NOTES: Reckoning with Post-Columbus Empires

Conquest & cosmopolitanism: The point of empire is domination & exploitation. The legacies of empire-building can include peace, technology transfer, cultural exchange, and trade. Do not attempt to...

Conquest & cosmopolitanism: The point of empire is domination & exploitation. The legacies of empire-building can include peace, technology transfer, cultural exchange, and trade. Do not attempt to cover-up the conquerors’ greed from the unintended downstream consequences! Do not attempt to dismiss beneficial downstream consequences as of no moment just because they were unintended by the conquerers and empire builders!

The point of building a colonial empire is the conquest, exploitation, and ruthless pursuit of wealth. But given that what colonial empires replaced were smaller scale societies of domination, unintended beneficial consequences resulting from imperial peace and cosmopolitan contact predominate in the net effects on the non-élite among the colonized. And how much of a real loss is the lost autonomy and place of the former élite that the colonizers displace from their position of domination?…

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My machines have surfaced for me this morning a piece by Samuel Rubenstein, who was, for some reason, thinking about imperial history last summer. Or, rather, watching an intellectual vehicle crash.

I find myself thinking that perhaps it is time to try again to gain a little clarity on how we should think about and evaluate the “empire” part of post-1500 history, on the way toward understanding the best modes for thinking about the post-1500 Imperial-Commercial Age:

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First, empires are large-scale societies of domination. Conquest and exploitation are their reasons for being. But with those they bring the flag. And the flag may bring an imperial peace and certainly brings a lot of people into cosmopolitan contact. And from that flows cultural assimilation, cultural exchange, enhanced trade and division of labor, technology transfer, and—perhaps—technological development as well.

To try to sum all this up into one bottom line is silly. Look at the different aspects, and try to understand and assess all of them.

The bad is very bad indeed. And the bad is, overwhelmingly, the point of the people and the élites who drive the creation of empires. The downstream consequences might be good, but they are not intended aims of the empire-builders. Cecil Rhodes was in the business of conquering things and getting rich. He was not engaged in charity work.

The good is good, and sometimes very good. And even things we usually think of as good—trade, say, in which both counterparties are pleased—that can in general equilibrium turn very bad indeed, if what one of the counterparties are pleased with are guns with which to carry out slave raids and the other is pleased with the slaves.

And yet there is another important point here: consider Value Above Replacement here. The large-scale society of domination that is an empire does not impose itself on an egalitarian free society of associated producers. There was a previous pre-conquest élite that ran its own society of domination. It is the identification of writers today with that displaced élite and their mourning of its loss of its autonomy to rule and dominate on its own behalf that seems to be at the root of much anger today against colonialism.

Thus Alan Lester quotes Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country:

We [Nigerians] were considerably damaged by colonial rule.… Colonial rule means that power, initiative is taken away from you by somebody else who makes your decisions…

This is the reason he gives for his “not justifying colonialism” even though the British Empire brought “the experience of governing and doing it competently”, in rather sharp contrast to the kleptocrats, soldiers, and thugs who took over post-colonial Nigeria for so much of the past half century.

But this “initiative is taken away from you” line is from the standpoint of someone who privileges the displaced local élite in the past and identifies with it. And is it really much better or much less stupid to place yourself on Team Mirza Muhammad Siraj ud-Daula than on Team Robert Clive?

But that someone else would have sheared the people like sheep if your team had not, and that your team brought trade and biotechnology and opportunity—it is the trade and biotechnology and opportunity that matter for the people, for they would have been sheared will-you, nill-you. But that does not justify or excuse your team’s shearing: it did that, and if you take ownership of that team you own it.

And let me add a final—and perhaps most significant—ingredient to the mix. There is a very strong sense that to focus history only on the fact of colonial domination by an intrusive, predatory élite from a faraway base is to try to play Hamlet not just without the Prince but without Elsinore and everyone in it. Restrict our view to people outside those of and who derive the bulk of their ancestors from the charmed circle, of radius 400 miles around Dover, from which comes the overwhelming bulk of the imperial adventures of the past half-millennium. Calculate how fast the prosperity of the people outside is growing. As best as I can tell, up until 1500 it was not growing at all: slowly advancing technology was offset by greater resource scarcity arising from higher population. From 1500 to 1770 it grew by 15%, which is enough to matter for societies as poor as humanity’s were. And after 1870 prosperity outside the Dover Circle explodes: growing at 1.25%/year, doubling every half-century. And that explosion is the direct consequence of the ability of the world created by the Imperial-Commercial Age to find a place in the slipstream of the post-1870 machine of engineering-driven modern economic growth inside the Dover Circle and its settler and emulator appendages.

The logic of empire runs, from most to least important, thus: conquest, exploitation, the flag, (perhaps) imperial peace, cosmopolitan contact, cultural assimilation, cultural exchange, enhanced trade and division of labor, technology transfer.

But when we assess the place of the post-1500 Imperial-Commercial Age from the standpoint of today, the significance is almost completely reversed. That it opened pathways to technology transfer appears most important. And then, in order of diminishing importance: enhanced division of labor, expanded trade, cosmopolitan contact, cultural exchange, cultural assimilation, (relative) peace, flags, exploitation, and conquest.

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Rubenstein:

Samuel Rubenstein: Unpicking Imperial History: ‘The name… Biggar appears 376 times in… The Truth About Empire…. Sixteen historians have assembled to present their ‘Real Histories of British Colonialism’ in 14 chapters, all adhering to the same structure. The offending pages of Biggar’s controversial book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, are pored over, quibbled, disputed, denounced. Errors are identified: sometimes pedantic, sometimes substantial, sometimes not really errors at all….

