Latest / Thinking Class / #064 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of The British Empire

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#064 - Lord Nigel Biggar - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of The British Empire · Thinking Class

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Lord Nigel Bigger.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Nigel is Emeritus Regis Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and distinguished scholar in residence at Pussy House, Oxford.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: He holds a BA in modern history from Oxford and a PhD in Christian Theology and Ethics from the University of Chicago.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: He was appointed CBE for services to higher education in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours list.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: His most recent books are Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, What's Wrong with Rights, In Defense of War, and Between Kin and Cosmopolis, An Ethic of the Nation.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: In the press, Nigel has written articles for The Financial Times, The London Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Glasgow Herald, The Irish Times, Standpoint, The Critic, The Article, Unheard and Quillette.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Nigel and I think out loud about the motivations of the British Empire, its legacy, good, bad, and ugly, what colonialism is and isn't, how to know when a country is being colonised, the influence of the biblical tradition on British governance, the legacy of slavery and its abolition, the responses of the children of former colonial subjects to the British Empire, the nature of patriotism and the future of cultural narratives in Britain, and much, much more.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: It was a real delight to speak to Nigel.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: I have been reading his work for a few years now, and I have always been impressed by his ability to look at an issue from every angle, and of course, with his courage, because he's had to handle a lot of opprobrium given the nature of the topics he's discussing in the repressive environment of the modern academy.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Nigel is a real gentleman.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: He's truly thoughtful, as I think you will hear.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And as an Englishman, I'm glad this Scotsman now sits in the upper chamber of the British Parliament.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: And make sure to like, subscribe, and follow the show on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice, and Substack, where paid subscribers now get the opportunity to contribute questions to a special QA that I put to my guests and that only you will get access to.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Sign up, let's grow Thinking Class together and enjoy the show, classmates.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: I think is evergreen, and it would be really interesting to get into the implications for that, and perhaps even the uh the the um influence of empire that we're still feeling today here in Britain, uh and perhaps internally.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: But before we get there, I think unpacking some definitions because when people talk about colonialism, the the term is used very widely in lots of different situations, and you've you've suggested that it's used rather imprecisely.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: So maybe we begin with that.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: What what is colonialism?
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh great question to start with, John.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Um frankly, I I prefer to avoid the word because because the ism, the ism implies something coherent and unitary and cohesive, as if there was a thing.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: And so whenever we use the word colonialism, stick it on something, we know what it is.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: And and usually nowadays, colonialism um uh connotes something bad.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: It was racist, it was oppressive, it was economically exploitative, it involved um it involved as a friend of mine um um um remarked when I first got into trouble on this topic, uh, it's all about uh oppression and subjugation.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And um in fact, if you look at the history of the British Empire, uh, which lasted um 400 years from 1550 to 1960, thereabouts, and stretched from Newfoundland in eastern Canada to New Zealand, uh just above the Antarctic.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was many different things at different times and in different places, sometimes different things at the same time in different places.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Um I I like to I talk about um imperial government or colonial government.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Um you can talk about colonization.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh not all empires were colonial, not ever not every part of the British Empire was colonial.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Um but I so okay, to get to get back to the question you asked about what is it.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Um Empire, let's start with Empire.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Empire Um is a political organization where uh one people dominates other peoples.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: Um and um colonial um colonization is where one people lands on the territory of another people and uh sets up shop in large numbers.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: So uh um um certainly um Europeans colonized North America to the point where uh uh white Europeans uh outnumbered uh uh native North Americans uh by um the middle of the nineteenth century.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Um Europeans also colonized Australia.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Um uh Europeans did not colonize India.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: The Brits did not colonize India.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh they they took over government, um, but even um at the height of the British Raj in India in 1900, there were 300 million Indians.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: How many Brits?
6:07
SPEAKER_01: 164,000.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Um and and um uh these were not people who took over large tracts of territory in the whole, they were uh soldiers, certainly, administrators, um uh financiers, traders.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, um toward the end of the 19th century you do get planters um uh in in northeast um the northeast of of British India.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Um so they take it, they buy land and they take over territory, but they're very small in number, and the amount of the amount of territory taken over is quite small.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: So um empire doesn't necessarily involve colonization.
6:46
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: Does that help?
