NEW YORK, NEW YORK, January 26, 2018 (New York Books, by Kenan Malik): The sun may have long ago set on the British Empire, but it never seems to set on the debate about the merits of empire. The latest controversy began when the Third World Quarterly, an academic journal known for its radical stance, published a paper by Bruce Gilley, an associate professor of political science at Portland State University in Oregon, called “The Case for Colonialism.” Fifteen of the thirty-four members on the journal’s editorial board resigned in protest, while a petition, with more than 10,000 signatories, called for the paper to be retracted. Like all such debates, this latest controversy comprises many threads. Was colonialism good or bad, and for whom, and in what ways? How should one debate these questions in academia, and in politics?
Apologists for colonialism argue that Western powers brought economic development, the rule of law, and liberties to its colonies. According to Gilley, colonialism stressed “the primacy of human lives, universal values, and shared responsibilities” and constituted a “civilizing mission” that “led to improvements in living conditions for most Third World peoples.” For many British historians, the British Empire was preeminent in achieving all this. As Niall Ferguson put it in his 2003 book Empire, “no organization in history has done more to promote the free movement of goods, capital and labor than the British Empire…. And no organization has done more to impose Western norms of law, order and governance around the world.”
If Britain could transform itself from a backward, undemocratic state into a modern industrial power, why could not any of the nations it colonized have done so, too? One answer might be that the countries that Britain colonized were even more backward than Britain was at the time, and lacked the social and intellectual resources to transform themselves as Britain did. But the reality, at least in some of its colonies, was the opposite. Consider India. At the beginning of eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was 23 percent, as large as all of Europe put together. By the time Britain left India, it had dropped to less than 4 percent. “The reason was simple,” argues Shashi Tharoor in his book Inglorious Empire. “India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain’s rise for two hundred years was financed by its depredations in India.” Britain, Tharoor argues, deliberately deindustrialized India, both through the physical destruction of workshops and machinery and the use of tariffs to promote British manufacture and strangle Indian industries.
Much more of this debate at “source” above.