Colonialism
A Moral Reckoning
By Nigel Biggar
William Collins, 480 pages, $21.99
In 2017, when Nigel Biggar was already in his seventh decade of life and his 10th year as Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, one could easily understand if he had contented himself with resting on the laurels of an already distinguished career. He had served at Oxford and held chairs at Leeds and Trinity College, Dublin. He wrote well-regarded studies on the ethics of post-conflict justice and reconciliation, Christians in public life, just war theory, and human rights.
Instead of retiring, he launched a five-year project with Oxford’s McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life to study the record of imperial history (primarily, but not exclusively, the British variant) and subject it to rigorous scrutiny “in order to understand and reflect on the ethical terms in which empires have been viewed historically.”
In Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, Biggar—a priest of the Church of England and ex officio as Regius Professor, canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford—delivers a damning tally of what he forthrightly labels the evils of the centuries-long British colonial enterprise meriting moral condemnation. These acts were “not only culpable wrongdoing or injustice, but also unintended harms,” including: “brutal slavery; the epidemic spread of devastating disease; economic and social disruption; the unjust displacement of natives by settlers; failures of colonial government to prevent settler abuse and famine; elements of racial alienation and racist contempt; policies of needlessly wholesale cultural suppression; miscarriages of justice; instances of unjustifiable military aggression and indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force; and the failure to admit native talent to the higher echelons of colonial government.”
Had he stopped with the enumeration of these evils, Biggar would have been in what constitutes the mainstream of the academy today, although many of those who emerged as his critics undoubtedly were less than comfortable with his use of the language of good and evil. What created an outcry, however, was his insistence that there was also a “credit column in the British imperial ledger.” He argued, for instance: “If the empire initially presided over the slave trade and slavery, it renounced both in the name of basic human equality and then led endeavors to suppress them worldwide for a hundred and fifty years.”
Moreover, the imperial system contributed ultimately to the creation of a worldwide free market that opened new economic opportunities for producers and entrepreneurs in the colonies and eventually independent states. This heterodoxy has brought down on Biggar no little rancor among his fellow academics, with multiple conferences and even one recently published “anti-colonial” anthology in which the various contributors piled on to anathematize him by name 376 times in the volume’s 300 pages. Ironically, it was the first Black person to serve as leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and, consequently, as Leader of the Opposition, who presented Biggar at the top of her list to King Charles III for appointment to a life peerage at the end of 2024.
The basic premise in Colonialism, however, is not all that surprising when one considers that its author is steeped in the Anglican ethos of the via media and the ascetical theology of the English tradition, thus bringing a fresh perspective, deeply imbued with Christian humanism, to a subject whose treatment has otherwise become hackneyed. In contrast, Biggar posits that “we ought not to judge the past by the present.”
First, because “human beings are always in the process of learning morally, and that some moral truths that are obvious to us were not obvious to our ancestors,” we “should forgive our ancestors for not perceiving some moral truths quite as clearly as we do, just as we shall surely need forgiveness from our own grandchildren for our own moral dullness.” Second, because “the circumstances of the past are often very different from our own,” sound moral judgments need to take into account human limits and frailty to ensure that “our morality is not self-righteously, rigidly moralistic.”
Biggar is the rare academic today who declares his allegiance forthrightly: “I am a Christian by conviction and a theologian by profession, so my ethics are shaped, first and foremost, by Christian principles and tradition.” As he recently explained to a British audience, his interest in Christian theology has never been simply academic: “From the very beginning it has been driven by a persistent desire to reach the position of being able to address, with Christian integrity and practical wisdom, important issues facing this country.”
And, as he asserts in Colonialism, the Christian ethical worldview is able to contribute to public discourse precisely because it is realistic: not only is it grounded in universal moral principles, but also, thanks to its faith in a God who looks with mercy on the limitations and burdens of human beings, a compassionate appreciation of the constraints under which they often have to act.
While the sheer scope and, frankly, length of Colonialism can be daunting, it is an important contribution in the best tradition of Anglican public theology, especially in this historical moment when contrived guilt and shallow virtue signaling—not only in the political arena but also in churches, often in the latter by leaders with paltry theological credentials—have sapped the self-confidence of both the citizens of democratic states and the members of many Christian communities when their witness is most needed. For offering not nostalgia but greater moral clarity as a corrective to endless diffidence and self-flagellation, Lord Biggar renders a signal service to both church and state.
The Rev. Canon Dr. J. Peter Pham is priest associate at St. Paul’s, K Street, in Washington, D.C. From 2018 to 2021 he served in the U.S. Department of State as Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and Sahel Regions of Africa, with the personal rank of Ambassador.