6:48
SPEAKER_01: It does, it does help.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh I the question that I'm diving into a bit earlier than I anticipated, but um there are so some of those numbers you talked about there, 164,000 British at the height of the Raj, 300 million Indians.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh depending on where you go looking in on the internet, uh, particularly with right-coded discourse, i.e.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: those leading right wing, you can find people suggesting that Britain itself is uh uh is experiencing a kind of colonization due to the high numbers of immigrants that are coming in.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh what do you make of that notion?
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that there is the experience of mass immigration in in Britain uh does stand up to scrutiny if we were to say that there is a a type of colonization taking place, or does something else need to be happening for that to be true?
7:48
SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting question.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Um and as you as you were posing it, I was going over my mind and saying, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Um so on the one hand, my one reaction could be, well, most of the immigration um is legal.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: That's to say, we let it happen.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: So if colonization is uh takes place without the consent of the natives, in this case we're the natives, then that's not colonization.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: But colonization of North America and New Zealand and even Australia did not always occur without consent.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean you certain certainly sometimes uh British people took over territory, they seized it, um uh without the consent of the natives.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: Um sometimes they walk in North America they walked onto territory that was vacant.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was vacant.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes in the 1600s because European imported diseases had decimated the local population who had then who had then moved, leaving land vacant.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Um sometimes, and and this was this was generally imperial policy.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Um normally um land would be occupied with the consent of the natives.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: Now it didn't always happen, uh, but often it did happen by treaty for one reason or another.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: Um so it's actually not true to s to to suppose that colonization is necessarily um uh coerced and unwelcome.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: Um so uh um you could say Yes, you could say we're being colonized uh now, but without largely without consent.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: Um but but uh here's the okay, here would be the difference.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: Um way back you know in Roman times, or even Greek times, uh you have Greeks and Romans uh sailing across the Mediterranean to Sicily or North Africa and setting up colonies.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Now these are cities with walls around them, with Greeks and Romans inside, and they dominate that territory, and uh the the the natives of North Africa or Sicily they do their own thing.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: So the the peoples are separate.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: Um ideally, here when we admit immigrants uh who are to who are going to be permanent residents, ideally they should integrate and assimilate because um you know Britain is not anywhere.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: We we have certain traditions, we have laws, we have customs, we have a language.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: Um so, in a sense, uh um what ought to be happening is is a measure of integration and assimilation.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Now I say a measure because, of course, there's no good reason why, let's say, people from Asia shouldn't carry on um making curry or or or or manning restaurants that we love to eat at.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, you you can retain your own culture, but I think when you move to another country permanently, you do need to pay sufficient respect to learn the language so you can participate and to obey the laws and the customs.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: And colonization wouldn't would not involve that.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: It would involve a kind of creation of an enclave uh that you control uh with or without consent of the native peoples.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Um but you you wouldn't have um um colonists would not, as it were, assimilate into a larger population.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: That's my initial thought on that.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think I think that probably stacks up with um those who've who've conducted work in this area.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've read Paul Collier's book, Exodus.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh remember the subtitle.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is very good where he says once you start reaching certain numbers of incomers, regardless of where it is, you know, let's just run it as a hypothetical, uh, you you get to a point where a diaspora forms, and that diaspora has enough um social and cultural capital that it doesn't actually need to interact with whoever it is that they're surrounded by and who were the original inhabitants, because they can set up their own uh their own economic systems to a certain degree.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh they can all help each other out and they don't necessarily need to interact.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh on top of that, you know, culture is obviously driven by a whole bunch of things, whether it's religion, whether it's the place that you originally came from.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And if people decide that that is much more worthy to hand down than wherever the place is they found themselves, then those diasporas become self-sustaining, and in some respects, I suppose, do get to the point you've just talked about, which is uh uh an enclave which is uh effectively under uh control of whoever that that group might be because of the nature of the diaspora.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a very, very good point.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh so so, yes, an enclave or what you might call a ghetto is a colony.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: Um and yes, I have read Paul Collier's book, and uh just to be absolutely clear, I mean, he he's not against immigration, and nor am I.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: No, he's not, nor you.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: He isn't he is in favor of the control of immigration because precisely because if if you've got large numbers of people coming from one part of the world and landing in another at the same time or in a short space of time, naturally, quite naturally, they congregate with their own kind and uh they don't integrate, and uh that can cause problems for social cohesion.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: So in the early noughties, when I was living in Leeds, um I remember having a convers.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: There were some there were some riots in Leeds-Bradford, not all involving uh young Asian men, also white men.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: Um but I remember asking the faith advisor to the Bishop of Bradford what what were the Anglican churches doing to try and uh build bridges between um the white community and and the Asian community in Bradford?
