The idea that there could be some salubrious aspects to creating an empire (which of course means “colonization”) is about as taboo an idea you can have these days—save defending slavery. And that’s what Nigel Biggar discovered when he wanted to explore the pros and cons of empires. First, part of his c.v. from Wikipedia:
Nigel John Biggar CBE (born 14 March 1955) is a British Anglican priest and theologian. From 2007 to 2022, he was the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford.
The article is about two projects of Biggar: an academic unit about colonialism at Oxford, and then his new book on the same topic. Click below to read how the Oxford project created hysterical opposition, and then how Biggar’s book on colonialism after first exciting a lot of interest at the publisher Bloomsbury, was effectively canceled when there was a public outcry. Bloomsbury then lied about why they had delayed publication. Further, Biggar’s five year project on “Ethics and Empire,” beginning in 2017 at Oxford, aroused such hostility that most of the project’s participants quit as The Offended tried to shut it down.
Now I’m no fan of colonialism and certainly not of empire, but I am also no fan of suppressing speech, either. If there’s a case to be made for the creation of empires like the Roman or British Empires, it should be hashed out and its proponents allowed to make their best case. How else can opponents hone or modify their ideas if the “case for empire” is simply shut down? To me, this is like banning Holocaust denialism, which I also believe should not be shut down. From reading about that denialism (most notably in Michael Shermer’s book Denying History) , I’ve been better able to argue for why it’s bogus to deny the Holocaust (you wouldn’t believe how clever and slippery the denialists are!). You can listen to a sample chapter of Shermer’s book here.
Back to Biggar. I admit that I don’t know squat about his views, either expressed in his Oxford project or his book, Colonialism: A Moral reckoning, which finally was published by William Collins. Here’s the published version; click to see the Amazon link:
The Project at Oxford. (Quotes from the article indented):
What had I done to deserve all this unexpected attention? Three things. In late 2015 and early 2016, I had offered a partial defense of the late-19th-century imperialist Cecil Rhodes during the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at Oxford. Then, in late November 2017, I published a column in The Times of London, in which I referred approvingly to Bruce Gilley’s controversial article “The Case for Colonialism,” and argued that we Britons have reason to feel pride as well as shame about our imperial past. Note: pride, as well as shame. And a few days later, third, I finally got around to publishing an online account of the “Ethics and Empire” project, whose first conference had in fact been held the previous July. Contrary to what the critics seemed to think, this project isn’t designed to defend the British Empire, or even empire in general. Rather, it aims to study evaluations of empire from ancient China to the modern period, to understand and reflect on the ethical terms in which empires have been viewed historically.
. . .That was quite enough to rouse the academic forces of repression. Responding to the online description of “Ethics and Empire,” Priyamvada Gopal—then a reader in postcolonial studies at the University of Cambridge, now promoted to professor—tweeted, “OMG. This is serious shit…. We need to SHUT THIS DOWN” (Dec. 13, 2017, 8:45 a.m.). A few minutes later, she issued a call to arms to “Oxford postcolonial academics” (8:49 a.m.). Among those who responded were Max Harris, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, who tweeted, “Totally agree—more needs to be done” (5:08 p.m.), and “working on a response” (Dec. 14, 2017, 2:30 a.m.); and Jon Wilson, senior lecturer in history at King’s College London, who wrote, “We need a big well-argued letter signed by everyone who writes on empire” (Dec. 16, 2017, 12:39 a.m.), and, “I’ll be in touch with James [McDougall]” (2:14 a.m.). When the Oxford Open Letter appeared on Dec. 19, Max Harris and Jon Wilson were among its signatories, and James McDougall, professor of history at Oxford, was listed as its senior co-author. When the worldwide one followed on Dec. 21, Priyamvada Gopal’s name came first, then Jon Wilson’s.
Shortly afterward, Oxford’s Centre for Global History took its cue, almost verbatim, from the Oxford letter and announced on its website that it “is not involved” in the “Ethics and Empire” project headed by me and “other scholars at Oxford”—coyly declining to name John Darwin, who, until very recently, had been the Centre’s own director. That this was a statement of boycotting intent, not of mere fact, was evidenced by the Centre’s obliquely critical claim “to move beyond the problematic balance sheet of empires’ advantages and disadvantages” and to “shun imperial nostalgia.” When this notice was first posted, one of the Centre’s own members reported to me that no one had consulted him about it.
