The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 359. Separating Good from Evil in the British Empire | Dr. Nigel Biggar

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Dr. Nigel Biggar break down his new publication, “Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning,” and parse out the truths and falsehoods from the modern day revisionist movement. They explore the ethics of imperialism, the motivations for the British colonies, their role in the slave trade, bringing modernity to much of the world, and looking back on history with a balanced lens. Dr. Nigel Biggar is a prominent British theologian, academic and author. He is known for his work in the fields of ethics, philosophy, and theology, particularly in the context of war, peace, and historical reverence. Biggar has made significant contributions to the study of Christian ethics and has written extensively on topics such as “just war theory,” moral responsibility, and the role of forgiveness in conflict resolution. He has been involved in various academic institutions, including the University of Oxford, where he held the Regius Professorship of Moral and Pastoral Theology. - Links - For Dr. Nigel Biggar: Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford:www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-nigel-biggar Director, McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life:www.mcdonaldcentre.org.uk Author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (HarperCollins, 2022):https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/colonialism-a-moral-reckoning-nigel-biggar?variant=39932985245774 What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford University Press, 2020):https://global.oup.com/academic/product/whats-wrong-with-rights-9780198861973?lang=en&cc=us# Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (Wipf & Stock; James Clarke, 2014):http://wipfandstock.com/between-kin-and-cosmopolis.html;http://www.jamesclarke.co/product_info.php/products_id/2218 In Defence of War (Oxford University Press, 2013, 2014):http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199672615.do

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So, Nigel, we're going to talk today about your book Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, which is just being released just a few weeks ago, and which, as I understand, is doing quite well. a few weeks ago, which, as I understand, is doing quite well. I would like maybe to start with the story of why it was that you got drawn into this historical, why you decided to write a history of this type. It's not precisely in your bailawick as a professor. So why do you outline the circumstances that led to your undertaking this endeavor?

Yes, Jordan. So I'm an academic professor of ethics of Christian ethics, and so over the years I have been in the business of trying to make moral sense and come to moral judgments about complicated moral issues. For example, the moral problem of war. My first university degree and my first love has always been history, so all of my life I've read history, and I've been reading a British Imperial history for 20, 30 years. And so moral questions that have been raised by European colonial endeavor around the world, especially the British effort have always interested me. And so in 2015, 16, there was a agitation in Oxford imported from South Africa to have a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the late 90th century imperialist, which stands over Oxford's high street on the back of Oral College, Oxford, to have it dismantled because it was said Rhodes was South

Africa's Hitler. As it happens at the time of December 15, I was reading the standard biography of Cecil Rhodes, I thought to myself, no, that's just not true. And so in early 2016, I published articles and I took part in a debate in the Oxford Union opposing the dismantling of road to statute because what was being projected onto him just seemed to me to be untrue. So that was my first, as it were, public performance on this issue. And then in 2017, pursuing my interest, I launched a research project here in Oxford called Ethics and Empire with a very eminent historian of Empire globally, John Darwin. And the aim of the project was simply to look at how people across time from ancient China

to the modern period, how they regarded the empires of their day in moral terms. And then finally, in late November 2017, I published an article in the London Times in which I made what I thought was the completely unobjectionable, rather bland point that we British can find both cause for shame and pride in our imperial history. And then about a few days later I published online an account of the ethics and empire project. And as my wife and I were waiting at Heathrow Airport to fly to Germany to celebrate our wedding anniversary, I got word from the university that a group of students have published an online denunciation of me in my project. I thought nothing of it. Four days later, three days later, my historian collaborator, I've got to resign

from the projects and then within the space of five days, two more online denunciations appeared, one from 58 Oxford colleagues and the second from about 170 academics around the world. So that was my inadvertent abaptism of fire. I wasn't expecting it. I just pursued a research project I thought was interesting and important, and I published an article

saying things that I thought to be true. The content I've created over the past year represents some of my best to date, as I've undertaken additional extensive exploration in today's most challenging topics and experienced a nice increment in production quality courtesy of DailyWire Plus. We all want you to benefit from the knowledge gained throughout this adventurous journey. I'm pleased to let you know that for a limited time you're invited to access all my content with a 7-day free trial at DailyWire Plus. This will provide you with full access to my new in-depth series on marriage as well as

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So why did your collaborator, was that John Darwin who resigned? And if it was, why did, okay, so why did he resign? I mean, he had obviously thought through participating in this project. I presume, although you can fill us in, that you were working well together, and then he felt this was a worthwhile project. The fact that he withdrew obviously made things more difficult for you, at least that's how it looks from the outside. What happened to Dr. Darwin and why did he feel compelled to take this route?

Well, Jordan, I don't want to be liable to accusations of defamation here, so I want to be cautious. Yes. So what John told me that weekend was that he had pressing personal problems and just felt he needed to withdraw. Okay, so I have some comments about that. So I've talked to about 200 people now who've undergone, let's say, a trial by fire of the sort that you describe. Now, it's easy to pillory people who withdraw in the face of opposition. But my experience has been that most of the people, virtually all of the people that I know who've been subjected to this sort of treatment,

react to it in a manner that's analogous to either facing a very protracted lawsuit or divorce or a very serious illness on their part or a serious illness on the part of someone close to them. It's devastating. Jay Bada Cheria, for example, at Stanford, he was raked over the coals for his attitude toward for his scientific discussion of the problem

of the epidemic response and his skepticism about the COVID lockdown. He lost 35 pounds in three months. And I know other people who've ended up all devastated, sufficiently, to receive psychiatric treatment and who've withdrawn into their own personal lives who've been abandoned by their professional colleagues. It's absolutely brutally awful. And so it never surprises me when I hear that someone has in fact withdrawn when they've

been mobbed because it's a stunningly effective tactic from the psychological perspective. And you said Dr. Darwin had indicated to you that he was having trouble in his personal life at that point as well. And obviously, either couldn't tolerate or didn't need the stress. And that's interesting too, you know, because lots of people move forward professionally

despite the fact that they're having all sorts of trouble, right? And then if you complicate that so that moving forward brings with it a tremendous psychological or personal cost, then you can bring the whole enterprise to a shuddering halt, which we seem to be hellbent on doing at the moment. So I have some sympathy for Dr. Darwin, but it put you in an awkward position, because now your collaborator had disappeared. I was stunned, frankly. I didn't know what was happening,

but I was stunned because our collaboration to that point had been very, very congenial, and we were both very happy. We launched the project in July 17. It went very well. I was aware there was a connection between this student protest and John's sudden abandonment of the project. It wasn't clear to me what it was. He said there were personal reasons.