14:23
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, we try.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that they're not interested.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Why?
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Because they have a self-contained community.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: They they marry among um among their own, they trade with their own, they speak their own language, and they're self-contained.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think um I think that that is a problem uh for for larger social cohesion.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's not it's not inappropriate.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, strictly speaking, given all that we've said, it's not inappropriate to refer to that as a kind of colony.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Um uh because it's it's not integrated.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: And that that would be a feature of a colony of a Greek colony in North Africa or Sicily.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: It's not integrated into a larger, a larger nation.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, uh I was speaking with Harrison Pitt and Connor Tomlinson about this recently.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: I joined them on their show Deprogrammed, which I think you might have been on as well.
15:16
SPEAKER_03: Actually, I think I have, yes.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh we we spoke a little bit about uh the nature of liberalism, and I know Patrick Denine has advanced this argument which liberalism was so successful in the achievement of desire and the state being used to enable people to become very autonomous, that in the end you can lose a sense of cohesion and you end up governing over a ragtag bunch of autonomous individuals uh who uh are fairly deracinated from the culture, but also those who do stick together, it's they are communities that don't really speak to each other.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose that there might be a recognition of this by our own political class because, as I mentioned in that interview, you that leads to hearing our Prime Minister Sakia Starmer refer to Britain's communities.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've we've we've shifted from the talk of a unity uh to communities, which suggests that there is a a division and perhaps does nods to what we've just been speaking about.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Um Nigel, you you wrote one of the lines in your book, Colonialism, uh, I'm sure contentious with uh some people who who see it as being a force for bad and being driven by certain motifs, whether it's uh whether it's greed, whether it's white supremacy or or what have you.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: You wrote there was no essential motivation behind the British Empire.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Try to describe that for the listener who has a certain view of what the Empire was.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: Um so let's let's go back to the beginning.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Um and the beginnings are in the 1500s and early 1600s.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Um in the 1500s you get um English um English um seamen um crossing the Atlantic and setting up or trying to set up bases on the eastern coast of North America.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: So what are they doing there?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh do they have interest in taking over North America?
17:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, um not at that point.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh they're there partly because they've heard tales of gold.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: So they're they're in search of of of gold.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: And I mean that might sound uh rapacious and grubby to us, but hey, um in the in the 1800s, um well, yes, in the 1800s, uh you have Chinese people going to Australia and Malaya in search of gold because people want to make themselves better off.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Um some of us play the loffery because we we want to become filthy wealthy.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: It's no, it's no different, except we don't have to take the risk of crossing the Atlantic.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh anyway, uh so some people were in search of gold, uh, which they didn't find, but also they were commissioned by the Crown to make life difficult for the Spanish.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh the Spanish were shipping bullion from um Spanish colonies in um South America and the Caribbean to Spain, and Spain posed a mortal threat to England.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Um so the irony there is that part of the origins of the English Empire in the 1500s was anti-imperial.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Right?
18:33
SPEAKER_01: They were against the Spanish Empire.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh roughly a little later, uh early 1600s, you have the East India Company set up.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: This is a company that uh had a royal monopoly um to trade with India.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: So you have English merchants going out to India.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Um why to trade, why?
18:56
SPEAKER_01: To make money.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: No shame in that.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, but one thing leads to another in India and and and indeed in North America, and uh so you have you have the East India Company setting up uh trading posts with the permission of local rulers, and then the um local rulers end up fighting wars with their neighbors, and they call upon their mates in the East India Company and say, Hey, hey, can you come and give us a hand?