I am so tired of the moral fervor of people like Gopal, who screams “We need to SHUT THIS DOWN!” It is the cry of those who want to keep everyone from hearing what the screamer doesn’t want to hear herself. It is censorship, pure and simple.
Oxford, of course, followed Gopal when the open letters appeared, severing official ties with Biggar’s project. And several of his colleagues in the project simply resigned. But the project didn’t die: Biggar recruited four other historians and they’ve had three annual conferences.
The Book
The main goal of Biggar’s piece is to shame Bloomsbury Publishing for the way it treated him: first accepting his book with great approbation, and then, when the outcry began, “indefinitely delaying publication” without giving Biggar a reason, though he (and we) well know what the reason was. It was Empire, Jake! Biggar’s account does indeed make Bloomsbury look pretty dreaful, and, to use Biggar’s word, “craven.” Publishers are not in the business of putting out books that conform only to dominant ideologies; they are there to publish books that can edify, offend, and, overall, encourage discussion. Biggar’s book falls in that class.
His account:
The facts are these. In the wake of the public row in December 2017, I was approached by Robin Baird-Smith of Bloomsbury Publishing, who suggested that I should write a book on colonialism. Initially doubtful, I gave it some thought and eventually decided to take up his suggestion. In May 2018, Bloomsbury and I signed a contract. [JAC: Baird-Smith is now the senior publisher at Bloomsbury.]
Thirty months later, I delivered a manuscript, a nail-biting eight hours short of the deadline. On Jan. 5, Robin wrote to me, saying, “I consider this to be a book of major importance, certainly one of the most important on my list for some time…. Your research is exhaustive. I am speechless. Your argument is conveyed with care and precision. I say again, this is such an important book.” He predicted sales of 15,000 to 20,000 copies. The manuscript was entered into the copy-editing process, and a cover was designed.
Then, on March 15, an email arrived from Sarah Broadway, head of special-interest publishing at Bloomsbury. In it, she told me that “we are of the view that conditions are not currently favorable to publication” and that “we will therefore be postponing publication and will review the position next year.” She added, “If you are not happy with this, we will pay the balance of the advance due and revert the rights to you.”
I was stunned.
Twenty minutes on, I replied, asking, “Please explain what conditions make the publication of my book ‘currently unfavorable’ and what conditions next year might make it favorable.” Four days later, Broadway replied, revealing nothing and merely repeating, “We consider that public feeling on the subject does not currently support the publication of the book and will reassess that next year.”
A knowledgeable source informed me that senior Bloomsbury executives wanted me to volunteer to walk away, so that they could appease younger staff who had protested against being made to work on material they found objectionable. Since I had no alternative publisher waiting in the wings, I was strongly disinclined to comply. Instead, I decided to hire a lawyer to look at my contract in the hope that I might be able to make Bloomsbury proceed with publication. Alas, £600 later, I was told that a get-out clause permitted the publisher to walk away virtually at will. From my point of view, it was worthless.
What’s interesting here is the enthusiasm that Bloomsbury initially showed toward the manuscript (beside the plaudits above, remember that they accepted the book’s prospectus, which is a group decision, and forked out an advance) as opposed to the haste with which they backed off when faced with opposition. Note as well the duplicity of the publishers in coming clean about the “delay”, and the fact that it’s the younger people who seem to feel that publishers should only issue ideologically approved books (this same thing happened when Woody Allen’s memoirs were canceled).
Bigger wrote a strong letter to Bloomsbury, chewing their tuchas, and then made all his emails available to the Times of London, including those showing that Bloomsbury lied about delaying the book (the Times wrote about this just a few days ago). Biggar’s is a good letter, and was sent to the founder/director of Bloomsbury:
Since Bloomsbury decided to cancel my contract, I took the only option left me and gave my consent.
I do not wish to conclude this correspondence without communicating the depth of my dismay at Bloomsbury’s conduct. You commissioned me to write a book on colonialism. I submitted the text on time. Your own commissioning editor, Robin Baird-Smith, described it as ‘a book of major importance, certainly one of the most important on my list for some time.’ He predicted sales of 15,000 to 20,000 copies. And yet you decided to cancel my contract because of ‘public feeling.’
This ‘public feeling’ was sufficiently clear to you to warrant cancelling a contract. Yet, in spite of two requests, you refused to be transparent with me about it.
