THIS IS AN IMPORTANT, TIMELY and brave book. It is the first serious counterblast against the hysterical and ahistorical orthodoxy that has placed a stranglehold on public discourse over the British Empire, and will prove to be an indispensable handbook in the battles to come.
It will no doubt be rejected out of hand by those who hold the view that imperialism and its sister “ism”, colonialism, are morally irredeemable and that therefore the sort of exercise undertaken by Biggar is itself morally suspect. Others will see this as yet another attack by reactionary “right-wingers” on what all right-thinking people should think.
In this context, the task Biggar has taken on is considerable, given that the vast bulk of the post-colonial conversation, in both academia and the media, seems to hold that as empire must involve the use of military violence and economic rapacity, it must therefore be evil and condemned without trial. There is no “innocent until proven guilty” for the British