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh because war is not good for trade, uh, war is not good for the economy, uh, the East India Company did have an interest in peace.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: It may not have have an interest particularly in having in seeing one Indian prince beat another, but it didn't have an interest in peace.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: So um helping one Indian prince um um overcome another, maybe the Indian prince had been attacked, um, was in the company's interests.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: They did that, and they got rewarded, sometimes with land, sometimes with porks.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And over time, um, they gradually acquire more and more territory.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Um and and um India until 1858 was not ruled by the crown, it was ruled by a company.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: Um it was only after the um horrors of the Indian mutiny of 1857 that the British government took control away from the East India Company and India became a uh uh the possession of the crown.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Um so there we have, you know, we have we have uh we have certainly people going out to try and make a better life for themselves.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: And of course, in in uh North America in particular, in the late 1700s and most of all in the 1800s, you have hundreds of thousands of um uh British people, Irish people, Scottish people crossing the Atlantic in search of a better life, often fleeing poverty and famine in Scotland and and um England and Ireland.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Um so the irony there is um the immigrants who went across to North America to to achieve a better life there, their motivation is no different from the people who are trying to cross the Channel right now.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, we we may, and I do, I I I do think illegal immigration has to be stopped.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh sympathetic though I might be to the people who are trying to build a better life.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Um but the motivation may be okay, but the the means in the case of illegal migrants is not.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Um and uh um but but again, in terms of what motivated the empire.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: And then um uh yes, yes, sometimes you you you get people who are um professional military folk and they like to do their stuff and they They go and invade territory they shouldn't invade, um, because you know what's a soldier for except fighting.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Um but then, but then you get the abolition of slavery uh in the early 1800s, and the British were among the first peoples in the history of the world to abolish slave trading and slavery, and from 1807 onwards, um the British used their growing imperial power to suppress slavery from Brazil across Africa, across India, Malaya, uh, Australia to New Zealand.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so there was also a humanitarian motive.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: So when I say no, there's no single motive.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Um the whole array of motives, and not all of them were bad.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: And no um economic exploitation and just conquering other peoples for the fun of it was not generally the case.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: What what are some of the goods that the British Empire produced?
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Um quite a number of them, and if if if let me encourage your listeners to go buy my book and look on page 277, you'll see a bit a long list of good stuff, preceded on page 276 by a shorter list of bad stuff.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Um which we can come on to, by the way.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to tilt this all too heavily in one favored.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: We'll just be accused of being shills for evils, I think, otherwise.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, and and whitewashing the empire.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: Um so some of the some of the good stuff, um um the imposition of imperial authority um did end uh inter-tribal warfare um in New Zealand, um um in South Africa and elsewhere.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh, because when you have an over overarching authority, uh it helps to stop squabbles between people who are subject to it.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: The authority can control and manage the the conflicts.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: So that was good, and that was also it was good not only because it uh lessened the loss of life, um, caused people to be less generally fearful.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: It was also good, of course, for economic prosperity, because war is not good for economic prosperity on the whole.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Um so it was that.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Um also from 1840 till 1920s, I think, the British Empire was committed to free trade.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, that meant that um English manufacturers of uh of cloth, uh English manufacturers who who produced mass-produced cloth through industrial methods could ship it out to India and undercut the prices of uh cloth produced by artisans in India, which was not good for the in native producers.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: Um the other hand, um the imperial free trade allowed um Indian entrepreneurs to send their sons to Cambridge and then uh observe industrial practices in Manchester, uh, take back plant and expertise to India, build steel mills and textile mills in the 1890s, so that by the 1930s, um, India, I think, was the fourth largest producer of steel in the world, and the mills were owned by Indians.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, you may have noticed well, who who who who owns what little remains of the British steel industry in South India.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: Tatar Steel.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Tatar is uh was an Indian industrialist who sent his son to Cambridge in the late 9th century, and uh he built it, he began to build his empire under the British.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um, so uh there was that.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: Um there was also the the uh exportation of liberal institutions um um and of a uh extraordinarily incorrupt civil service, most famously in India, but also in in Africa.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Um you may not like bureaucrats, but it it sure helps if they're honest.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: And the British in India, and again, in India, you the senior civil service was populated by by the British, and there were about 1,200 of them.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, but they were conscientious public administrators.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: And you get you get um the tradition of the rule of law, um, impartial courts, you get a free press.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: You don't get democracy until 1930s in India, but then but then it was only in 1928 that men and women got got the vote in equal terms in Britain.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Um you don't get democracy, but you do get a free press, and the free press in Hong Kong, in India, in South Africa, um, often run not by Brits but by natives, could be fiercely critical of colonial government.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: And the judiciary in Kenya during the Malmo um uprising of the 1950s and 60s was fiercely critical of colonial government.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: And uh um so the British exported liberal institutions that that held colonial government to account in the way that government in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia to this day is not held to account.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: And my final well, uh two more um points on the positive stuff.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Um final point would be that um, the point would be 1945, the British Empire was committed to fight Nazi Germany.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: And between May 1940 and June 41, May 1940 when France fell, June 41 when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the British Empire offered Nazi Germany the only military resistance, with the sole exception of Greece.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, um um uh uh just to toot the Empire's trumpet, uh right now, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Britain, and the United States, all parts of the old British Empire at one point are among the most prosperous and most liberal countries on earth.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And according to the World Values Survey over a year or so ago, um Britain, Australia, and Canada are among the least countries on earth.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, excuse me, the least racist countries on earth.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: In sharp con in sharp contrast to China, Russia, and Japan.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: So the the the I rest my case, my lord.
