Paul Allen

If there’s a right way to praise colonialism, this isn’t it

The Biggar Picture

Sir Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, is becoming a cause célèbre among crusdaders for a return to the “true” history of Canada and its treatment of First Nations.

I heard Biggar in conversation with Margaret Macmillan at an event hosted by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education in Toronto on March 1, 2025. While in town, Biggar helped launch the Free Speech Union of Canada.

Praising Colonialism

In his latest book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023, 2024), Biggar claims to have written – not a history – but a moral assessment – of British colonialism, with its myriad goods and evils (Table 1). [276, 284-285]

Table 1. Evils and Goods of British Colonialism.
Evils Goods
Brutal slavery Renounced the slave trade and slavery in the name of basic human equality
Epidemic spread of devastating disease Led endeavours to suppress the slave trade and slavery worldwide for 150 years
Economic and social disruption Moderated the disruptive impact of Western modernity upon very unmodern societies
Unjust displacement of natives by settlers Promoted a worldwide free market that gave native producers and entrepreneurs new economic opportunities
Failures of colonial government to prevent settler abuse and famine Created regional peace by imposing an overarching imperial authority on multiple warrng peoples
Elements of racial alienation and racist contempt Perforce involved representatives of native peoples in lower levels of government
Policies of needlessly wholesale cultural suppression Sought to relieve the plight of the rural poor and protect them against rapacious landlords
Miscarriages of justice Provided a civil service and judiciary that was generally and extraordinarily incorrupt
Unjustifiable military aggression and the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force Developed public infrastructure, albeit usually through private investment
Failure to admit native talent to the higher echelons of colonial government on terms of equality quickly enough to forestall the build-up of nationalist resentment Made foreign investment attractive by reducing the risks through establishing political stability and the rule of law
Disseminated modern agricultural methods and medicine
Stood for international law and order in the two world wars, helping to save both the Western and the non-Western world for liberal democracy
Brought up three of the most properous and liberal states now on earth – Canada, Australia and New Zealand
Gave birth to two more – the United States and Israel
Evolved into a loose, consensual, multiracial international organization (Commonwealth)
Helped to plan and realize first the League of Nations and then the United Nations
Through the Commonweath, applied moral pressure to South Africa to abandon its policy of apartheid
Evolved into an important part of the post-war Western alliance against Soviet and Chinese communism
Has a significant afterlife in the Western military alliance of NATO, the intelligence alliance of the Five Eyes, and various influential economic development agencies

Biggar wants to make one thing clear immediately: “All these evils are lamentable, and where culpable, they merit moral condemnation. None of them, however, amounts to genocide in the proper sense of the concerted, intentional killing of all the members of a people….” [276]

He then addresses two broader questions involving credits and debits in the imperial moral ledger.

First, “Was British colonialism more good than evil?” Biggar claims that this question is unanswerable “because the goods and evils that the empire caused, intentionally or not, are of such different kinds that they cannot be measured against one another. They are incommensurable. How much chalk is worth so much cheese? How much racism is worth so much immunisation against disease? How many unjustly killed people are worth the blessings of imperially imposed peace?… To ask these questions is immediately to expose their absurdity.” [285]

Second, “Was British colonialism right or wrong?” Biggar claims that we can – and must be able to – judge some regimes to be, all things considered, wrong. He insists that the moral difference between (say) British colonialism and Nazism must be more than a matter of degree. To get there, Biggar translates the question of whether British colonialism was right or wrong into an exercise where “We can try to discern central values or principles that were consistently expressed and concordant goals that were earnestly pursued and realised, more or less. If these value, principles and goals were gravely evil and immoral, we can then say that the rule was systematically unjust, And if it was not systematically unjust, then we can say that it was systematically just, whether more or less.” [283] In these terms, Biggar claims that British colonialism was not essentially racist, nor disproportionately violent, nor essentially exploitative – and so, that it was not systematically unjust – and so, that it was systematically just. Q.E.D. [286]

Biggar’s moral assessments strike us as unsatisfactory. First, his “proper sense” of what amounts to genocide is too restrictive and inconsistent with the legal definition of “genocide” provided in the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Second, with respect to Biggar’s handling of his two broader questions about the morality of colonialism, he first tries to cripple our ability to reason about relative good and evil and then tortures a raft of adjectives and adverbs in several dubious premises in order to arrive at his foregone conclusion: British colonialism was just (more or less).

Condemning Anti-Colonialism

Biggar claims that anti-colonialists – like James Daschuk and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada – can’t be blamed for condemning racism, economic exploitation and wanton violence. “But they can be blamed for letting their condemnations run out ahead of the data. Time and time again in this book, we have seen historians and others overegging the sins of  British colonialism …” [290]

As Biggar sees it, the anti-colonialist’s malpractice stems from some combination of poor qualifications, bad motives, spiritual or psychological disease, and gullibility.

