THE CONTINUATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE:

As he argues, the "basic problem with the anti-colonialist's equation of British colonialism with slavery, and their consequent demand for cultural 'decolonisation,' is that it requires amnesia about everything that has happened since 1787". It requires us to overlook how widely popular in Britain was the abolitionist cause from the closing decades of the 18th century. The uncomfortable reality for anti-slavery campaigners is that for "the second half of its life, anti-slavery, not slavery, was at the heart of imperial policy".

Accordingly, this is a helpful and timely contribution to a public conversation about the nature of empire and colonialism that is dominated by many highly-charged assumptions, assertions and correlations ("fascism", "genocide", "racism", "state violence", "oppression" and others). The book is to be applauded for its careful handling of a range of complex and often emotionally-charged questions.

For my money, much of the current public debate about empire needs to be focused less on the intrinsic morality of what happened (because I am suspicious of the motives of those pressing modern political and ideological interpretations on the past) and more on the quality of governance that was provided across the various imperial projects that made up the experience of empire. It is in this that Biggar excels.

In most cases the quality of civic administration across the empire was exceptional; in a few it was abysmal. I agree with Biggar that a remarkable legacy of the British exercise of empire was to introduce standards of probity in public administration that were unparalleled in the history of imperialism, even if this legacy was tarnished by the horrors of, for instance, Amritsar and the Bengal famine. India, along with most other parts of the empire, received its independence as a "going concern" from its imperial parent in 1947.

One measure of its success is the remarkable extent to which India retained the civic structures it inherited. It is fascinating to see how the people of the Naga Hills in Assam were irritated by the arrival of the British in the 1870s (because they inhibited the traditional culture of inter-tribal warfare and headhunting) but angered by their departure in 1947. That rancour about Britain leaving exists to this day. The history of colonialism and imperialism is complicated.

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