For Biggar, the whole debate is about the ‘perception and self-confidence of the British today’; by incessantly talking down Britain’s imperial past, Lester and his ilk are an ‘ally – no doubt inadvertent – of Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia and the Chinese Communist Party’…. One must defend the empire, Biggar argues, to prevent what the historian Elie Kedourie called ‘the canker of imaginary guilt’ from crippling ‘the self-confidence of the British… in their role as important pillars of the international order’.

Given that these are the closing words of Colonialism, it’s astonishing how few of Biggar’s critics have understood his underlying intellectual project…. I actually have more sympathy with the underlying neoconservative politics of Colonialism than I do with the book itself, finding it difficult to disagree with Kenan Malik’s judgment <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/colonialism-a-moral-reckoning-by-nigel-biggar-review-a-flawed-defence-of-empire> that ‘where it proves impossible’ for Biggar ‘to locate a nugget of good’ in the empire, ‘he seeks instead to find exonerating circumstances for the bad’. At the same time, though, Biggar’s work speaks to his personal courage and integrity. Lester whines that ‘the pressure to “cancel” academic research on colonialism now seems to come mainly from the populist right wing…’ but as far as I am aware, no publishers scrapped plans to publish The Truth about Empire, as Bloomsbury <https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/nigel-biggar-hits-out-bloomsbury-cancelled-book-empire-8s75506dk> did with Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning….

Margot Finn… rummages around the book in search of methodological faults…. It hardly matters that Biggar neglects ‘photography, film, media, and material culture’…. Finn rather misses the point… [and her] sticklerism might also have been more compelling if it didn’t appear in a book that commences with praise for the work of Jenny Bulstrode <https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/cort-case-shows-why-historical-truth-matters/>, for whose cause Alan Lester <https://x.com/aljhlester/status/1725161655019929659> has been a passionate advocate…. Finn’s high standards for historical research would, if applied to some of her fellow contributors, leave the book slenderer….

[Biggar uses] Nazi Germany… as a foil to the British Empire…. [But] Lester was quite right to say… ‘it is not enough to defend the British Empire… [that it was] not as bad as the Nazis’…. Surely nobody serious would ever even compare… [them]?… The reader’s sense for dramatic irony may now be tingling. In his chapter, Liam Liburd defends comparisons between the British Empire and Nazi Germany and criticises negative reactions… as ‘hysterical’. He cites, as one example, Andrew Roberts’s reaction to Kehinde Andrews making such a comparison: at a discussion of Churchill’s racial attitudes, Roberts dismissed <https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/the-racial-consequences-of-mr-churchill-a-review/> Andrews’ rhetoric as ‘puerile invective more befitting the playground than the seminar hall’. Now, what exactly did Andrews say to elicit such a reaction? Here is the quotation, verbatim: ‘The British Empire was far worse than the Nazis.’ Liburd fudges this as an innocuous ‘comparison’: Roberts was ‘particularly horrified by any suggestion that Churchill’s views should be considered within the context of the same history of race and racism as Nazism’. As we can see, however, Andrews was going a lot further than this. Liburd never quotes this comment… and one can see why…. Critics of Biggar, who say he’s stacking the deck in his favour when he brings the Nazis into the discussion, may be correct: but in setting their arguments side-by-side with Liburd’s, they aren’t making life any easier for themselves….

What can we see through all this mudslinging? There is so much talking past each other, especially on the Anti-Biggar side, that one sometimes feels like banging one’s head against the wall…. Perry… Carleton, and …Wahpasiw… criticise Biggar for engaging in ‘politics and not history’…. [They] rail… against the ‘power, privilege, and profit… amassed during… empire of which many Britons are continuing beneficiaries’; refer… to Canada’s [ongoing] ‘colonial project’… bizarrely insist… (Lester’s aims for ‘accessibility’ notwithstanding) upon referring to North America as ‘Turtle Island’. But [they say it is] Biggar, not they, is engaging in ‘politics and not history’: to which he would, unlike them, presumably respond ‘I know’….

The historians’ guild assembled to expel this moral theologian from what they felt to be their home turf, but they’re not sending their best. We get the Historikerstreit we deserve… <https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/unpicking-imperial-history/>

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References:

• Achebe, Chinua. 2012. There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra. New York: Penguin Press. <https://archive.org/details/therewascountryp0000ache>.

• Biggar, Nigel. 2023. Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. London: William Collins. <https://www.amazon.com/Colonialism-Moral-Reckoning-Nigel-Biggar/dp/0008511632>.

• Lester, Alan, ed. 2024. The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism. London: C. Hurst & Co. <https://www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-About-Empire-Histories-Colonialism/dp/191172309X>.

• Lester, Alan. 2023. “Over the last few months…” X, November 21, 2023. <https://x.com/aljhlester/status/1725161655019929659>.

• Policy Exchange. 2021. “The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill: A Review.” London: Policy Exchange. <https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/the-racial-consequences-of-mr-churchill-a-review/>.

• Rubenstein, Samuel. 2024. “Unpicking Imperial History”. Engelsberg Ideas. August 19. <https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/unpicking-imperial-history/>.

• Snyder, Laura. 2023. “Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Biggar Review – A Flawed Defence of Empire.” The Guardian, February 20, 2023. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/colonialism-a-moral-reckoning-by-nigel-biggar-review-a-flawed-defence-of-empire>.

• Times Culture Desk. 2023. “Nigel Biggar Hits Out at Bloomsbury for Cancelled Book on Empire.” The Times, February 19, 2023. <https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/nigel-biggar-hits-out-bloomsbury-cancelled-book-empire-8s75506dk>.

• Wooton, David. 2023. “Cort Case Shows Why Historical Truth Matters.” Engelsberg Ideas, February 2023. <https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/cort-case-shows-why-historical-truth-matters/>.

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