29:04
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29:39
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, Billards, uh, and I can actually call you that.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: I um I I was wondering in my mind there how the nature of power uh as exercised in the British Empire came to be.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose as someone who is an Anglican priest and knows a lot about the history of these British Isles, is in my mind I was thinking, okay, we've got uh a very long history, which people say particularly started to bud when the Anglo-Saxons came here and set up this this kind of free and easy government in some respects, and a relative liberty amongst peoples, and that started to spread amongst the the Celtic fringe and and what have you.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And um, and then in in my mind, I think, okay, well, the Bible itself as a tract, I know the Russians have orthodox, but perhaps a different historical set of links going on there with their um ties to the the Mongols and various things.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: I think Peter Francpan has said Russian development and the corruption there could well be because of uh interactions with the Mongols in the past, and that's how the oligarchy came around.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, back to back to those that the the British Empire sprouted, thinking about our developmental history, you then got the Bible, which is effectively the only book in which um, or at least at that time, where uh those in the positions of power were being criticized and it was being logged and it was being celebrated, and um that was a total inversion of, I suppose, the the antique world.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And so d do you think uh I'm picking up on your point here about how people could be fiercely critical of colonial government.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Um that didn't happen everywhere.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Is that because of the things that I raised, or do you think there's something else behind it that's that made the British uh colonial governors stay their hands in the face of criticism from their subjects?
31:53
SPEAKER_01: That's that's uh really interesting question, John.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Um so there there's certainly a a long biblical tradition um of um skepticism or criticism of of royal monarchical power.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Um and so the the the ancient Hebrew prophets uh would often be fiercely critical of the abuse of power, not just by rulers but also by the rich.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: Um did that influence um those who administer the British Empire?
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think it did.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: I think it did.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh um and it came to influence the the notion that those who have power have it for public service, for the service of the whole public.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: Um and that that would that would be connected with the the gradual uh taming of monarchical power and the history of particularly of England.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, we all know the well would my generation all that in school, I'm not sure younger generations learn this anymore.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: The constitutional development um here in in England and and uh Scotland and Britain, um whereby yes, the the the king becomes increasingly um accountable to and um um um controlled by Parliament.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: Um in the medieval period uh French observers were astonished at the extent to which the English king um was was was um limited by his council.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh now, of course, the council gradually expanded.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: Initially it was just lords, then it was lords and commoners, commoners would be merchants, and then as we know in the 19th century, 20th century the electorate expands.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: But even in the medieval times, the sense that the king was not absolute, and and on the two occasions in the history of England when kings tried to become absolute, most famously in um the case of Charles I, he lost his head, and then James II tried to emulate that and lost his throne.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh so um, yes, I think there is a connection between, as it were, the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition and the notion of accountable, limited government.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is complicated because there were also um people in the 1600s appealing to the Bible in favor of absolute monarchy.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: See, you know, you the Bible is a rather it's it's a it's a it's it's a book with many opinions, because it's it's it's 60 different bits of literature created over about a thousand years, so they don't don't all so say the same thing.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Um uh but there is certainly a strong stream there.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, for example, just in terms of kind of um institutional connection, um up until the reign of William the Third on Maundy Thursday, where the practice the practice was that the monarch would get on his knees and wash the feet of a number of his subjects in imitation of Jesus.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately apparently William III didn't like doing that, so now the monarch hands out arms or or uh uh charity, uh, which is not, in my view, nearly as symbolically powerful.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Um but but uh and also in the coronation service.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one reason I'm uh why I'm in favor of the monarchy as we now have it is that I I do think it's very symbolically healthy that the head of state, when receiving the symbol of his or her authority in the form of the crown, does so on her knees or sitting.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh the crown is not seized like Napoleon, it's not put in his own head like Napoleon did, it is given uh from above.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: Um so that so the monarch is himself subject to a higher authority and is not absolute.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: So I think there is certainly a connection between biblical Christian tradition and that um that development of the limited executive and therefore space for criticism of it.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Fascinating.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's not fall on the trap of whitewashing.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: There'll be some people keen ears going, okay, you've talked about the good, you've talked about why Britain was uh for the most part that it could be uh a fair and just governor.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's talk about the injustice.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what are some of the things that we really truly should be ashamed of uh in in our history as imperial governors?