Given the timing, that seemed to be less than the whole story. I was told by a third party that he did indeed have domestic concerns that were preoccupying him. But later I discovered on the obscure part of the Oxford University website, a statement by him saying that he had withdrawn from a project because its aims had changed. I have to say, as far as I can see, that wasn't true. But to your point, I mean, I think, I mean, my experience, not just with John, but with others too, even some very old good friends, was that one friend described the issue of colonialism as toxic and as a consequence he was involved in a research center I run and he also withdrew. So my experience was of feeling as if I'd

suddenly become diseased and people were stepping back. Right, right. Right. Right. Right. Well, I think that I think that's the right metaphor, because I think the psychological mechanisms that underlie shunning and isolation are an extension of, they describe it as a consequence of the operation of the behavioral immune system. And people who are shunned are essentially treated with contempt and derision as if they are infectious pathogens. Now one of the things I learned for example, I read a book called Hitler's Table Talk and it was transcripts of his spontaneous discussions over mealtimes, over about a three-year period. I was

very interested in the psychology of contempt and derision and Hitler never used language that was associated with fear in relationship to the Jews. You hear this notion that Hitler was afraid of the Jews, but that isn't the case is that the language he used was all parasite host language, contempt and derision. It's a much more toxic emotion to have directed at you than fear,

because you destroy things that are pathogens. You burn them out, you show them no mercy. And to be targeted with derision and disgust, as you said, you you ended up contaminated. It's about the worst thing that can happen to you socially. Yeah, I think in the cases I'm talking about,

I think it was more fair than discussed. Of course, I've had plenty of discussed and hatred and hostility directed from other quarters. In this case, it was more, I mean, there, you know, I've, I've, I accept now there are people out there who really, really, really hate what I, what I say and think and therefore hate me. You know that. I know that. But the other phenomenon is of people who are friends or colleagues who don't hate you.

But I think the most scary of what, the way I interpret it is the step back from you, because there's kind of what other people will think of them if you're there with you. Well, they're afraid of becoming the target of that contempt. Yes, okay. It's catch. Yes, yes, that's right. The fundamental problem is that you become a target of disgust and contempt, and then people are afraid of being contaminated by that and thrown into the same.

Absolutely. And you know, another problem you had, I presume, is that you're, in some ways, you're the perfect poster boy for the kind of mobbing that might occur in relationship to colonialism because while you, you're a professor at Oxford, you're a professor, a professor of Christian ethics, you're Caucasian and, you know, you, you, you are a male. Yeah, well, there's that too. There's that too. And so, well, so that begs the question, you know,

it might be that it's easier for people to believe ill of you because they might say, well, doctor bigger is only justifying the structure that gave rise to his incredible privilege, his tenured luxury at Oxford. And so he's inclined psychologically to support the and so he's inclined psychologically to support the colonial enterprise because he's a prime beneficiary of it. So how would you, how do you, how have you responded to that sort of psychological analysis typical of the mobbing types, right? They read the people. That's a really, really important point. And I thought about this. My first response is, yes, you could be right. I mean, all of us have social and economic interests, right?

And sometimes, as interests can determine what we decided to research on, and it can shape the adjustments we come to. So yes, it's possible that my views and colonialism are indeed shaped by my private interest. Of course, not all interests are in the judgment, but it could be that I'm defending my privilege. But of course, in my view, that goes for everybody, including my critics. So in principle, yes, could be the case. So as an ethicist, how do you protect yourself against that? I mean methodologically, I mean, it's easier in the scientific domain, at least in principle,

because there are strict methods for separating out personal interest from the facts at hand, even though they're not 100% reliable, but it's a lot harder when you're investigating history. So, I think Jordan and here I speak as a, not simply as a theoretical ethicist, but as one who thinks himself bound to practice a bit of what he preaches. I think when needs certain virtues, I think one needs to have a sense of responsibility to be honest, and that means a sense that one is morally bound to expose oneself to criticism. I'm sure I'm not perfect on that, but I think I do do that. And so in my book,

do do that. And so in my book, you tell me if I'm wrong, let ridges aside, in my book, when I'm coming to judgment about the British Empire, I don't shy away from the really bad bits and insofar as I identify as British. There's a painful for me to admit, but I do admit them. So I think what one response I have is it is possible to be honest. And there are certain marks on this person that they are willing to face criticism, they're willing to think about it, and sometimes even willing to concede. And I have to say, compared to my critics, as I've experienced them, compared to my critics, as I've experienced them, I do more of that than they do. No doubt I've got things to learn. So, going back to these, go ahead. Yeah, as it were, the tactic of psychologizing people you disagree with and saying, well, he's only doing that or saying

that, he would say that wouldn't it be because he is white and nail and privileged? So one thing I say as well, it's possible in principle. Let's see if it is the case in practice. The other thing to say is, it's a dangerous tactic to deploy the psychology of the opposition. Because what it allows you, the psychology I just do, is to say, well, because he's only doing that, because he's white and nail and privileged, I don't have to list no damn thing he says. So I immediately exempt myself from any responsibility

to listen to what he says and to respond to rationally giving reasons. So it kind of immunizes myself against any responsibility actually, to be honest, and open to the criticism and plison what he says. So I think it's a danger that these are collodizing dismissal of opposition allows you to be dishonest. That casual kind of moralizing, you know, the only reason you think the way you are is because you're trying to justify yourself. First of all, that cuts both ways,

and I think it is worth taking it seriously. You have to examine your own bias in order to think straight. I used to tell my graduate students to triple, double, triple, and quadruple check their statistics and to try to make the results they obtained go away. Because if they were motivated by the necessity to develop their career to publish something that wasn't true, number one, they would warp the whole research enterprise and send other people chasing a red herring. And number two, they could spend the rest of their life investigating something that simply

didn't exist. And then there's the other complicating issue of just being wrong. If you're a sensible thinker and you're a critical thinker, you should subject your own thoughts to the most intense critical analysis possible, knowing that if you put forward second-grade thoughts, you'll act them out, and that will cause you no end of grief. And partly what we're supposed to do in university is teach people to subject their own thoughts to a multiplicity of critical perspective so that there's nothing left but wheat, right?