First, he condescends that “the typical labourer in the post-colonial fields is neither a philosopher equipped to interrogate concepts such as ‘freedom’ and ‘power’, nor an ethicist equipped to evaluate them morally, nor an historian equipped to enter sympathetically into the strange world of the past. Usually, the post-colonialist is a scholar of literature … ” [294]

Second, he regrets that anti-colonialists are not always propelled by “humanitarian motivations” but by “material political interests” (e.g. arguing for reparations), “mundane professional ambitions”, and “familiar human pleasures of crusading”. [289, 290-291]

Third, he posits “a degenerate Christian sensibility” or “the paternalism of guilty conscience” as plausible explanations for the “exaggeration of colonialism’s sins” that bedevils post-colonial studies. [295]

Finally, he faults the anti-colonialist for privileging the views and feelings of the oppressed as “the first and last word, the final authority” – “a truth that cannot be gainsaid”. Here, he pulls out all the stops: “Whatever its merits in restoring the self-respect of the colonised, this view amounts to a dogmatic revolutionary authoritarianism that dismisses contradictory reasons as reactionary rationalisations. And the cost, in the end, can be very high indeed – an illiberal totalitarianism that is incapable of self-correction and results in the likes of Stalin’s purges of 1936–8, Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966–76 and Pol Pot’s ‘killing fields’ of 1975–9.” [291, 292, emphasis mine]

Biggar’s interest in countering the arguments of anti-colonialists is not purely academic, but has a geopolitical aspect as well. Enemies of Western democracies – Russian and China especially – are determined to expand their authoritarian power and influence. “One important way of corroding faith in the West is to denigrate its record, a major part of which is the history of European empires. And of all those empires, the primary target is the British one, which was by far the largest and gave birth to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” [6]

Biggar is determined “to provide a reliable guide to Britain’s colonial past” and “to draw the right lessons for the future”. He is adamant that “the canker of imaginary guilt” shouldn’t be allowed to cripple the self-confidence of the British – together with Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders – in their role as important pillars of the liberal international order.” [296, 297]

Biggar’s Agenda

Biggar’s agenda is to persuade us that, British colonialism was praiseworthy, all things considered, whenever and wherever it took root. The index of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning refers to eleven former British colonies. Mentions of these colonies by name in the main text1Introduction to Epilogue, excluding endnotes. suggest that Britain’s colonization of Canada figures prominently in Biggar’s mind (Table 2).

Table 2. Mentions of former British colonies.
Former British Colony Mentions
India 117
South Africa 80
Canada 60
Australia 40
New Zealand 37
Egypt 34
Kenya 24
Ireland 20
Tasmania 13
Palestine 9
Rhodesia 7

Three chapters account for most mentions of Canada (Table 2). According to Biggar, these chapters are concerned with the following “moral questions”:

  • Chapter 4: How far was the British Empire based on the conquest of land?
  • Chapter 5: Did the British Empire involve genocide?
  • Chapter 7: Since colonial government was not democratic, did that make the British Empire illegitimate? [17]
Table 3. Mentions of Canada by Chapter.
Chapter Mentions
Introduction 3
1. Motives, Good and Bad 2
2. From Slavery to Anti-Slavery 0
3. Human Equality, Cultural Superiority and ‘Racism’ 1
4. Land, Settlers and ‘Conquest’ 12
5. Cultural Assimilation and ‘Genocide’ 22
6. Free Trade, Investment and ‘Exploitation’ 2
7. Government, Legitimacy and Nationalism 12
8. Justified Force and ‘Pervasive Violence’ 0
Conclusion: On the Colonial Past 5
Epilogue: On Anti-Colonialism and the British Future 1

As intelligent and hard-working as he clearly is, Biggar is still one man – and no historian. His ambitions and limitations together require that he depend upon others to do much of the spadework – leaving him to build his history and then pass his moral assessment of colonialism.

Biggar exhorts historians to be “absolutely scrupulous in finding out and acknowledging all of the relevant facts” and not “run out ahead of the data”. [8, 290] Yet Biggar’s own selection of historical facts and data is demonstrably biased and unscrupulous.

Biggar’s Unscrupulousness

In addressing his three leading “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada, Biggar explains “I have consigned most of my skirmishes with historians to the endnotes. However, at several points in the main text readers will find themselves presented with what is, in effect, a critical review of a particular book or report. The purpose in each case is the same: to lay bare the gap between the data and the reasons given on the one hand, and the anti-colonialist assertions and judgments made on the other.” [14] So we pay particular attention here and observe that Biggar cites a total of 41 different sources in 31, 61 and 24 endnotes to Chapters 4, 5 and 7, respectively (see Appendix A).