37:17
SPEAKER_01: So so just a qualification.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: Um when I first began to think about these things um about eight years ago.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I talked in terms, I thought I wrote an article in the London Times saying that we Brits can find cause in our imperial past for both pride and shame.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but someone persuaded me actually that's not appropriate because you and I didn't do it.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: So we we we've no reason to feel guilty ourselves.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: So I I talk now in terms of uh admiration and lament.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: So I I lament things that that um if not my ancestor directly, then ancestors of of um my British people did.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: So what what are the lamentable things?
38:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh well to be lamented is the importation of disease.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Um uh probably the most devastating um effect of colonization upon natives in uh North America um and um in Australia were diseases brought by Europeans and and the British, um diseases to which we become immune because we've been used to living with domesticated animals, and we become immune to the germs that they spread.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: But the natives of North America were not immune, nor were Aboriginal peoples.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh uh so when Europeans first landed and first started interacting with the natives, um the spread of disease could have been what was actually devastating.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: Um one American historian says that in the 1700s, uh if if a Native American people suffered successive epidemics uh uh of disease over a 50-year period, they would lose 90% of their population.
39:19
SPEAKER_01: Um so that was that was terrible.
39:22
SPEAKER_01: And that's one reason why a lot of land was vacant.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing um no one intended to do that.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: Um there were a couple of a couple, only a couple of possible occasions when the British, once during the French and Indian Indian Wars of the 1750s, 60s, possibly during the American Revolutionary War, when the British may have um used disease as a biological weapon.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: But the there are only one or two occasions.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Um most of the devastation was caused inadvertently, and what you do inadvertently you can't be blamed for.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: So, by analogy, uh let's suppose the Communist Party of China did not deliberately spread COVID.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we we we we we may want to blame them for not shutting their airports sooner.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh but the disease was spread, I think, inadvertently, but seven million people died.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: Um and also, um, just to confirm that point, um, of course it wasn't just Europeans who spread disease.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: Um it is, I think, widely accepted that smallpox first arrived on the coast of the northern coast of Australia, uh, brought by fishermen from what's now Indonesia.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: So, spread of disease is unfortunately a universal phenomenon.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not only white people who do it, and most of it was done uh inadvertently.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh so that was the probably the most devastating thing.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh more more culpable, lamentable things uh would have been, yes, uh the the uh the unjust seizure of land um and the the expulsion of native peoples.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: It happened in North America, it happened in Africa, it happened in Australia.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: It didn't always happen.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't always how land was acquired, but it did happen.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh and sometimes um um mur um massively murderous killings uh of uh native peoples by British people in Australia or North America, excessive violence.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: Um and yes, sometimes economic exploitation.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean uh a lot of people are very critical of the exploitation of black Africans in South African mines in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: Um conditions were very poor.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm I I I tend to be a bit resistant to that simply because um when is it when they when is exploitation, exploitation?
42:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean African workers were not compelled to work for the mines.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: They chose to come.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: They were encouraged by or coerced somewhat by by the position of taxes.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: But they they came and they came again to work.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: And yes, the conditions were poor, but the conditions were poor for miners in in Northumberland at the same time.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Um and partly through through um the pressure from imperial authorities, the um the mine owners were forced to improve the conditions.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: Um but just as a matter of, I mean, I assume, I assume that there were certainly cases of uh unfair exploitation of native workers.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: They weren't paid enough or uh they were worked too hard.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: Um but but again, I mean, there was exploitation in England at the time, and no doubt there's been exploitation by native entrepreneurs in post-colonial times.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: But this reminds me, of course, of the the probably the greatest lamentable stain on the record of the British Empire, which was the 150 plus years of slave trading and slavery, starting about 1650, ending in the trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh that that clearly what was the greatest stain, and uh that's why the our contemporary um um um decolonizing critics um want us to equate uh colonialism with slavery, the Colonialism and slavery is often spoken with in the same breath as if it was the same thing.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: And uh um um while while the the uh British involvement in slavery was certainly lamentable, um I just point out that the second half of the British Empire's life was committed to anti-slavery, so you can't identify them.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: There was both.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh fortunately, the anti-slavery followed the slavery and replaced it.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh the other thing to say about slavery is just to remember that um um for reasons that bear thinking about, uh slave trading in slavery was universal.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Um Europeans did not go into the interior of Africa to seize slaves.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: Slaves were brought to them by Africans who had been enslaving other Africans and selling them to the Romans before they sold them to Arabs before they sold them to Europeans.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Um so the British, you know, we can lament British involvement in slavery.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: We need to remember that most people were involved in enslavement and slavery.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we should be proud and admiring of the fact that um toward the end of the 1700s more and more Britons became convinced that slavery was was abhorrent and should be stopped.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: And they stopped it.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: Thank goodness.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Here, here.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: Your book, when it came out, we talked about those decolonizing critics who would equate, as you say, colonialism with slavery, and suggest that this is the the biggest story within the imperial history of Britain.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, what was the response of former colonial subjects, perhaps, or at least people from those regions and countries that read your book?