So the chaff disappears. And so when you're writing, you said you'd take an even-handed approach as much as possible to the catastrophes and benefits of the British colonial enterprise. I mean, how do you, again, what do you do to try to ensure that you're surveying is broad a range of the evidence as you possibly can, knowing your own potential bias. Well, there are a number of things. I mean, I teach my students the virtues of being scrupulously just to what someone says in the text and even to be charitable, it's to say, before you start to criticise what they say,

construct it, construct it in the strongest possible form, and then dismantle it. So I play that same thing to myself. So when I come across material in history that I read about, that is negative about the British Empire, I report it in my book. So, so that there are a number of pages that deal with the 150 years worth of abhorrent involvement in slave trading slavery in the second chapter, I think. And I quote descriptions of what what was done to slaves who try to escape, for example. It's horrific. But I, so it's there on the page, I let the reader see it. So it's probably not a pedo of it.

It's not just of critical skills. I mean, I'm, this is, so I'd say this, it's a matter of personal virtue. You have to become the kind of person who just does this, one feels obliged to do it. So that's right. Right. Right. But in terms of my, in terms of my own work on this topic, so for example, I have read a number of books on controversial issues written by the kind of people who are

very hostile to me. I read them. And on the whole, I mean, there are a number of cases in the book. I lay out what they say and then I take it apart. And most of the time, in my view, it falls apart. But I, as I said, the reader can see what I'm doing exactly. And if the reader thinks I'm not playing fair or I'm cheating in some way or I'm overlooking something, they can see it. Right. So they can check. So you put enough of the process of the inquiry into the work itself so that people can follow along and double check for themselves, whether you're playing a straight game. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Right. And you know, you pointed to something that's extremely important, I think, in this regard, given your position, also as a professor of, say, Christian ethics. I mean, one of the, I've been investigating the metaphysical presumptions of science. And there are metaphysical presumptions that have to be accepted before you can start to operate as a scientist. And so, for example, you have to believe that there is a logos or a logic in the objective world. You have to believe that there is an objective world. You have to believe that that logic is apprehensible. You have to believe that apprehending is apprehensible. You have to believe that

apprehending that logic is a moral good, because otherwise, why would you bother? And then you have to believe that truth in relationship to that apprehension is the most important orienting principle. Those are all metaphysical presumptions. I actually think they're metaphysical presumptions that are derived from Christianity itself, which is why science emerged in Europe and not elsewhere. But you said, know that you have to live your life in a manner, if you're going to tell the truth when you write, you have to in your life? And why should people take that seriously? That's very germane question given your You know your position as a professor of Christian ethics at Oxford, right? I mean you above all in some ways are Required to not only make that case, but to walk to walk the walk

That's a deep question, Jordan So what's my answer to that? I think it's first of all to say, I mean, we human beings, our lives are taken by themselves, taken in isolation. Our lives are little and meaningless. I mean, we come when we go. Unless we plug ourselves into some larger narrative, what what what's the most is it matter what I do say? So partly, I'd say that if you think of your life as I do, as a kind of pilgrimage or an adventure,

and the goal is to approximate oneself to what's good and true and beautiful. You might say, God. Then, in a sense, my little life in this place, this time, it takes on a larger, deeper significance. So, I think of myself. I mean, I don't know the truth. I know fragments of the truth. But, I think of myself, the point of my life is to bear witness in the way that I can do what I think is true and worthwhile.

I mean, God knows. and I mean that literally, God knows alone how anything I say or do or achieve will last, or what effects it will have. I don't know, but here and now I have a limited task, and that's simply to bear witness to the truth. As I see it, that's one thing I'd say. Okay. Okay. Okay, well what was it, what was it in your life?

Do you think that drove you to conclude that alignment with the truth was the appropriate way to conduct yourself? Because there are alternatives, obviously, like manipulation and the pursuit of short-term gratification, the use of deception, for example, to get what you want. And why did you decide, what drove you to decide that you were going to at least attempt to align yourself with the truth?

That's a... Yeah, it's a really good question. And to me, it's a bit of a mystery. I wasn't brought up in a Christian household. I was attracted to Christianity. And I think that's something to do with the question of asking. I mean, for a long time, I find myself fascinated and admiring of individuals who stand up for what they believe to be true and right, even though the whole world turns

against them. I mean, I know, yeah, I'm quite aware that I seem to have become such a person in some respects. But I remember age of 6, 7, 8 when the movie King of Kings by, produced by Cecil D. B. Mill came out in I think 1693. My father took me to see it at the local cinema. And I was so moved by the story of Jesus and his crucifixion. At the age of seven or eight I came back home, was foot to bed, and I lay there staring at the ceiling weeping, saying to God, and here I was praying, no one taught me to pray. Take it off Jesus and put it on me. It's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit,

it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit missy-enix for that age. So I think somehow the idea that one is bound and you know, you talk about being bound or obliged, it sounds like a burden. Yes, it is, but it's also a fulfillment. And so shortly after that, this was, I'm talking about age six, seven, age 10, I mean, when I was young, I used to steal. And I remember an occasion in, I was at a boarding school at age of, I don't know, 10, let's say, and I used to steal toy soldiers from some of my school mates. And one evening,

I was doing this again. And I suddenly thought to myself, no, this is not satisfying. I don't want to do this. I don't want this stuff. And I put it back. I never stole again. Now, again, why did I do that? So in that case, it was a sense of, this is not what I really want. So, and yes, did I say this to myself? Well, the phenomenon was no. Something said this to me, And I heard it. Yeah. So what makes you, so the radical claim, then we'll get to your book, but I want to go into the trustworthyness of its source, let's say, and how that might be established. The radical postmodern slash neo-Marxist claim is that all claims to truth are essentially masks for an underlying

drive to power, sort of a demented nichionism, and that there's really no escaping your motivation and even if you claim to be, as you're claiming now, to be the representative of a higher truth, all that is is a particularly subtle and insidious justification of your underlying motivation. And what makes you believe, do you think? You touched on it with regard to the like the external quality of the voice of conscience say and the emotional impact that this admiration you had in the aftermath of the movie you touched on this, what makes you think that there is a truth that can be pursued independent of the subjective striving for dominance and power? So you're quite right, the new Marxists and the postmodernists say that it's all about

power. What they mean is, they're all about power. Yes, they do mean that, yes. Yes, but the assumption they're making is, they're all about power and it's wrong. They're making that because they're criticizing the way the establishment or the elite behave. And the criticism is based on the assumption that they, the Neumarxes, know the truth and they have it right, which is why they want to dismantle that power. But what's missing here is any sense of self-criticism and any kind of self-awareness because the cynicism is directed completely externally. But the cynicism with regard to other people implies actually

an oblique affirmation that there is truth and there is morality, it's that we have it. So, I think, well, that's very interesting because the other problem with that. So, essentially, your observation is that, while the postmodern types, especially with more neo-Marxist twist, accuse every system and every other person other than themselves, let's say, of being motivated by nothing but power. Yet, they claim that that doesn't apply to themselves, and they implicitly claim that objection to the use of power is moral, but they absolutely never, as far as I can tell, explain why, which is actually why I was asking you that question.

