Der Kolonialismus war nicht nur schlecht, sagt Rupert Everett

Just before Jamaica got independence in 1969, the homicide rate was 3.9 per capita. Not great, but not awful. Better than modern day USA homicide rates. Jamaica’s homicide rate today is 53.34 per capita.

Make of that what you will.

Of course it wasn’t but people these days seem unable to accept that things are not just black and white.
Everything either has to be all good or all bad there’s no middle ground.

“Decolonisation” is just an empty buzzword for culture warriors. Its impossible to argue against because out with ending colonial rule that happened over 50 years ago it has no real meaning.

Here is a list of countries by Human Development Index.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)

The US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UAE and Hong Kong are all in the top 20. 8 out of 20 are the UK and former colonial possessions are among the highest spots for human development.

The processes that allowed Britain to become a world power are wildly misunderstood by a large number of people. I t was the development of political, educational and economic institutions that turned a relatively backward part of Europe when Europe was something of a backward part of the Eurasian system of civilisations into the world striding behemoth.

This goes deep into the medieval era, with roots predating the Normans but its the rise of a parliamentary system, a relatively independent judiciary, a market economy that was moderately free of government control and an education system that started as religious schools but became the old universities like Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews etc. The emergence of grammar schools and a formal schooling system then the rise of Protestantism and its drive to make men literate to read their Scriptures.

So instead of a despotic system of a over powerful king and lords who were kings of their domains you had cities and merchants and squires etc who were educated, able to engage in trades and business and had rights that were above the whim of a king.

This is not unique to Britain and has parallels in Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Germany (or bits of the mess that became Germany).

But into the 1600s Britain had everything in place to become a scientific powerhouse, the education and freedom. It also had in place to become a major developing economy with freeish markets and property rights. Newton, Hooke, Halley, Harvey, Bacon, Napier, Wren etc. And Britain settles America.

Then its into the absolute thunderrun of inventions that feedback into more power that is the industrial revolutino in the 18th century. Then the British start to really pull ahead of everyone on Earth into the 19th century when Europe and the US begin the catch up. And its then, in the 19th century Britain really becomes a massive Empire.

Into the 20th century and the ideologies of individual freedoms, rights under law, and the equality of men that built the economic power of the 19th century also begin to show the huge immorality of ruling over other peoples. In the mean time other regions of the world begin to imitate the institutions and education of the west.

So as the Empire recedes some countries and regions are left with the strong core of institutions and ideologies that allow the full expression of human development. Generally speaking the closer a country is to wester political and economic institutions the better it is able to grow and develop.

This does not justify colonialism. But it places the why it happened into the context of the growth of the ideas of rights and institutional strengths that enabled it and eventually showed its moral wrongs.

When we look at the past we should do to learn what worked and what did not. The current petty minded moralising by only trying to see the negative of the past and of one set of cultures has no real function other than allowing people to wallow in weird and fully unearned sense of superiority over people of the past.

The issue is not to trivialise crimes that were committed, nor to hide them but to add proper context. The violence that colons inflicted on the colonised was sometimes outrageous to people back home, but also sometimes it was comparable with similar violence inflicted on the local populations by their rulers. Colonies were also one of the few if not the only opportunity for social and economic ascension for someone who wasn’t well born.

The post colonial approach appears to be fixated on certain countries and ethnic groups with a fairly blatant agenda, yet it conveniently forgets Russian, Ottoman or Chinese imperialism, Arab conquests, or the fact that a number of leading countries were built through ethnic cleansing: those are not European countries even though the Cathar massacres might qualify for France.

Now why don’t we look also at modern imperialism: Indonesia ‘s new President, Prabowo, had indigenous insurgents slaughtered in the thousands by his militia. It is a long-standing tradition there to organise transmigration programs, just like in Crimea, Tatars were replaced by Russians, or Kazakhs witnessed a huge influx of Russian population. Indonesia bears many hallmarks of an empire but because it’s brown, nobody seems to care.

I wouldn’t have thought it was controversial to recognise that not every single thing that happened during colonial periods was bad? Is it not common sense that some good things happened, no matter how many or few there were?

It wasn’t all bad, and my family comes from a colonised country

Personally, as a man who’s done a lot of reading about Britain and her empire, I think this “Colonialism good!” Vs “Colonialism bad!” dichotomy is one we really need to move away from. Not to say it shouldn’t be *part* of the discussion (though even then, for whom exactly it was good or bad isn’t as clear cut as many assume), but at the moment it seems to be the only discussion anyone is willing or able to have.

It tells us nothing about the *whys*, *whats* or *hows* of Empire – all of which are hotly debated in and of themselves -, and even less about the other historiographical controversies surrounding it (see, the Porter Vs McKenzie debates as an example), but instead encourages us to see colonialism as a broad morality play with almost cartoonish heroes and villains. Thus, any attempt to grapple with empire as an exceedingly complex, multifaceted phenomenon that lasted over 400 years is drowned out by an insistence that the whole affair is less complicated than the plot of Star Wars.

This is not to say that there are no parts of imperial history that deserve condemnation (much of it was condemned by British people themselves at the time of empire!), but it is to say that there is far more to talk about than the endless “railways Vs Amritsar” debate, which can only lead us down a blind alley.

Imagine for a moment if we reduced the entire discussion of the Islamic world to “Golden Age science Vs Tamerlane’s sack of Delhi”. Folks might not know anything about either of them aside from which to cheer for and which to boo as if they were watching a pantomime – and that’s no way to learn history, especially not a history on which the social fabric of our nation might depend going forth.

For me colonialism is grey. I wasn’t directly affected by it but I have family who was put in slums and deprived of education by British colonials so but if they didn’t I probably wouldn’t be speaking English nor on this website or in the uk for that matter. They did bad and they did good and the one thing I can at least complement the British on is they didn’t try so hard(brutally) to keep colonies like the French and ottomans did

Every empire engages in brutality, but not all of them add good to the world. Nobody ever gives Belgium grief like they do Britain, despite our global drive to end slavery, and willingly granting independence to anybody that wanted it peacefully.

Colonialism wasn’t all bad, says historian, economist and sociologist Rupert Everett… oh no, wait.

Ah yes because everyone loves an uninvited guest who overstays their welcome. Oh and ransacks the house too.