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh how have you found people have responded to the arguments that you've laid out of the good, the bad, and the ugly?
45:59
SPEAKER_01: Um so, John, um you would expect that um the responses would be various.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Um as they had been among among uh British people too.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: Um there are there are fiercely opposing views on of these things.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh but um one of the first things that I learnt when I when I was dragged into the culture wars on this issue in December 2017 by um several hundred academics who wanted to shut down uh to to silence me um uh was that um people with non-white skins would write to me and say we agree with you.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: So, uh for example, um I got an email in December 17 after my after after um the row about my views on empire got into the press from um a consult uh uh a palliative care palliative medical consultant whom I'd met ten years previously, uh who was British but but of Indian ethnicity.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: And uh he wrote to me and said, Nigel, um you may not know, but my grandfather was in the Jalin Wallabug in Amritsar in April 1919, when General Dyer infamously opened fire, uh, ordered his Gurkha troops to open fire uh on what turned out to be an unarmed um civilian crowd killing several hundred.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Uh so my grandfather was there, he said, but I agree with you, the British Empire contained good as well as bad.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: Um and um uh there are plenty of I mean, and another example would be this are just anecdotes, John, but they're indicative of the fact that it is not true that all of the subjects of empire or the children of the subject of empire or the grandchildren of the subject of empire think the same thing, which which is the impression you you might get if you listen to to white champions of the colonial oppressed.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, why would you expect um all Indians or all Nigerians to think the same thing?
48:31
SPEAKER_01: Um so um a couple of years ago there was uh a document produced by a Church of England body um um uh about the Church of England paying reparations for slavery.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: And it also uh um recommended that the church should apologize uh to um Africans for the uh denigration and suppression of tradition traditional African religion.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: Um and when I uh showed this to um a young uh Nigerian woman journalist, common novelist, Christian, she was incandescent with with uh dismay and and uh indignation uh because um from her point of view uh her people have been liberated from benighted traditional African religion uh um uh into Christianity, and there are now 700 million African Christians.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh they weren't forced to become Christian.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: Um so so um one thing that surprised me, John, was pleasantly surprised that there are the there are people with non-white skins who agree with me, and in fact, um uh a project that I had launched in in July 2017 on ethics and empire, um I I I designed it with uh a very eminent um historian of empire.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: And when when I came under um um became the the object of a campaign to shut me down, um my white uh um historian colleague abruptly resigned of the project.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Um so I had to go looking for um other historians to repopulate it, and in the course of 2018 I found them, and I found four new historians who came on board the project, three of whom did not have white skins.
50:46
SPEAKER_01: One was a British Iranian, another was a British Indian, and the other, no, actually, the other two were British Indians, one of whom, uh Zeria Mazani, who died sadly last year, uh his grandfather was um um a servant of the Raj.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh when I say servant, I mean he was a high-ranking servant, uh, but he was he was actually committed to British rule in India, an Indian committed to British rule in India.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: His father, on the other hand, was an Indian nationalist.
51:18
SPEAKER_01: And Zurier started off on the left, and by the end of his life, he was on the right.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: And he was he was a doubty a doubty defender of the British of British rule in India, not uncritical, but a defender uh against the um those who think it was just nothing but a litany of racism and oppression.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: And Zaria was uh he was born right at the end of British rule in India, and he was the son of someone campaigning for Indian independence.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: So uh of course there are fierce critics of our British the British record um in India and Africa and uh among Aboriginal people in Australia, but they are the only voices.
52:00
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, this this marries up with my experience.
52:03
SPEAKER_00: I I worked with a um the British Nigerian chap uh about seven years ago now, and I asked him as someone who'd come over to uh London at the age of 12 how he felt.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: Does he feel like he's he's British now, having spent the last 30 years here?
52:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh what what does he think about the the past relationship between Nigeria and and Britain?
