COLONIALISM:
A moral reckoning
By Nigel Biggar
Harper Collins. 480 pages. £25 (HB)
ISBN 978 0 008 511 630
This book was being talked about before it was released. It was due to be published by Bloomsbury, but at the very last minute they got cold feet and decided that a book on colonialism that questioned some post-colonial narratives was too hot to handle.
Nigel Biggar does not write as a trained historian, but as a moral and pastoral theologian based in Oxford. He offers a moral inquest into the colonial past.
The book, which includes 130 pages of endnotes, is a thorough investigation of the historical impact of colonialism. It challenges the idea that the colonial reach of Western powers has only had a negative effect upon the countries it has conquered and governed. At a time when statues of colonial pioneers are being pulled down, dynasties and institutions with links to slavery closely scrutinised, and calls made for restitution, this is not the most popular narrative.
Readers will not agree with everything written in this book, but it does challenge the narrative that is a bit too much Rule Britannia, and also the Cancel Culture that denies any benefits that might come from Empire.
To take one major example in the book, that of the Atlantic slave trade. The author acknowledges the role of Britain in this trade, and is clear about it being unjust and cruel. The author outlines the role of Britain in the abolition of the trade, and its willingness to meet the cost of the British Navy policing the high seas to seek to prevent the trade continuing. More controversially, the author explores the role of African and Arab chieftains in facilitating the passage of fellow Africans as slaves, and the huge amounts of compensation paid to slave owners after the abolition of slavery.
This book presents a complex picture of this aspect of Britain’s colonial past. It does not overlook the missteps of colonialism; some readers might feel that the author is not critical enough, but he does provide a pointer to a more nuanced reading of the past. Put simply, this book is a variation on the theme of a question made famous by the Monty Python team: ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’