It's like, well, if it's self-evident that power is wrong and it's self-evident that you stand for something other than the use of power, which is obviously something both transcendent because it can unite people who are united against power and hire in that it's morally preferable to power, then exactly what the hell is this? And that postmodernists simultaneously disavow the existence of anything like unifying meta-narrative, and they do that explicitly, even though they seem to have a unifying meta-narrative in their objection to the use of power. But it's all left implicit.

It's like an unconscious God as far as I can tell. It's something like that. And so you elaborated out your relationship to transcend the truth in the confines of conscience, you said, with regards to the theft, but also to the feeling of admiration that overcame you when you were six or seven years old, when you saw this particular movie. And that's an interesting observation to me because I think often that our moral intuition is grounded in something like admiration, right? And that comes upon us. It's not something we create. You said that happened to you when you were six or seven.

You learned that there was something to admire. And you didn't come from a religious background and yet you became a professor of Christian ethics. So how did that unfold across time? Just on this business of admiration. And another reason I would give for saying, for justifying why I think of human life properly as being about the acknowledgement and the approximation and the calling towards truth, goodness and beauty is that it makes those who adopt that position more beautiful. So they become, you know, those who, and I think even postmodernism might agree with this if they were willing to be thoughtful. When you look upon, as it were, exemplars of the moral position you hold, those who have risked all for justice or for the truth. There's a beauty about them that is fascinating and draws you to them. And that raises the question,

I don't suppose cows or slugs read this way, but it raises the question of why is a cosmos so constructed that we human beings are really moved by people who do such things and sometimes moved to risk all to risk all to follow them and do do it likewise. That tells us something really important about the cosmos. Well, it seems to me and I think your level of analysis is correct. I think that it's a truth that's metaphysical and objective and theological once, that the proper pathway forward all things considered is to be found in establishment of a relationship with the truth. And you might say, well, that's because if you're in accordance

with reality, you can dance with reality in a much more effective manner than if you set yourself up in opposition to it. And then you might say, well, that's such a fundamental truth that we're actually oriented instinctively to apprehend its presence when we see it. And I think the reason that heroes in movies and heroes in literature, I think the idea

that the king of kings, that that idea of a king of kings even emerged is that it's the hierarchical ordering of that which is most admirable. And what you have on the Christian front is this peculiar proclamation that what's most admirable is the union of what is highest with service to what is lowest and most and most helpless. You see that I've been looking, for example, at shepherd imagery in the Old Testament, because the shepherd is a common trope for, well, obviously for Christ, but also David is a shepherd and able is a shepherd. And a shepherd is a very interesting character because a shepherd back in more archaic times

was a very brave person because the sheep that he guarded were preyed upon by vicious predators. Lions and wolves were very common in the Middle East, and shepherds were often called upon to defend their flock from very vicious predators with very primordial implements. So David, for example, obviously used a slingshot, which he also used to kill giants. And then the shepherd at the same time has to be the person who, despite that monstrous capacity to kill even wolves and lions, is capable of paying attention and caring for the most vulnerable possible creatures. And in the shepherd's story, it's obviously lambs, but the idea that that's the lost among human beings

or infants is an easy move from that position. And you look at David, Michelangelo Statue of David, and you see this combination of no masculine capacity to stand firm in the face of terrible opposition and this ability to care for what's vulnerable. And it seems to me that that's that idea is core to the Christian like the Christian set of images and stories. And it calls out admiration because it calls to the instinct to emulate that. And that's not a cognitive, it's not exactly a cognitive process, it's way deeper than that. Yes, yes, yes.

John, you asked about how one of that became a Christian ethicist, just briefly to tell you that. briefly to tell you that. I mean, I said my first love was always history. I studied history at university in Oxford in the early 70s, but that period of history in this country in Britain was extremely disturbed. My first term in Oxford in October 73, I had to learn to drink my tea without sugar because the docks were all closed because the docks were on strike. No sugar was coming to the country. I had to prepare for my first day to be exams by Cancel Light because the power stations were shut down because the coal miners were on strike. And that was when the violence in Northern Ireland was at its height.

So there was a sense of national crisis. And as a young Christian, I had decided to become a Christian when I was 13, and I was now aged 20 or so, 1920. I was asking myself, what have the theological and moral resources of Christianity got to say to this national crisis? And actually, looking back, I ended up pursuing a career as a professional ethicist because I wanted to work out my answers to those questions. And so it's a really, I became a Christian

and it's partly because I've become a Christian, but also because I was early fascinated as too trivial, I was possessed by questions of right and wrong and good and bad. And particularly was a guard to the political crisis in Brisbane of the 1970s. And in some ways, Jordan, the book I've just written a colonialism, I feel that of all that I've written, that probably is the book I was born to write.

Aha. You used this language of possession, you said, and like you insisted upon that. What do you mean by that, and why did you use that terminology, particularly? Well, again, because it's not true that the experience, the the the phenomena was not I chose to do X. As with the the the story of when I finally decided I didn't want to steal anymore, it was a sense that something came to me. That was the experience. Came to me and said, Nigel, you don't really want to do this. And I said, no, I don't really want to do this. So the sense of which, so the word of the talk of possession, being possessed, is a more

accurate description of the experience. Right, right. Well, that seems to me to be a reflection of the intrinsic logos of being. And it's partly, you see that in science because there are phenomena that scientists study, but those phenomena are also those phenomena that call to the individual scientists, right? They pursue an interest that makes itself manifest to them in some ways independent of their will. That grip of interest it manifests itself as the problems that be set you that will not let you lie in peace. And it manifests itself as the set of opportunities that back into you.

You know, I don't know if you know this, but the word phenomenon itself is derived from a Greek root, phanus thigh, and it means to shine forth. And there is this, yeah, that's very interesting, right? There is this autonomy of problem and interest that's quite the mystery, you know, if something bothers you, you can't just easily shake it off voluntarily. If an opportunity compels you forward, you can capitalize that and use it as a source of motivation, and you could object to it and put it off to one side, which is a big mistake. But it's very, very difficult to convince yourself that you're interested in something that doesn't call to you.