52:29
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, of course I uh I feel like you've got a bit of an identity crisis going on, uh, but he recognises the good of Britain.
52:38
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, he says it was the first time I'd heard someone uh say this because these are the conversations you typically don't have because he told you you shouldn't.
52:47
SPEAKER_00: But he said there were there was no doubt in my mind that it was a better governed society, and he started to tell me a lot about the corruption and the violence and the targeting of those who've lived in um western countries and they come back and he says, you know, I've got to I've got to wear different clothes.
53:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've got to wear clothes that aren't the ones that I wear in Britain because then they'll know I've got money.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: And also, even he was talking about bureaucracy as well.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: He said, There's so such a low trust there that people, if an articulated lorry pulls up by the side of the road, everyone runs away in fright because they can't be sure it's been strapped down properly and it might crush them.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: Um so these were these were these were stories which I'd I'd never even thought would get brought up.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: But he said, Yeah, of course.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I think uh on the whole it would be uh he said, I'm conflicted because it was better government, but would I be prefer preferred Nigeria to be governed by its own people?
53:43
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then he said, But I just don't think they're doing a particularly good job of it.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: And you don't really know what to say to that when you you're in the workplace.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: Um I I I uh I uh um in the book I I quote uh Chunua Chebe, who is uh a famous nationalist, African nationalist novelist, um uh who on the one hand, you you know, you can find him saying, you know, he wasn't at all happy about Brits coming in and governing his people.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: Um on the other hand, his father was a Christian missionary, whom he admired, and he went to a Christian school, which he valued.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: And after independence, of course, um Nigeria um degenerated in the civil war over Biafra in the 1970s and suffered all sorts of um institutional dysfunction.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: And just before he died in 2013, he was being interviewed by some Iranian journalists who were pressing him to condemn the British Empire or British colonialism, and he refused.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: He said, no, it's complicated.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: He said uh he said um he said uh British justice was severe, but it was predictable.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: And he said uh you know, institutions worked.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: Um so he said it's complicated.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so I I yeah, I think I think you you can, and I do, um, I appeal to to um non-white witnesses, I appeal to um uh the who've governed, or the children of the native governed, uh uh to to defend the the empire.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the only way to do it, I think.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you if you're gonna back up those those points.
55:36
SPEAKER_00: Um before before I wrap up the main body of the show and move to two subscriber-only questions, which can be relatively quickfire.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to keep you all night, Nigel.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: You've already been very good with your time.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: Last question that I ask all of my guests in the main body of the show is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life that you thought was previously unshakable, perhaps?
56:01
SPEAKER_00: And what was it that led you to change your mind?
56:05
SPEAKER_01: You didn't warn me about this.
56:09
SPEAKER_01: It caused it my life.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: Well off the top of my head, John.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm sixty-nine, I was born in nineteen fifty-five, I grew up in the sixties.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: Um I I um I think I I kind of absorbed a sense of of national diffidence and and and self-uncertainty.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh where it was it it was it was for a long time, you know, if you if you spoke up in favour of Britain, you were regarded as kind of naive or stupid or unsophisticated.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: Um well, um one of the advantages of older age is it's it's a dangerous combination of two things.
57:14
SPEAKER_01: First of all, you finally figure out what you think, and secondly, you care less what other people think.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh so you say what you think, and and I have recent recent years been describing myself as a British patriot.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not a fascist, I'm not a Nazi, uh, I don't think Britain is perfect.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but if you love something, it's only if you love something that you that then it can disappoint you, and Britain disappoints me a lot.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I think this is a this is a great country, and I want it to be I want it to be its better self.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm I'm fed up with with having to hide that, and I'm not hiding it anymore.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's that's one one thing that's changed.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's not that my views have changed.
57:56
SPEAKER_01: Um I think the views have always been there, but I I speak them with with greater confidence.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I if people want to dismiss me as a a Nazi because of saying that, then that's on them.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: It's it's just stupid.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so I that's that's one thing.
58:15
SPEAKER_00: Nigel, it's been an absolute pleasure.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me and for being so generous with your time.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh, look forward to seeing you produce the books and your your other projects you're working on, and I'd love to be able to invite you back on to talk about those in future.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks, John.
58:31
SPEAKER_01: It's been great talking to you, and I'm glad uh that that uh uh we've talked about some of the important things that I hope your listeners will have uh learnt from.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: And yes, I'll be glad to come back in the future.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful news.
58:43
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Take care.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are run making it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
59:15
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59:24
SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.