Skipper

Richard Gott has always been a bit of a rancorous old leftie but his article today on the allegedly malign legacy of the British Empire is thought provoking. He argues that virtually all our annexations, impositions of settlers and other intervetions have resulted in ongoing suffering of a grievous kind. He cites Palestine where our casual dominion resulted in a form of settlement imposed by the west which he predicts will end with Israel being destroyed as a state. He surveys other examples of failure- Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, where settlement has borne tragic outcomes; India, where partition caused enormous fatalities plus ongoing problems over Kashmir; Ceylon, where white owned plantations imported workers from India with dire present day consequences; and, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq we absurdly sought to create a nation out of incompatible elements which now engage in murderous civil conflict and in Afghanistan we see the 'fourth Anglo-Afghan war in progress to be followed, as before, by an Afghan triumph'. He concludes:

'It seems that the story of Empire is being re-enacted over much of the globe, bringing violence and destruction on a scale barely envisaged in the imperial era.'

Against this it could be adduced that the empire has not rained devastation upon countries like Australia or Canada and that India, for one, has derived huge benefits from British occupation in terms of honest government, education and infrastructure. One leading historian, Niall Ferguson, has also argued that the empire provided the template for the better aspects of the modern world, like free trade and internatial law and that by being 'sacrificed' by Churchill in exchange for victory in the Second World War, it effectively saved the world from Nazism. I'm unsure about this argument however, and I look not only at the huge suffering our imperial adventures caused but also the deforming impact of its legacy of racism not to mention the occasions, as Gott has indicated, where the empire has struck back to provide something which seems like an avenging moral symmetry. But the argument is important, not just between historians but in the present day as well.