johnny crossan
Well-Known Member
We are where we are - democracy is under massive threat from without and within - we need to get a proper perspective of our colonial past. Usually the Empire created better conditions than those it replaced and was considerably more civilized than its contemporary competitors and historical predecessors. Fed up of statue destroyers and tv historians feeding the reparations industry.
Said this in another thread without response: Denigrating colonialism has been well described by the distinguished theologian Nigel Biggar as an “important way of corroding faith in the west”. The British empire, for Biggar, “was not essentially racist, exploitative or wantonly violent”. It was born out of many motives, from “cultural curiosity” to “the vocation to lift oppression”, none of which was “morally wrong”. Britain’s “involvement in slavery was nothing out of the ordinary” but its attempts to abolish it were particularly selfless given “the higher price that British consumers would have to pay for freely produced sugar”. He concedes that the empire “did contain some appalling racial prejudice”, but this was relatively marginal. Rather, “the empire’s policies… were driven by the conviction of the basic human equality of members of all races”.