Of course, it is quite clear what it is. The public feeling that concerns you is that of—for want of a more scientific term—the ‘woke’ left. This is an illiberal movement that agitates to suppress the expression of any views that offend it. Since my book exposes several of its basic assumptions as false, you correctly anticipated that the ‘woke’ section of public feeling would be offended by it.
Therefore, rather than publish cogent arguments and important truths that would attract the aggression of these illiberals, you chose to align yourselves with them by de-platforming me. In so doing, you have made your own contribution to the expansion of authoritarianism and the shrinking of moral and political diversity among us.
I can quite understand, then, why you were unwilling to be transparent about your reasons. They are shameful.
Yes they are.
Go have a look at the last two paragraphs in which Biggar draws some conclusions about the substitution of hysteria for rational discussion and about about the willingness of publishers to defer to the younger members of their companies. He finishes with this:
That’s why it’s so important that Bloomsbury be held to account in public—so that they, and other publishers, see the reputational costs of unprincipled cravenness.
To me the lesson is also that of Hitchens, Mill, Milton, and other free-speech advocates. If someone wants to argue against the “received wisdom”, it is important not just to let them speak, but it is more important to let them speak than those who parrot the current ideas. And it’s most important that people listen to the most heterodox ideas. I haven’t read Biggar’s book and don’t know what’s in it, but the fervor and censoriousness of its opponents make it all the more important to read and consider.
h/t: T. m.
There is a whole History Reclaimed website run by Biggar and some of the people who agree with him. There is a debate worth looking at between one of them (Tombs) and Alan Lester on the History Reclaimed site. See also Lester, Deny and Disavow: Distancing the British Empire from the Culture War. Lester has a piece about the issues at blogs:sussex.ac.uk. “History Reclaimed: but from what?”
Will have a look at this; sounds interesting – thanks for the suggestion.
As I generally tend to do when people try to “cancel” books because of ideology, I have bought this one. It’s my way of doing my small part to make their tactics backfire.
Also, of course, it sounds interesting.
Bookstores should have sections called “Books they don’t want you to read.”
Book bannings are free publicity and usually increase sales. I bet some authors hope their books are banned.
This not only seems unobjectionable, but actually worthwhile. I’ve just added it to my Amazon wishlist.
Me too. It comes out in May here.
Here’s an archived copy of the article from The Times: https://archive.ph/2cEDZ
And here’s his 2017 article for The Times that Biggar mentions: https://archive.ph/4xbkT
If Bloomsbury can’t spot the potential for such media storms to be used to turn an academic book with a print run of a couple of thousand into a blockbuster with sales in the tens of thousands, then their marketing department probably died in the last zombie apocalypse and nobody noticed.
I suspect the Bloomsbury’s HR department also been taken out by the living dead, undetected. Because “working on preparing a book for publication” should be in their worker’s contracts as a “do this, or get fired” task. Personally, I object to being strapped into a mocked-up aircraft seat, turned upside-down and being dumped head-first into cold water. But it’s a necessary part of my work (the contract line about “completing safety courses, as required”), and if I didn’t do it, I’d have been fired. Is it permissible for Bloomsbury to serve gander sauce on the goose?
Yes, publishing is a business, but I’ve met people in publishing who ignore that end because they simply love books and want to get them out there. Most books, of course, lose money, and sometimes they put out books that they KNOW will lose money. I think you underestimate how much many in publishing love books!
Quillette has just published a very long review by John Lloyd of Biggar’s book. It is generally favorable, noting that Biggars presents the pluses and minuses of colonialism. There should be more reasoned reviews such as Lloyd’s. The book analyzes an historical topic. As I’ve argued before, there is no “true” history, but interpretations of the past by historians and others. All interpretations are subject to criticism by presenting contrary evidence. Thus, for those that reject Biggar’s interpretation, the proper response of critics is to present an analysis of the past that they think better explains the historical event of colonialism. This is why the understanding of the past is always a subject of continuing debate, hopefully based on evidence. The attempt to shut down the book is appalling.
https://quillette.com/2023/02/06/colonialism-and-its-discontents/
This is awful. Thank you for mentioning Michael Shermer’s book, which I now intend to read.
The attack on Biggar reminds me of a murder of crows I saw in my yard a few years ago, one-by-one brutally attacking a baby bunny until it was no more. It was terrible to watch.
