Biggar’s Colonialism: A Call to Nuance and Critique
“Was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?” This question is, according to Sunil Khilnani, indirectly implied in Caroline Elkins’s book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag. Khilnani, in reviewing Elkins’s book in The New Yorker, argues that Elkins makes a compelling case that ought not to be dismissed.[1] I would argue that, more often than not, challenging such a claim is in great danger of not just dismissal but “cancellation.” Such an ethos of empire condemnation is the fruit of post-colonial thought. The chief seed-sower of empire-condemnation, Edward Said. His tome, Orientalism, is the sacred text of post-colonial ideology.[2] The harvest is an overall cultural ethos in which to challenge the progressive assumption that all “empire” is evil is to tread in hot water.
Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar endured the scalding when his book Ethics and Empire became the talk of the contentious town known as the internet.[3] What transgression did Biggar commit? The unforgivable sin of defending empire.
Colonialism Summary
Biggar’s book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning is a re-examination of the post-colonialist anthem that empire is evil and the history of colonization is monopolized solely by heinous acts of injustice. Biggar does not defend evil acts of colonization. However, Biggar’s contention is that one cannot sweep over the history of the British Empire with a singular brush of injustice. And it is a gross exaggeration to equate the atrocities of the British Empire with Nazi Germany.
All [the British Empire’s] evils are lamentable, and where culpable, they merit moral condemnation. None of them, however, amounts to genocide in the proper sense of the concerted, intentional killing of all the members of a people, the paradigm of which was the Nazi policy of implementing a ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the Jews. In the history of the British Empire, there was nothing morally equivalent to Nazi concentration or death camps, or to the Soviet Gulag.[4]
Ideally, Biggar hopes to disassociate the evils of empire with the liberal, humanitarian ideals the British empire aimed at passing on to non-Western countries.[5]
Malik’s Critique
In response to Biggar’s re-evaluation of the moral challenge of “empire”, Kenan Malik writes in The Guardian that Biggar’s moral assessment is found wanting.[6] In defending western-values, Biggar’s revisionist history, according to Malik, is “a politicised history that ill-serves his aim of defending ‘western values’.”[7]
I am in agreement with Malik’s assessment of Biggar. However, I do agree with Biggar that the broad brush stroke of “injustice” over the British Empire’s history, with the extreme version of likening it to Nazi Germany, is also irresponsible. I believe there’s a call to nuance in how we understand empire. Khilnani does this when he writes,
Strains of liberalism embraced or accommodated paternalism, racism, and authoritarianism, helping provide intellectual cover for unimaginable cruelty. Yet liberal philosophies also elaborated ideas of autonomy, individuality, and collective self-rule that, in turn, seeded principles about legitimacy that anti-colonial thinkers and activists enlisted to their cause. Amid colonial condescension about their peoples’ civilizational adequacy, they sought to teach their Western liberal counterparts to imagine politics in genuinely universalist terms.[8]
A Posture for Christian Leaders
For us as Christian leaders, there are two invitations. First, in our complex world with stained histories, we must lead the way in nuanced thinking. This means avoiding binary thinking. Progressive, post-colonial groupthink that finds empire as solely evil is faulty as starry-eyed vision of empire that overlooks the many skeletons in the closet. Group-based binary thinking is a disease in our dialogue as a society. Dr. Edwin Friedman would identify the root cause as anxiety-fueled poor self-differentiation. A symptom of this, according to Friedman, is “the herd instinct.” In this, “dissent is discouraged, feelings are more important than ideas, peace will be valued over progress, comfort over novelty, and cloistered virtues over adventure. Problems are formulated in rigid either/or, black-and-white, all-or-nothing categories.”[9]
Second, for Christian leaders, we must follow the late activist and writer William Stringfellow in courageously recognizing the powers and principalities at work in human systems such as empire. The Church must not get too comfortable in society, for the Church must always be willing to critique and avoid being a servant to such a principality.[10] Stringfellow writes the following:
The course of European and American Christendom since then [Constantine arrangement], has been scandalized by bizarre happenings: The Crusades, the Inquisition, the suppression of the Peasant’s Revolt, the practice of genocide against North American Indians, the sanction of black chattel slavery in the United States, the opportune merger of white colonialism and the missionary enterprise in the nineteenth century, the seduction and surrender of the churches to Nazism—to name only a very few.[11]
Christian leaders must be willing to critique empire and obey Christ as Lord above empire. In the words of Allan Boesak in his reflection on the book of Revelation: “So John speaks from his island to the church today. He confronts us with stark choices: obedience to God and God’s Word or subjection to the Caesar, the Living God or the one who calls himself god, the Lord or the dragon, the Messiah king or the beast.”[12]
[1] Sunil Khilnani, “The British Empire Was Much Worse Than You Realize,” The New Yorker, March 28, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/the-british-empire-was-much-worse-than-you-realize-caroline-elkinss-legacy-of-violence.
[2] Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2023), 43-44.
[3] Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (London: William Collins, 2023), 1.
[4] Ibid., 276.
[5] Ibid., 297.
[6] Kenan Malik, “Colonialism by Nigel Biggar Review – a Flawed Defence of Empire,” The Guardian, February 20, 2023, sec. Books, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/20/colonialism-a-moral-reckoning-by-nigel-biggar-review-a-flawed-defence-of-empire.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Khilnani, “The British Empire Was Much Worse Than You Realize.”
[9] Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (10th Anniversary, Revised Edition) (Church Publishing, Inc., 2017), 75.
[10] J. R. Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership: Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church (100 Movements Publishing, 2023), 187.
[11] William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1973), 45-46. Found in J. R. Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership, 187.
[12] Allan Boesak, Comfort and Protest: The Apocalypse of John from a South Africa Perspective (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015), 38.
About the Author
David Beavis
David is Australian by birth, was raised in Southern California, and is the Youth and Young Adults Pastor at B4 Church in Beaverton, Oregon. David and his wife, Laura, live in Hillsboro with their dog, Coava (named after their favorite coffee shop). M.A. Theology - Talbot School of Theology B.A. Psychology - Vanguard University of Southern California6 responses to “Biggar’s Colonialism: A Call to Nuance and Critique”
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David,
What an outstanding post! Insightful and thought-provoking.
The first point for Christian leaders to “lead the way in nuanced thinking”—how does this (or maybe it doesn’t) relate to Wink’s argument that from a “Christian point of view, true patriotism acknowledges God’s sovereignty over all nations, and holds a healthy respect for God’s judgments on the pretensions of any power that seeks to impose its will on others.”? (The Powers That Be – page 62.)
David, your posts are always so insightful and profound! I love your bottom line: Obey Christ as Lord above empire or anything else. Thank you for your faithfulness in all things.
David,
Great use of Khilnani, Malik and Stringfellow…and groupthink! It is certainly a strange time when one can be cancelled when offering a critique, particularly of national history (and the present, of course). I agree that the church is a (the?) place to offer such a counter-perspective than the dominate narratives. How might the church do this and not find themselves cancelled? Great post!
David, What a great post! Thoughtful, challenging, and informed by helpful resources. I really like the way you brought a complex conversation home with your “Posture for Christian Leaders.” I always learn so much in reading your posts and appreciate the way in which you weave your broad learnings into your blog posts. Thank you!
David,
I like that you bring up the critique posed by Kenan Malik in The Guardian, who argues that Biggar’s defense of Western values overlooks the complexities and injustices of colonial history.
David, your post are always so amazing! I appreciate how you incorporated everything as well as brought such a meaningful discussion! I alwasy learn so much from you! Now write the book!