For each source, we have determined the total number and per-chapter number (and percentage) of citations (see Appendix B).

Biggar relies on secondhand accounts for nearly 30% (12/41) of his citations. For example, all citations to John A. Macadonald’s remarks in House of Commons debates depend on versions reported in Daschuk (2013), Smith (2014) or Williams (2014), with no evidence that Biggar has read the original texts.

Biggar cites nearly 60% (24/41) of his sources just once. Biggar tends to rely on a single source when addressing each of his leading “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada:

  • How far was the British Empire based on the conquest of land? – Flanagan’s First Nations? Second Thoughts (2008) accounts for 31.8% of citations in Ch 4
  • Did the British Empire involve genocide? – Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996) accounts for 51.6% of citations in Ch 5
  • Since colonial government was not democratic, did that make the British Empire illegitimate? – Daschuk’s Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (2013) accounts for 48.8% of citations in Ch 7

Biggar characterizes his three main sources as follows:

“Since Flanagan’s [First Nations? Second Thoughts] is politically controversial in Canada, we should note that it won the 2001 [actually 2000] Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy, and the 2001 Donald Smiley Prize awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association for the best book on Canadian politics and government. My own judgement is that Flanagan thinks carefully and fairly, and writes with authority.” [Ch 4, endnote 3]

“In this section I have relied very heavily on Miller’s [Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools], partly because it was recommended to me by several historians as the standard work on the topic of the history of the residential schools, and partly because of the intellectual quality of the work itselt. For Martin is scrupulous in displaying all of the data, even when they go against the grain of his own interpretation, which allows the reader to see when that interpretation runs out ahead of its supporting evidence.” [Ch 5, endnote 34]

“I observe that Flanagan’s conclusion [about native peoples’ patterns of habitation on the prairies] is confirmed by one politically hostile witness. James Daschuk, with some tendentiousness, blames the starvation of the native peoples of the western plains in the late 1870s and early 1880s partly on the racist ideology of the government of John A. Macdonald …” [Ch 4, endote 13] “Ironically, [Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life] was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize. In 2018 the Canadian Historical Association removed Macdonald’s name from the prize.” [Ch 7, endnote 56]

He also explains why he discounts the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report:

“Because the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada does not display the same scrupulousness [as Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision], I have not relied on it much at all. … I have not relied much on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report, because its presentation of the evidence if not scrupulously even-handed. … the interpretation of the history of the residential schools is placed within a history of colonisation that descends into caricature. … I observe that Patrice Dutil, professor in the Department of Politics and Administration at Ryerson University, Toronto, concurs with my judgement [in his ‘Not Guilty: Sir John A. Macdonald and the Genocide Fetish’]. … Gerry Bowler, professor emeritus of history at the University of Manitoba, agrees [with Dutil] [in his ‘Is the Final Report of the TRC Good History?’]. … In sum, I have not relied upon the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, because it is not reliable.” [Ch 5, endnote 67] 2Biggar offers no explanation for his ignoring entirely the work of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (2019), the admissions and apologies from the Canadian government and the Christian churches that operated Indian Residential Schools, and the body of civil, criminal and constitutional legal decisions and analysis that relate to his leading “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada and its impact on First Nations.

Besides sharing these characterizations, Biggar discloses little about his criteria for including or excluding source materials.3It may be unfair to expect him to support his conclusions with a systematic review of the relevant literature (e.g. Mark Petticrew, Helen Roberts, Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide, 2006), but it seems entirely fair to expect him be more transparent and accountable for his methods. To determine how closely Biggar’s choice of source materials reflects the academic literature, we conducted five searches of Google Scholar, submitting queries that seemed relevant to his leading “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada:

  1. “canada .and. coloni*” (e.g. colonialism, colonization)
  2. “canada .and. settl*” (e.g. settler, settlement)
  3. “canada .and. (treaty .or. treaties)”
  4. “canada .and. genocide”
  5. “canada .and. (residential school*) .and. (indian* .or. indigenous* .or. native* .or. aboriginal)”

For each query, we extracted the 200 most relevant search results (excluding citations) for 1990-2023, tagging books (B) and book reviews (R)4There were a total of 12 reviews of 6 different books. (see Appendix C).

Among the 5 queries x 200 search results/query = 1,000 total search results, we identified 860 unique titles (see Appendix D).5A book and its review(s) were considered a single title.

Upon close inspection, we observe that only four titles are common to Biggar’s bibliographic sources and our search results from querying Google Scholar:

  1. JW Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (2013)
  2. JR Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996)
  3. JR Miller, Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History (2017)
  4. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report (2015)

From the disjunction between Biggar’s bibliographic sources and our search results, we draw two conclusions:

  1. Biggar relies heavily on materials that are not considered especially relevant to his leading “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada (according to Google Scholar)
  2. Biggar largely ignores the literature that is considered most relevant.

