses Britain’s moral wrongs, but he is clear on one thing: to equate it with the “Evil Empire” on par with Hitler and the Nazis is propagandic nonsense.
And so, in chapters 6-8, Biggar continues to go though many more historical instances where he bears that point out. If you want more details, buy the book and read it for yourself. For the purposes of this post, I will simply provide an extremely brief overview what goes on in those chapters.
Chapter 6: Free Trade, Investment, and ‘Exploitation’
The main accusation Biggar addresses in chapter 6 is that the British Empire exploited the natural and human resources of the native populations and destroyed the native industries to make room for its own. Basically, it is all about economics and the effects of free trade. Yes, Biggar says, the clash between British culture and native cultures did often disrupt traditional native ways. Yes, some British settlers were motivated by racial prejudice and treated natives unfairly. But, as Biggar notes, those things are not unique to colonialism—they are part and parcel throughout human history, in every society and culture. In any case, the opening up to worldwide free trade also provided those native populations with new opportunities, and the British government invested in education to try to prepare them to take part in the new economy.
Chapter 7: Government, Legitimacy, and Nationalism
In chapter 7, Biggar addresses the way British colonialism is generally portrayed, namely as the big, bad centralized government in London teaming up with greedy capitalists to subjugate and exploit native peoples. First, he notes that in reality British rule wasn’t highly centralized—the colonial governments were often doing their own things. And yes, the colonial governments were not “democratic” with universal adult suffrage, so that native people didn’t get to vote; but for that matter, universal adult suffrage didn’t happen until 1928—meaning a lot of British citizens were in the same boat.
Secondly, he argues that because the number of actual British rulers and settlers in their colonies were so small in comparison to the native peoples, “the former could not have governed at all without the widespread consent and cooperation of the latter” (180). Basically, despite the inevitable corruption (that will happen in any government), many of the native peoples wanted British rule because it was better than the other options—the British made sure to protect the minorities among the native peoples who would have been at the mercy of the majority populations.
He also touches upon the British (and Canadian) governments failures regarding the Irish (and indigenous) populations during famine. In particular, Biggar addresses the charge that John Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, oversaw the “sinister” and “malevolent” mismanagement of relief during the western famine in the 1880s that amounted to “genocide” of the native population. After discussing the complexities of what happened, Biggar then points out that the total deaths of as a result of the famine from 1879-1883 was forty-five.
He finally addresses the rise of nationalist movements that happened within the colonies. He notes that most of them were “children’s crusades,” namely movements of the younger generations who weren’t just rebelling against foreign rule, but also against the older generations. On top of that, he notes that not all nationalist movements are actually good. In their zeal to tear down anything “foreign” OR from the older generation, some nationalist movements can end up being terrifyingly oppressive and brutal. (We can think of Mao’s revolution, or the rise if ISIS—both recruited the younger generation to overturn everything that was before them).
In any case, Biggar’s simple point is that “to describe British colonial rule as simply or generally oppressive and exploitative, as is commonly done, may satisfy certain ideological prejudices but it obscures the complicated historical truth” (213). A lot of times, British rule was welcomed and had support by the native population. On top of that, democracy is a fragile thing that doesn’t just happen. Biggar argues that British were trying to instill those democratic virtues so that the native populations could eventually govern themselves. He ends the chapter by saying that if we forget our history, and all its complexity and messiness—if we endorse “illiberal cancel culture” and insist on simplistic caricatures of the past—the West can easily lose those democratic virtues: “Cultural advantage, however hard won, can always be lost again, since what has been learned can always be forgotten. Progress can roll backwards” (215).
Chapter 8: Justified Force and “Pervasive Violence”
In his final chapter, Biggar looks at six specific instances of violence on the part of the British Empire on native peoples: (1) the First Opium War (1839-1842); (2) the Indian Mutiny (1857); (3) the massacre in Amritsar (1919); (4) the military takeover of Benin City in West Africa (1897); (5) the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902); and (6) the counter-insurgency against the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya (1950s). He goes into quite a lot of detail in discussing each one, but for the purpose of this post, I will just highlight his conclusions.