The sad reality is (probably) that the publisher decided that the book wouldn’t sell well. Colonialism is not a popular subject today, unless presented as an unmitigated evil. The publisher was concerned about not recouping its costs and, more importantly, about how its own reputation might be damaged by publishing the book, thereby risking future revenues. Spineless, if you asked me.
Such is the danger posed by a mob.
Slightly at a tangent, I can avow that Nigel is a man of the greatest
humanity. When I was at school (Monkton Combe), caning of pupils by
the senior prefects was still allowed. Nigel was Head Boy, and so he
chaired the conclave of senior prefects, which would occasionally meet
to pass judgment on the misdemeanours of the most recalcitrant
pupils. When I was hauled up in front of this august body Nigel
declined to administer the forfeit that I most certainly deserved.
His book arrived in the post today and I am looking forward to learning from it.
Niall Ferguson’s “Empire” is one excellent overview of the British Empire, with both its pluses and minuses. The pluses include, among other things, Ramanujan’s 5-year stay in Cambridge, the railroad and public health systems in India and parts of Africa, and the democratic principles recently abolished in Hong Kong.
Since no positive outcomes of any kind can be ascribed to the German Reich briefly constructed by Hitler, I wouldn’t make an analogy between holocaust denial and the contemporary censorship of any rational discussion whatsoever about the European empires. A better analogue to our current “Progressive” Left’s behavior would be the censorship of “Mendelism-Morganism” in genetics that was once practiced in a galaxy far away,
Wasn’t real one man one vote, representative democracy in Hong Kong instituted only shortly before the transfer to Chinese rule?
The galaxy you refer to (the USSR, I presume) also had pluses usually overlooked in the US. The Soviets industrialized a completely backward, rural, totally stagnant region (the Czarist empire where economic growth was unknown), did so without incurring foreign debt, alphabetized populations that previously did not have widespread literacy, built a relatively well functioning free public health system that at least covered the basics, kept the peace among diverse populations that had been warring with each other for centuries, developed a space program, and was certainly better functioning for a majority of the population than the Chicago boy managed mafia robber baron regimes that immediately succeeded it in the 1990s in Russia, Georgia and Ukraine.
Indeed.
One thing I would ask pro-colonialists or even those who are ambivalent about (i.e. they see plenty of “pros and cons”): “How would you feel if a more dynamic civilization came to your nation and took away your right to self-govern?”
Perhaps the answer would be: “I would welcome it if these colonizers had better ways of doing things than us.” But I doubt it. And therein lies my skepticism of any pro-colonial arguments…apparently it’s only ok when we (the West) do it to others.
That being said, I will read this book as I am interested in the arguments. At the very least, I should get a good history lesson on colonialism.
There is no need to be for or against colonialism. It was a historical fact. Being against it today is like being against human sacrifice. It was, but no longer is. (And by the way colonialism in modern times put an end to human sacrifice.)
It’s not so much that it’s OK when the West does it. It’s that being on the prevailing side is the place from which almost all of us view it. If colonization of the Americas had not happened, none of us would be here. And the natives in their unspoiled Eden would not have flush toilets, cell phones, ATVs, firearms, university degrees, and someone who could rescue a labouring mother with a Caesarian section.
Right of Conquest was how the world order worked up to 1945. To the indigenous residents of colonized lands I say, “You just didn’t fight effectively enough against people who really really wanted to stay here. People in India and Africa did. You didn’t. Same thing will happen to us someday. Think hard about which side you want to be on.”
“There is no need to be for or against {slavery}. It was a historical fact.”
Somehow that statement doesn’t work so well if I substitute slavery for colonialism. We should be for or against slavery, even though it was an historical fact as well.
But maybe colonialism is different and we should have no moral intuitions or opinions about it whatsoever. If this is one of the arguments in the book, I look forward to reading why that is so.
Maybe colonialism is different and we should accept that moral intuitions or opinions about it may vary. Finding out what that variance is I suppose, would be a good reason to read the book. If one was interested.
Why should we take a position on an institution that no longer exists in our society? I admit I find the American obsession with race and slavery unhealthy and as a foreigner I don’t understand it.
Contributing to concrete efforts to eradicate modern slavery seems like a good idea, sure, but that takes money and effort that other goods compete for. And countries that have slavery, or connive at it, object to foreign efforts as neo-colonialism or imperialism. Criticizing American slavery costs nothing and accomplishes nothing, You don’t even get thanked.
“Why should we take a position on an institution that no longer exists in our society?”
