If there is one subject that is guaranteed to provoke an eruption among contemporary progressives, it is the British Empire. In the era of statue wars, identity politics, and the “decolonisation” of university curricula (even policing the ethnicity of authors on reading lists), the Empire remains a unique source of antagonism. There exists a widespread belief that the British variant of imperialism was particularly violent and repressive and thus uniquely in need of condemnation. There have been calls for Nelson's Column to be pulled down, because Horatio's views did not reflect modern social mores. An undergraduate student in one of my classes recently insisted that he could discern no differences between the British Empire and the apocalyptic death cult of Islamic State.
Of course, some scholars have offered a more nuanced and thoughtful take on the Empire and its legacy. My own colleague at the University of Edinburgh, Harshan Kumarasingham—a New Zealander of Sri Lankan heritage—is currently doing his best to explore the legacy of British constitutionalism throughout the Commonwealth. Niall Ferguson offered a famously provocative interpretation in his classic Empire. And now Jeremy Black, of the University of Exeter, has had a quite ingenious idea for tackling the problem.
Black is probably the most prolific historian on the planet. He has authored more than 100 books (!) and continues to add to his oeuvre with energy. He has written on a mind-boggling array of topics, from 18th-century Britain to global military history to cartography. He has written a pair of books about James Bond. Black is always a pleasure to read: argumentative, stimulating, and engaging. He writes for serious periodicals, including Standpoint and The New Criterion. He is a well-travelled and in-demand lecturer who has delivered talks across much of the world. I recently listened to a pair of lectures he gave at the wonderful New York Historical Society and was struck by his sheer range. Black is not your ordinary academic historian. His wide-ranging expertise marks him out as a throwback to a less narrow age of university scholarship. And that makes him the ideal figure to write this important book.
Black has raised his head above the parapet, not so much to defend the Empire as to ponder why it arouses such animosity. His views are made clear in the first sentence of the introduction: “Empire reflects power, its existence, and its use.” Imperialism has been a fact of historical life, at all times and throughout the world. So why is the British variety singled out? Black argues that when progressives whip themselves up into a frenzy about the British Empire, often they are reallyattacking the modern United States. Britain is “the ostensible target”, but the thing they are actually angry about is the power of America. For decades, the US has provided an inexhaustible source of material to power the protests of university students and bien pensant intellectuals. These people are typically not suited to thinking strategically, show little historical (or political) awareness, and cannot accept that one indispensable component of world order is hard power. Throwing a rhetorical jab at the US, or the British Empire, is a straightforward means of validating what Black describes as “theatrical” emotions.
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