So there is that autonomy, right? And that's related to that idea of possession, is that something seizes you and directs you. And you can act in concert with it or reject it. Those seem to be your options. I was looking at the story of Jonah the other day trying to sort it out. It's such an interesting story because it's very germane to what we're discussing. So Jonah hears a call from God and he's basically called upon to go to a city, Nineveh, and tell the people of Nineveh that they've wandered off the path

and that they're going to be in serious trouble if they don't get their act back together. And Jonah being a wise man, just like most professors, let's say, decides there's no damn way. He's going to go to a city and tell everyone there that they're wrong because that's not going to turn out very well for him. So he decides to get the hell out of there and jumps on a boat, goes in the opposite direction. And then the storms rise around him and the sailors conclude that there must be someone on board who's offended the gods or God and they go to each person and inquire and Jonah finally admits that God told him to stand up and say what he had to say to the demented citizens of Nineveh and he decided he was going to escape. And so the sailors throw him off the boat at which point the wave sees. And that's pretty, and so it's so interesting psychologically because what it implies is that if

you are called upon to say something, to set things right, even at the social level and you don't, the storms are going to rise around you. But that isn't all that happens to Jonah, right? The next thing that happens is that this terrible beast comes up from the abyss and swallows him, and pulls him all the way to the bottom of the world. It's like the harrowing of hell in the Christian story. And so the further inference there is that if something calls to you to speak the truth when things are corrupt and you ignore it, not only will the storms rise around you, but you will end up somewhere so dismal

you can hardly possibly imagine it. And I can't help but think about that in light of the rise of totalitarian states in the 20th century because people in totalitarian states lied to each other and to themselves 100% of the time. And that's why they ended up in hell. You know, when Jonah repents and decides to go to Nineveh, the whales spits them back up on shore in consequence. And because of that, because of he goes there

and tells the truth, the God then decides to not destroy the city. And what that also implies is that if Jonah would have permanently abandoned his ethical responsibility to say what he was called upon to say that an entire city would have been devastated. And that's a hell of a good lesson for the current times. Yeah, so I guess my, my, it's a something that puzzled me and I don't the answer to it is, is My, my, it's something that puzzled me, I don't the answer to it, is, is, why are some people so made that they respond to the call? I mean, I'm, you caught Jonah, I'm thinking of a passage

in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, where the prophet is, is complaining to God, is saying, you know, you give me your word and I speak it and everyone hates me and and insults me. Bloody hell, I'm not I'm not gonna do it anymore. He says, I'm I'm sulking. I'm not doing it anymore. But then he says, but when I flat arrives, they distance themselves. They keep themselves safe. I don't know what the secret is. Well, I think part of it is, I think part of it is the consequence of a million microchoises. There's this old idea that the Blues Seniors in the US had that you meet the devil at the crossroads. The crossroads is obviously a choice point.

What I saw happening in universities is that whenever the faculty were called on to withstand the pressures of the administration, especially as the administration became more and more woke, they retreated. It was a micro-retreat. Yes. And so it was a failure to, and the rationale was, well, I don't need to make an issue out of this. But if you fail to make an issue out of a million micro-catastrophies, then it's a macro-catastrophy

and you're weak. Now it doesn't completely address the question because you might say, well, why do people turn to the right or the left in the initial stages of that decision process? Like in childhood, in principle, when you were faced with your conscience in relationship to stealing those soldiers, you could have continued to steal them, right? You could have up the anti, you could have doubled down like the Pharaoh, let's say, and pursued that pathway. You know, the classic Christian response to that is that, well, we have free will. And whatever that means, as our soul is granted the capacity to freely choose between up and down and, you know, barring a better explanation, that's a pretty good one. Otherwise, you end up with notions of predestination and so forth, which...

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a mystery there that we can't completely resolve. I certainly can. We can observe. Yep. No. No.

So, shall we turn to your book itself? Yes, please. All right, so there's eight chapters in the book, and you associated each of the chapters with a question. I thought we would just go through the chapters and the questions. So chapter one is, well, let's start with the introduction. You already laid out the opposition to your work that arose when you started to investigate the ethical the ethical pros and cons of colonialism. And you decided to undertake a moral assessment of

the British Empire project. You lay that out in the introduction. In chapter one, you start with motives good and bad. And the question you put forward was, is was the imperial endeavor driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate? Well, that's the ultimate in postmodern questions. You might say, I lied in that sense, we discussed with the Marxists. And so, was the imperial endeavor driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate. Tell us what you concluded and why. Yeah, so this phrase, the lust to dominate is the one that St. Augustine used in the early 400s to describe the Roman Empire.

That's why I used it. And if you take your cue from Augustine, then that was the kind of essence of Roman Empire. So when I came to think about the history of the British Empire, that was in my mind. And it seemed to me, certainly as far as the British Empire goes, to be completely inadequate to describe it as driven by either the simple lust of dominate or agreed.

In fact, if you look at the variety of motives that moved Britain's to travel over the world and to take control of various territories. The reasons are various. And I make a point here that no one woke up in London one day and thought of themselves, oh, let's go and conquer the world. It wasn't like that. It was much more ad hoc in response to circumstance. I mean, there may be empires where someone wakes up in Berlin and decides to go and

conquers Europe. But it wasn't always so, and there may be empires that are entirely about the loss to dominate. Maybe, you know, Genghis Khan was of that, and his Mongols were of that kind. But well, it needs to be careful, very careful, I think, not to import a kind of one-fitz-all theory and to say, well, this was an empire, so this must have been like that. A lot of the my critics, the reading of historical data is kind of pre-programmed by a theory as to what empire must be. But if you look at the history of the British Empire, motives, I mean, an early and persistent motive was trade. People, the East India Company went out to India in the 1600s to trade and make money.

Other people at the same time went west, was across the Atlantic and pitched up on the coast of North America. Why did they do that? Partly because they were there to harass Spanish shipping, bringing gold back to the Americas to Spain? Why? Because Spain was the dominant empire, and England was a Protestant country at the the wrong end of power at that time, ironically, the beginnings of English British Empire in that case were actually anti-imperialists. in that case, we're actually anti-imperialist. And then, yes, then people like Francis Drake and Walter Rolly are keen to find gold in the Americas, and yes, they abuse the natives.