- The British government’s decision to go to war in the First Opium War was totally unjustified.
- With the Second Anglo-Boer War and Benin expedition, military force was justified.
- With the Indian Mutiny, Amritsar, and Kenya, there was “disproportionate and indiscriminate use of violence” (272)—basically, a response was called for, but those in charge took things too far.
- On top of that, when unnecessary force was used, “the imperial and colonial governments repudiated the abuse and resolved to stop it.” That showed that such violence and negligence wasn’t symptomatic of that being the consistent colonial policy, and it certainly didn’t amount to the level of a Nazi-type genocide.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
My overall conclusion about Biggar’s book is ultimately two-fold. First, for the most part, it actually is rather dry. His goal was to show that with the British Empire, as with all empires and all nations for that matter, there was a wide range of complexities, and while the British Empire was certainly responsible for a number of moral outrages, it also did a whole lot of good for humanity as well. As with the United States, there have been episodes of national shame and disgrace as well as episodes of national glory and moral triumph. And in between those two “moral poles” is a whole lot of moral mess, ambiguity, and muddle. Such is the case of just about every nation and empire and people in the history of the world. Biggar conclusively makes this point, but to be honest, halfway through the book I found myself saying, “Ok, I get it, you’ve made your point…there are how many more pages of this?”
That being said, what I feel is more significant is what has led to my second conclusion, namely the reason why Biggar felt the need to write his book in the first place. At the beginning of his book, he mentions the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign that happened at Oxford around 2016-2017, as well as the “1619 Project” and the “Black Lives Matter” movement that was growing around that time and that really exploded on scene in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, as more or less as the catalysts for the reason he wrote the book. He wrote the book ultimately as a response to the charges and accusations that these types of groups were hurling concerning…the British Empire, the United States, “colonialism” and “the West” as a whole.
These charges can be summed up with a number of words we’ve all heard as a constant drumbeat over this past decade: colonialism, racism, white supremacy, genocide, capitalism, and fascism. Adjacent to those things have been a number of other things that have gotten wrapped up in kind of activism, things like LGBTQ+ rights and the plight of the Palestinians. Without commenting on the validity or rightness/wrongness of any of these causes, my only point is that all these get lumped together. If you see news footage of a BLM protest, chances are you’re going to see pro-Palestinian and pro-trans rights signs as well. What they all have in common is the object of their attack—it ultimately boils down to Western Culture. Whether it’s colonialism, Evangelicals, capitalism, Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, or Niles Biggar—the main object of attack is the legacy of Western Culture. The activists Bigger is pushing back against in his book view Western Culture, the British Empire, and the United States as “colonial oppressors” on any and all minority groups. Without passing judgment on any of that, I think that is a fair assessment of the reality of what is going on.
I remember the first time I started becoming aware of this. It was in 2017, right after the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia in which “Alt-Right” activists and Antifa activists clashed, and one young woman ended up getting killed. At that time, there was a debate on whether or not to take down Confederate statutes in general, and a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville in particular. Many wanted all of them taken down and many said they should be kept up, or possibly moved, because they bore witness to even the shameful things in our history. What happened in Charlottesville, though, was that two extremist groups took things too far and started a violent riot.
