Pro-imperial truths of the old world

A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain, 1941-45 Robert Lyman (Osprey, £25)

Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a national security fellow at the Center for the National Interest, Washington D.C. and a non-resident fellow at the James G. Martin Center

AFEW YEARS BACKduring my doctoral research, I was invited to a colloquium on imperialism at Oxford, which, because of our modern standards of free and open intellectual discourse, was effectively a secretive little conclave. This was during the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, around the time when, due to mob pressure, Portland professor Bruce Gilley’s “The Case for Colonialism” paper was redacted by an academic journal. The seminar’s organisers did not want hysterical teenagers egged on by activist dons to disturb what turned out to be the nuanced discussion you’d hope scholars would, and could, engage in.

There I met a man of very advanced age, whose name I cannot remember and had no fear of being killed.”