But there you've got trade, which I think is innocent. You've got actually a desire to defend yourself against overwhelming imperial power, which could be innocent. The last for gold that led you to abuse other people is not so innocent. Later on, in the 19th century, one reason the British ended up in West Africa and East Africa, one reason was lobbying by humanitarian to suppress the trading slaves. So that was a humanitarian reason. So the historical phenomena tell you there are a variety of motives here, some good, some bad. Okay, so we could perhaps assume as a rule of thumb that the motivations of our ancestors were just as complex as our motivations.

And then we could assume that the tendency to monomaniacly reduce all motivations to a single motivation is probably more reflective of the refusal to think in complex ways than it is and what would you say, a manifestation of accuracy and diagnosis. And so you see, I mean, accuracy and diagnosis. And so you see, I mean, I'm an admirer of Freud in many ways, but he was rather monomonical about sex. And the Marxist types and the Neomarchists are absolutely monomonical about power. They assume that all human relationships are structured by power, except theirs, as we pointed out before. And then they extend that analysis to the economic and historical domains, and that really does simplify the endeavor, right? It's also interesting from a religious perspective, I would say, because the atheist, Neil Marxist postmodernists have elevated power to the status of a God. And I would say, if the spirit of power is your God, that's about as close to an antichrist as you could possibly formulate. And that's a very interesting phenomenon as well. You know, because you might ask, well, in the aftermath of the Nietzschean

death of God, what arises to replace that central unifying tendency, let's say, one possibility would be nihilistic disunity, which Nietzsche did describe as a looming danger. But the other is that another kind of monotheism will arise. And it does seem to me to be very self-serving because once you have decided that power is the only motivation, you never have to think about anything again. You can just interpret everything that happened in terms of oppression and victimization. And if you're smart, you can do that well, you know, but that doesn't mean that it's helpful. Yes, I, I, I, that's sticking this issue of power for a moment, Jordan,

because I, I realized in retrospect, a major, not the articulate theme running through my, my book, and in fact, all my recent thinking writing is what I would call a certain realism. So just taking the issue of power, my view is there ain't nothing wrong with power. We all want it. I mean, if we don't have power, we can't do anything, right? So let's stop assuming that the power is always bad. The only question is whether we use power well or badly, justly or unjustly. And the first modern critics obviously oppose certain kinds of power, but they need to be honest

about the fact that they oppose it because they want power for themselves. And the question post of them is, will you use it well or badly? My experience of them insofar as they've criticized me and what I think is the abuse power very, very broadly and very casually. But it's the only motivation then why not use it? I always think of it as self-justification for use of compulsion. I think we could also distinguish two kinds of power. There's ability and there's use of compulsion. And you pointed out as one of the motivations that drove the British Empire, you pointed out the desire to trade. Now, a skeptical Marxist would say, well, there's no difference between trade and greed, and so you've undermined your own argument. But if I have something valuable to offer

that you can't produce and vice versa, and we trade in principle, we're both better off. I mean, that's the classic free market argument. And I don't see anything at all that wreaks of compulsion in that endeavor. I mean, I think you have to be damn cynical to think that all production and exchange can be reduced to mutual exploitation. It doesn't account for productivity, right? There's no productivity there. So it's a foolish theory. I mean, greed is excessive desire for whatever it is. It's a lust. And the question of when we all, everybody I think wants to flourish, we want to profit in some way, nothing wrong with it at all. But yes,

our desire to flourish and profit can become excessive when it's at other people's expense, or when it's unjust. So let's distinguish the desire to profit or flourish from greed. Well, and so I would also say we could point to a natural ethos that emerges as a consequence of repeated trade. So we're trading repeatedly in this conversation and hopefully I'm not dominating and hopefully you're not dominating. And what would happen if one of us did is that the conversation would degenerate. If we can exchange mutually and reciprocally, then we can play a game that's self-sustaining and that's growing. And the same thing applies on the trade front. So I would say there's a natural limit intrinsic natural limit to the use of exploitation in economic exchange. Because if you do nothing but exploit your

trading partner, the next time you come to trade, you're going to fail. Yep. Yep. And in the early decades, centuries of overseas colonial endeavour, the British Europeans were on the weaker foot, Indian merchants, Indian, in fact, the East Indian Company only got a foothold or toehold in India because it was granted them by native Indian rulers. So at that point, the British were the weaker, not the stronger. Right. So the role of the mercantile impulse, which is an impulse for mutually beneficial trade in the expansion of the empire is radically understated by the Marxist types partly, because they don't distinguish trade in any other economic enterprise from greed and power. Yeah, now, I think, you know, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, let's let me be honest here and say, for example, in the use of Native African

labor in southern Africa and elsewhere in the British Empire in the 19th century, there is no doubt, well, it's highly probable, One needs to examine each case that native labor was exploited. That's to say the terms of their employment was unfair, and they were forced to do things they didn't want to do. To which my answer is, well, yes, I'm sure that happened. But it also happened in Britain itself, and it happens no doubt in contemporary India and Nigeria. So the exploitation of labor through unfair terms and conditions wasn't a peculiar colonial sin.

So okay, so now let's go to chapter two, from slavery to anti-slavery. The question you posed there was, should we speak of colonialism and slavery in the same breath as if they were the same thing? Now, one of the weird tensions that emerges for me there, and I've tried to think this through clearly, I'm reading at the moment a multivolume history of slavery put out, I think, by Cambridge University Press. And my sense historically, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong here, is that slavery

is a ubiquitous feature of human societies. And the conscious realization that slavery itself is intrinsically wrong, even in the case, let's say, of prisoners of war or debt or debtors. That notion emerged with great difficulty and it manifested itself most profoundly in the UK, probably in the person of Wilbur Force, who and the Christian Protestant evangelists who made a very strong case that slavery itself was intrinsically immoral. And the consequence of that was eventually that the British Navy fought for about 175 years on the high seas to make slavery a counterproductive enterprise. And one of the things that sort of terrifies me about the radical leftist enterprise is

that they really risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater because whatever it was that it held Wilberforce and then the entire UK to stand against slavery is the only thing we know of in the entire history of the world that actually did stand against slavery with any degree of success. So why do you, what other cases do you think can be made that colonialism and slavery were not the same thing? And why do you think there is this insistence on the radical left side to deny the very process that actually did free slaves in so far as they've become free in recent times?