Others may want to try to explain Biggar’s eccentric selection of bibliographic sources.

Others may have better means (than querying Google Scholar) of identifying the materials that are most relevant to “moral questions” about Britain’s colonization of Canada, against which Biggar’s selection of bibliographic sources could better be compared.

Conclusion

In his latest book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2023, 2024), Nigel Biggar claims to have written – not a history – but a moral assessment – of British colonialism, with its myriad goods and evils. Biggar’s agenda is to persuade us that British colonialism was praiseworthy, all things considered, whenever and wherever it took root.

Biggar claims that anti-colonialists – like Canadian historian James Daschuk and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada – can’t be blamed for condemning racism, economic exploitation and wanton violence. “But they can be blamed for letting their condemnations run out ahead of the data. Time and time again in this book, we have seen historians and others overegging the sins of  British colonialism …” [290] As Biggar sees it, the anti-colonialist’s malpractice stems from some combination of poor qualifications, bad motives, spiritual or psychological disease, and gullibility.

Biggar exhorts historians to be “absolutely scrupulous in finding out and acknowledging all of the relevant facts” and not “run out ahead of the data”. [8, 290] Yet our research demonstrates that Biggar’s own selection of historical facts and data is biased and unscrupulous.

Various means could be used to identify seminal authors and their works about Britain’s colonization of Canada – resources that Biggar completely ignores. Here are just a handful that our research would promote for serious consideration:

AUTHOR TITLE YEAR TYPE
Asch, M Aboriginal Rights and Canadian Sovereignty: An Essay on R. v. Sparrow 1991
Asch, M Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equity, and Respect for Difference 1997 B
Asch, M From Terra Nullius to Affirmation: Reconciling Aboriginal Rights with the Canadian Constitution 2002
Asch, M On Being Here to Stay: Treaties and Aboriginal Rights in Canada 2014 B
Asch, M Confederation Treaties and Reconciliation: Stepping Back into the Future 2018
Asch, M and J. Borrows Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings 2018 B
Borrows, J With or Without You: First Nations Law (in Canada) 1995
Borrows, J The Royal Proclamation, Canadian Legal History, and Self-Government 1997
Borrows, J Domesticating Doctrines: Aboriginal Peoples After the Royal Commission 2000
Borrows, J Recovering Canada: The Resurgence of Indigenous Law 2002 B
Borrows, J Crown and Aboriginal Occupations of Land: A History & Comparison 2005 B
Borrows, J Indigenous Legal Traditions in Canada 2005
Borrows, J The Power of Promises: Rethinking Indian Treaties in the Pacific Northwest 2012 B
Borrows, J The Right Relationship: Reimagining the Implementation of Historical Treaties 2017 B
Borrows, J The Sui Generis Nature of Aboriginal Rights: Does It Make a Difference? 2017
MacDonald, DB First Nations, Residential Schools, and the Americanization of the Holocaust: Rewriting Indigenous History in the United States and Canada 2007
MacDonald, DB The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada 2012
MacDonald, DB Genocide, Reconciliation, and the Residential Schools: A Survey of Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Attitudes Among Elected Officials in Canada 2012
MacDonald, DB Treaty Relations Between Indigenous Peoples: Advancing Global Understandings of Self-Determination 2017
MacDonald, DB The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation 2019 B
Neu, DE Accounting and Accountability Relations: Colonization, Genocide and Canada’s First Nations 2000
Neu, DE Presents for the “Indians”: Land, Colonialism and Accounting in Canada 2000
Neu, DE Accounting and the Holocausts of Modernity 2004
Woolford, A Ontological Destruction: Genocide and Canadian Aboriginal Peoples 2009
Woolford, A Genocide of Canadian First Nations 2011
Woolford, A Nodal Repair and Networks of Destruction: Residential Schools, Colonial Genocide, and Redress in Canada 2013
Woolford, A Colonial Genocide in indigenous North America 2014 B
Woolford, A Dispossession and Canadian Land Claims 2014
Woolford, A This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States 2015 B
Woolford, A Canada and Colonial Genocide 2015
Woolford, A We Planted Rice and Killed People: Symbiogenetic Destruction in the Cambodian Genocide 2021

Besides his biased selection of source materials, Biggar is also unscrupulous in his treatment of four key resources:

  1. JW Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (2013)
  2. JR Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (1996)
  3. JR Miller, Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History (2017)
  4. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Final Report (2015)

Our critique of this aspect of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning will be the subject of a later post.

Licence

We are publishing this material under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. If you find use for our work, please credit Paul Allen (https://paulallen.ca).