Well, it still exists in other parts of the world..it’s not completely dead yet. And, perhaps the fact that very few people thought to take a position on it for centuries was why it persisted for so long globally.
Did you not read past Leslie’s first sentence?
Indeed it does! And, as Leslie alluded to, the people who are most vocal about their opposition to slavery (note: we’re all against slavery!) always seem to not-so-gracefully elide its continued existence in certain places, as those places tend to be ones where Western intervention would be considered “colonialism.”
It is a good thing for us Americans to read and think about the great speeches of American history, Lincoln’s second inaugural and Douglass’s What to the slave is the Fourth of July? It’s not to the point to ask what this accomplishes. It’s good to be enabled to think well, with the help of Lincoln and Douglass, about slavery and its role in our history and its continuing resonances, as in the uses we still can make of these speeches, as Martin Luther King did.
As slavery in the United States is over, being for (is anyone?) or against it isn’t particularly relevant. Being against slavery would be relevant for countries like Mauretania (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37975552), but I don’t see US social justice and anti racism advocates being very concerned about slavery and institutionalized, ingrained racism where they still blatantly exist. Instead, they focus on microagressions and ephemeral relict phenomena at home.
Since at least the nineteenth century, the medieval Islamic conquest of Spain has been much romanticized, conveniently being forgotten the fact that it was a slave-based society. Others have looked at least somewhat favorably at the Ottoman annexation of most of the Christian Balkans, not to mention the Mongol incursion into Russia during the Middle Ages.
More or less no-one is “pro-colonialism” these days, the argument is only about whether it was an unmitigated evil.
For example, for many peoples the choice was not between a colonial power and local democracy, but between a colonial power and a local despot.
Controversial opinion: Britain’s last colony, Hong Kong, was better off for being a British colony and thus escaping Mao’s rule. Indeed, Hong Kong would be better off today if it were still a British colony, rather than now being part of communist China.
I’ll bet that many Hong Kong people would agree with that, though of course better than either would be for Hong Kong to be a self-governing democracy.
Well, it would probably be better for the people of Haiti, and indeed many countries in Central America, if they just became colonies of the United States. We go in, push aside the corrupt and hapless government, establish US style institutions, open up the economy, and viola, you will probably have significant improvement in the quality of life of the average person in these lands. Maybe we are nice and set a time limit of 100 years on our governance.
Sounds like a plan…should we do it? What would Biggar say?
I expect that it would benefit the average Haitian, yes. It likely wouldn’t benefit the US at all.
Similarly, one can ask whether the British empire benefitted Britain, after all, ruling half the world required vast expenditure on the army and navy and many capable people diverted to colonial administration. Simply trading with others, rather than colonising them, is easier and cheaper.
(For anyone wondering, Britain did not get rich because it colonised half the world, rather it colonised half the world because it got rich, and that was owing to the industrial revolution.)
The Spanish Empire was in a similar if not worse situation as it lacked the manufacturing base and effective commercial network that the British built. The galeons of silver bullion mostly ended up in Flanders and Germany to pay for the armies in Central Europe. It was the royal tax (el Quinto Real, or Royal Fifth, initially 20% of the mined gold and silver but later resuced to 8-10%) that the crown collected from all its provinces; included Peninsular ones. The remainder stayed locally, in spite of what many Hollywood movies suggest. Empires are rarely profitable.
“How would you feel if a more dynamic civilization came to your nation and took away your right to self-govern?” Isn’t that what happened to the Anglo-Saxons in 1066? And in 1610-1612, Moscow had a similar chance, when it was occupied by soldiers of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the Poles left when they couldn’t find any decent ogorki in Moscow, leaving Russia free to develop along its own lines, which later absorbed both Poland and Lithuania and are currently on display in Ukraine. Incidentally, in all the clamor in fashionable current exercises of post-colonial theory, has anyone ever detected a single mention of the Russian Empire? I thought not.
Yes, of course those things happened.
And again, maybe we should be saying things like…”yes, wasn’t it a great thing that the Anglos were overrun in 1066! In fact, as a matter of course, dynamic civilizations should be running around the world and taking over more pedestrian societies as a matter of course. They will have ground rules of course…raping and pillaging are strictly out these days. But we should all recognize the net good that the colonized receive from the colonizers…”
In other words, in an interesting discussion of colonization, we are not punting on the ethics of colonization. Otherwise, it would be just a recitation of history with no commentary on the positive or negative effects on the colonized or colonizers. I mean, if that is all Biggar’s book is, I don’t see what the fuss is about.