After it was over, Donald Trump gave a contentious news conference during which the press wanted him to denounce the neo-Nazis and white supremacists on the “Alt-Right.” He did, but he also pointed out that there were violent Antifa people engaging in violence as well—and that all the violence should be condemned. He then turned to the issue of the confederate statues themselves and said there were “very fine people on both sides” of that debate concerning the taking down of confederate statues. He then asked about statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and whether or not they should be taken down, because after all, they were slave owners. He then reiterated that there were “very fine people” who wanted the confederate statues down and who wanted to keep them up, but then said, “and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
I remember cringing because it was such a contentious conference—but at the same time, what Trump said was true: there ARE good people who have a different opinion on the statues; there WERE very violent people in both groups on that day who should have been condemned. As it turned out, the narrative that was spun from that news conference (that many people still believe today) was that Donald Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” I don’t care if you love or hate him—we literally have it on video where he says they should be condemned totally. Simply put, the “very fine people” narrative was a complete lie. On top of that, a few years later, in the summer of 2020, what happened during the BLM riots? It wasn’t just confederate statues that were torn down and vandalized, but, sure enough, statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, to name a few. Why? Easy—it was all about colonialism and white supremacy. To the BLM rioters, there was no real difference between Robert E. Lee, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln—they were all racist white oppressors. As for the billions of dollars in damages done to small businesses in minority neighborhood and the people killed in the riots, the steady narrative was that they were “mostly peaceful protests,” and if you disagreed, you were a racist.
Also during that summer, there was a huge push to defund the police, because the police, the activists claimed, were racist oppressors. I remember writing some blog posts about what was happening at the time. Because of the activists claiming that the police were committing “black genocide,” people were under the impression that police officers were gunning down hundreds of unarmed black men every year. The actual facts told a different story. In 2019, 1,004 people in the United States were killed by police; 40 were unarmed; of those 40, 20 were white and 10 were black; of those 10 unarmed black deaths, 6 of them were still violent and dangerous, and of the remaining 4, charges were brought against the cops in 2 of them. By no stretch of the imagination, does that entail a “black genocide.” Yet that BLM false narrative became the controlling narrative for the next few years.
Now of course, that’s not to say there are some racist cops; that’s not to say racial injustice has been committed in our country’s past. But the narrative that those activists spun was provably false, the violence they committed was really real, and those who challenged their claims and narrative were routinely lambasted as being “oppressors” and racists. Sadly, the legacy of those protests and riots was a whole lot of destruction and violence. The millions of dollars donated to the BLM leaders went into their own pockets; it didn’t go to the inner cities to help those who were suffering in poverty. I don’t actually think though that their aim was to simply get rich. I remember going onto the BLM website at the time and seeing a clear Marxist ideology. Many of the leaders were self-proclaimed Marxists. They weren’t trying to get rich—they wanted to “tear down the system,” because the system was capitalist, and capitalism fueled colonialism, and colonialism was racist, etc.
But history and the facts show that is much too much of a simplistic caricature that has no real root in reality. It is ideologically driven, pure and simple. On top of that, it is ultimately narcissistic. It plays upon people’s genuine empathy and manipulates them into bending the knee to that ideology, because no one wants to be a racist. No one wants to be accused of supporting any stance that can (and will) be called “white supremacist-adjacent.” No one wants to be accused of being a “genocide denier.” On top of that, it turns genuinely good, sympathetic people into being hateful activists themselves, who will savage you if you say something like, “Well, I think Biggar makes a valid point,” or “What Trump said there was actually correct,” or “Jordan Peterson has some interesting things to say.” If you do that, you’re “siding with the oppressors,” because those people are questioning that particular anti-colonialist narrative.
Such a narrative, such a movement, eliminates the possibility of dialogue and discussion, for it demonizes anyone who doesn’t bend the knee to that ideology. We should all acknowledge the past—both the good things and the bad. And when it is possible, we should all want to make restitution with those who have suffered abuses. I don’t think anyone is against that. The problem, though, is when tries to take those specific instances of abuse and broadbrush 250+ years of a nation’s history as, in its totality, being corporately guilty of things that happened hundreds of years in the past.
As an American, I can acknowledge my nation’s past sins while at the same time be proud of being an American, because America has done a lot of good in the world. As a Brit, Biggar is saying one can acknowledge Britian’s past sins and still be proud of being British, because Britain has done a lot of good in the world. That, I feel, is a healthy and realistic mindset we should all strive to have. It is a shame to see that he has been to vilified for saying something that is so blindingly obvious.
In closing, would I recommend the book? Yes and no. The second half gets rather tedious and boring in my opinion. But it is worth reading if you want to understand the current “spirit of the age” that is seeking to silence and tear down any positive word about Western culture.