So Jordan, I think the identification of colonialism with slavery is similar to the 1619 project in the United States, which identifies the foundations of the US with fundamentally racist and therefore fundamentally illegitimate. I think what's happened is that the probably through Black Lives Matter, the killing of George Floyd in 2020, Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter movement, came across the Atlantic with no change of clothes landed in Britain. Our equivalent is to say contemporary Britain is systemically racist. The reason we're so semically racist is that we continue to revere our colonial past, let's say, by having a statute of social roads. And as we all know, colonialism

was essentially about slavery, which was based on a racist view of Africans as subhuman. So colonialism equals slavery equals racism. And that's the foundations of Britain. And that's why we have to repudiate our colonial past cool down Cecil Rhodes, cool down Johnny McDonald in Canada, and somehow, therefore, we liberate ourselves from systemic racism. And that's the logic behind the colonialism and slavery mantra. So in this country, those two things are commonly talked about as if they were the same thing. commonly talked about as if they were the same thing. And my very simple point in that second chapter is to say, wait a moment, as you've just said Jordan, yes, for 150 years, some British people, by no means all,

were involved in slave trading and profiting from slavery in the West Indies. But for 1807 onwards, and then 1833, first the slave trade then slavery itself were abolished by the British and for the rest of the empire's existence for another 150 years roughly, the British were involved in anti-slavery. So you cannot identify British colonialism with slavery because for the second half of its life it was anti-slavery. And yes, slavery in one form or another, in some forms more humane than others,

has been around since virtually the dawn of time, practiced on every continent by black and brown and red-skinned and yellow-skinned people as well as white-skinned people. The Comanche nation in the southwest of the US ran what one historian has called a vast slave economy in the 1700s. The Arabs were involved in slavery. Africans were selling African slaves to the Romans and the Arabs before they ever sold into Europeans. So we may be dismayed at the fact that so many Europeans and British people up

until the late 1700s accepted this institution and the fact of slave trading, but we have to put it in context. Everyone did it, including slaves who escaped from the plantations Jamaica into the forest of interior. Some of them kept slaves of their own. So common was the practice. So yes, what happened in the late 1700s was for the first time in history, some nations, not just Britain, also Denmark and France,

came to the view that only other people as your property without them having any rights was morally abhorrent. And for the first time in history, these nations eventually led by Britain abolished the slave trade and slavery. And then Britain used its imperial power, its power for humanitarian purposes to abolish slavery from Brazil across the Atlantic, across Africa, India, to Malaysia. So power can be a good thing, and in that case, it was used for humanitarian purposes. There in here is, Jordan, as you suggested just before I started speaking, just before I started speaking. There are, and here is, in that case, the empire and those humanitarians who were lobbying for the imperial power to be used

as a press slavery, they were the progressive people of their days. Well, it also seems to me, and you're in a great position to comment on this. So first of all, we have to accept to some degree that the willingness to use power and compulsion and to keep slaves is relatively ubiquitous across the entire human family, let's say, and that opposition to that emerges with difficulty and rarely. And then you have to ask yourself, what are the preconditions for that kind of opposition? And certainly the case with Wilberforce, as far as I can tell, that he was driven by the conviction

that all men and women are made in the image of God, and that it was a violation of a transcendent ideal that slavery in and of itself was the violation of a transcendent ideal. And that is something that's deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. And deeper than that, I mean, there's certainly the dawning of objection to the notion of slavery and tyranny in the book of Exodus. That's much older than Christianity. But it's still an idea that emerged with difficulty.

And I have tried to think my way around this, right, because I don't like to multiply unnecessary metaphysical presumptions. But I can't see at all that opposition to slavery would have emerged the way it did in Britain. If it wouldn't have been able to draw on a well of metaphysical and religious presupposition, that was predicated on the idea that each person has a soul and that that soul in some manner has a divine value. Yeah, so you're quite right. The main impulse for the abolition movement was Christian, even gelical Christian. And so John Wesley in 70s, 74

published a treatise called Up on Thoughts of Slavery, and on the front page of the Treaties is a quotation from the book of Genesis, where is it Cain says something like, am I my brother's keeper? The gods answer being yes you are. And the implication being that all human beings, regardless of race and cultural development, are equally children of the one god. And that was clearly the main conviction that drove even Joel Christian's non-conformist Christians initially to follow the...

Right, I didn't know about that comment by Wesley. So that ties the story of Canaanable in with the opening chapters of the earlier parts of Genesis, the old verses of the earlier part of Genesis. So you have the proposition that human beings are made in the image of God, and you have the later proposition in the Canon Abel story that that means that you have a divine obligation to act in relationship to others with that divine value in mind. That's right. And so now we get we get we get on to chapter three on race here at Jordan. So this Christian conviction of the fundamentals, the development of a contrary view, which you might call a scientific or biological racism, which holds that you have a hierarchy of races,

and the white races are naturally, biologically superior to non-white races. So you have a kind of permanent, fixed, heart-racial hierarchy. But this notion of some people's being naturally inferior, vied with the Christian notion, but never displaced it. So, for example, I was reading and I quote this in my book, an account of debates in the Parliament of Canada in the 1880s, and it's reported by the historian that every time someone would stand up and say that the Native Americans are naturally inferior, others would stand up. And other MPs would stand up and say, no,

that's not British, that is not Christian. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's an interesting. There's a lot of issues there that are great interest. One is that the white supremacist movement in the late 1800s was grounded in the quasi-scientific tradition and not in the Christian tradition. That's pretty interesting for those who think that science by necessity will offer a morally superior view to say a mythologically predicated metaphysics.

And the eugenicist movement was a scientific movement as well. And it was predicated on a misapprehension of Darwinian presumptions and a misuse of the notion of survival of the fittest. fittest being equated with, let's say, most successful and dominant right now, and those concepts are by no means equal. So, a scientist would object, well, they were bad scientists, and there's some truth in that, but it's still interesting that the dominant form of explicit racism emerged out of the confines of the scientific community and not within the confines of the religious community. And so, and so, you're the question that you pose in chapter three, which we just discussed was, was the British Empire essentially racist?

One of the things that struck me about Wilbur Force and Wesley, this is particularly true in relationship to India, is that even though by the time they were operating and agitating against slavery, there were extremely potent economic reasons to keep India under the thumb of Britain, so to speak. There was still a tremendous amount of impetus on the moral side to translate the British Empire into something like self-government for the inhabitants of India as rapidly as possible. And that's, of course, a radical improvement over the situation that obtained before the British occupied India, because it wasn't like it was a paradise of equality of opportunity prior to the emergence of British power.