“Perhaps the answer would be: ‘I would welcome it if these colonizers had better ways of doing things than us.’”
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” (LoB)
Though I may disapprove of Biggar’s opinions (I’m not familiar enough with them to say for sure one way or the other yet), I will defend to the point of near-death experience (never go full Voltaire, man, never) his right to express them.
The question for the censors and cancellers though is, Will they go to the point of a near-death experience for themselves to prevent him from expression?
Suppose the University of Lethbridge had provided Frances Widdowson with armed security to make sure her speech was not prevented? The U provided her with no such thing and all campus security did was plead with her to leave to avoid more ugliness, which she did.
https://wokewatchcanada.substack.com/p/frances-widdowson-takes-lethbridge?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=515626&post_id=101054579&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2NDAwOTE5MywicG9zdF9pZCI6MTAxMDU0NTc5LCJpYXQiOjE2NzU2ODMzMzcsImV4cCI6MTY3ODI3NTMzNywiaXNzIjoicHViLTUxNTYyNiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.SknRj08JzpxL1WJODmP9hjEbcF0jU7rc_jRqmKHuCZ8&utm_medium=email
I should say the thread relevance of my reply to Ken above is that “Decolonization” has been adopted as a central mission of all Canadian universities I am aware of, even the good ones. This ideological position is incompatible with the Kalven principles. If decolonization competes with free academic enquiry then the latter is no longer the reason why the university exists in Canada. Truth takes second place to reconciliation.
No one is quite sure what decolonization or reconciliation means — the goalposts are set by external actors — but some formulations call for the type ot ethnic cleansing that requires being able build a large number of seaworthy boats in a hurry.
So we will not come quickly to the view that European colonialism was an unmitigated evil that undermines our legitimacy in this country, just as it ought not to undermine yours.
What do we do when we feel censorship in untenable but the book is of poor, unacceptable scholarship?
Do you think that’s likely to be the case here? I don’t get that impression …
Write a review in the appropriate places (including the popular press) explaining why. Or ignore it, and not risk the so-called “Streisand effect.”
Years ago I heard ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq speak and consequently bought several of his books, including Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’. It included what might be considered some pros and cons of Western Colonialism.
As I recall, he wrote movingly regarding a particular imposition the British made on the culture of India: universal education. The conquered leaders were outraged: reading and learning were reserved for the higher castes. Most especially, they were not for women. Yet the new English rulers set up mandatory schooling for even the poor and the female, writing that when there came the time the Indians ruled themselves, an educated people was necessary for democracy.
They also forbade the esteemed ancient practice of widows being coerced to throw themselves on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. I’m not familiar with Biggar’s arguments, but this might be the sort of thing he’s throwing out there.
I do not know Biggar’s arguments either, but it seems that the justification for colonialism of the British variety is one of morality or ethics. That is, what the British said to the residents of India was something like this: Yes, we are going to rule your land against your will and use your resources for our own benefit, but because we are a beneficent people, we are going to give to you the superiority of western institutions plus our technological advantages, whether you want them or not. Or, is it more ethical to adhere to the Prime Directive of Star Trek: do not intervene or attempt to alter an alien society, regardless of what the consequences of not intervening may be? So, what we are dealing with in regard to the question of the benefits of colonialism is an ethical one that may not reach a consensus anytime soon.
A fairly critical review of the book is here (but may be paywalled):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/colonialism-by-nigel-biggar-review-w7qnv9g3v
And a more sympathetic approach is shown in this discussion:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-the-british-empire-nigel-biggar-and-matthew-parris-in-conversation/
PS: for non-British readers, Matthew Parris is a veteran journalist and a former Tory MP, tending towards the left of the party.
If I encountered an opinion that I found objectionable or wrong, my response as an academic would be to mount a response to it – organise a seminar, write a critical review, publish my own book etc.
Here in the bay area more and more neighbors have stood up in their front lawn “little free libraries” the size of an oversized mailbox.
littlefreelibrary.org
I never see books such as Biggar’s Colonialism, Pluckrose and Lindsay’s Cynical Theories or Murray’s The Madness of Crowds in those little libraries. In fact, I rarely see such books in the local bookshops.
So, I am looking for a well-to-do patron who will help me fund the purchase of such books that I can then place in these little libraries all around town. It would be my small attempt to open my neighbor’s little minds.