That's right. I mean, as I'm frank in the book, yes, the British Empire did contain all sorts of racial prejudice, but my point is, it didn't only contain that, it also contained, as we've just discussed, this major movement for the abolition of slavery, and later on in the in the 1800s, a movement of concern for the plighted native peoples who were suffering under the sudden impact on modernity based on a racial, racially egalitarian view. And also, yes, sometimes you get Britons who are dismissive and contemptuous of native cultures. But on the other hand, in India, for example, you have Britons who are fascinated by ancient Sanskrit Hindu culture, who are unlike Indians who are allowing the ancient monuments to disintegrate, preserve

the monuments. And then you get this very, just in case you think that British imperialists were constantly imposing their unwanted culture on native peoples who have this incident in 1829, I think, when I was really three maybe, when the East India Company wants to invest in a, in building a Hindu college devoted to ancient indigenous Sanskrit learning. And you have a progressive Indian social reformer, Roger Ramohan Rai who writes to the Governor-General and says, look, Sanskrit learning is benighted. What Indians need is exposure to European science in which Europe has become preeminent. And just think of that for a moment. In this case, the Brits want to support indigenous

learning. And the Indian says, no, we need the new stuff, the European stuff. So yes, there was racism, but there was also respect for fascination, for admiration for native cultures. And also, yeah, well, the issue, the question that you posed was it essentially racist. Now, if it's racist by error and by corruption, that's very different than say, as you pointed out, the 1619 project, which is making the case that the essential motivation was both racist

and slave owning, let's say predicated on this need to dominate an oppress. And there's a big difference between saying that things might degenerate in that direction, even frequently, and saying, no, that was all it was. That's that essential monomania again that we were talking about. Yeah. And so, see, and another, I would say, historical fact that mitigates against the essentially racist accusation is the persistence of the Commonwealth after the Empire abandons its direct political

control. I mean, you have to ask yourself, it's not as if the Commonwealth is as tight or effective as it might be, but as far as a loose collection of nations on the international front goes, the Commonwealth is pretty damn voluntary in its structure, and also an aggridation of the countries that function better on average than almost all countries in the world. And that includes India, interestingly enough, which is a very, very complicated country, and hard to get all moving in a productive direction simultaneously. Yeah, I just going back to your earlier point about the kind of the liberal vision of an empire that would, as it were, relax into independent states.

I mean, the British learned their lesson from the American War of Independence in the 1770s and 80s. the British learnt their lesson from the American War of Independence in the 1770s and 80s. And in my book I quote three Scotsman, all of whom ended up governing cities in India, Madras, Calcutta, Bombay in the 1820s. And every one of them can be found writing to each other or saying to their subordinates, look, we aren't going to be ever ever. We British can't rule here forever. All we can hope to do is to help build decent government, leave with grace and carry, we hope, the good will of Indians. And then it from 1860 on 1867 onwards, as you as a Canadian will know, when Canada became a dominion, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, all becoming increasingly independent,

but 19th-day to the virtually independent states. And India is put on the same track after the First World War. So yes, yes, some Britons wanted to cling on to power, Imperial power too long. But there was also a kind of liberal vision whereby the empire would relax into what was being talked about as a Commonwealth of Nations as early as 1916. Yeah, well, it's very interesting to speculate on the motives for that emergence, too. It's, I mean, you don't want to be naive when you look at the historical record, but it seems to me to be undeniable that especially again, in the impulse that gave rise to people like Wesley and Wilberforce, there was this notion of the universal dignity of mankind and the idea that

if we could all cooperate voluntarily towards the highest possible ends, that that would be much preferable to any state of preferable in maintenance and productivity and ethical desirability to any state that might be imposed by force. Yeah, so I think there was a positive, a liberal conviction, plus a kind of wise political recognition that Britain didn't have the power to impose itself. It is lost the war against the Americans in the 70s and it didn't have the power to make colonies do exactly what it wanted. So it had to negotiate. Right. Well, so the cynical view would be well,

because Britain couldn't exercise power, it settled for the second best choice. But that's pretty damn cynical, because there are other ways of being foul and corrupt that don't involve necessarily the use of direct power. And it is quite interesting that that India, for example, still maintains very positive relationships with with the UK. Yeah, it does. And I, I, I myself think that since power is a fact of life, and the other questions whether you use it badly or, or, or well, I think those who recognize the limits of the power are wise. And many people don't. Chapter four, land settlers in Conquest, how far was the Empire Endeavor based on the conquest of land?

So in North America and in Australia, and for some extent in Africa, yes, there was conquest. As an ethicist, as a theorist about just war, that doesn't settle the matter ethically because I have to know what were the reasons for the conquest. But my reading of what happened in North America was that the English colonists in the 1600s were pretty brutal and pretty unscrupulous in taking lands from native peoples. But there was a moral revolution as we talked about at the end of the 1700s. And in Australia, I think certainly colonial governors and officials were, they tried very hard to prevent settlers from seizing lands unjustly from natives. And in the 1800s, the principle was that you don't seize territory, you negotiate

and you make treaties. And in the 1800s, that's what happened in Canada. So when people talk about the British Empire, if it was one thing, and when people say, well, it was essentially racist or essentially exploitative or essentially about conquest, I have to say, well, no, it was all sorts of things. And you've got, you do have the unjusties, you're of territory. But in the case of India, for example, the British never settled there in large numbers in 1900 when there were about 300 million Indians, there were only about 164,000 Britons. So there wasn't, there were conquests in India, but again, one has to ask, well, was the use of force in this case justified. Sometimes conquest justified, I mean the Allies conquered

90 Germany in 1945, most of us would say that was justified. So conquest is not necessarily wrong. But there's no doubt that some land was taken unjustly from natives. But let's put this in context again. The mass movement of people and the trespass on other people's territory had been a fact of life throughout history. Within the North American continent, Indian peoples were in the business of displacing other Indian peoples. So the

Iroquois, I think in the 1600s, expanded their own empire that was expanding the Zulu in the 1920s and the Africa they expanded and pushed other African peoples off territory. I'm not justifying that, I'm not saying it was good. I'm just, and when the Europeans did with the British did, I'm not saying it was good, but it happened a lot because, because unlike the will we inhabit today, we didn't have, they didn't have stable states with fixed boundaries. Things were much more fluid and uncertain. But it's not the case that the British Empire was built entirely on conquest or entirely

on the unjust seizure of land. It depends on the case. In some cases in Canada, for example, the session of land by native Canadians was agreed by treaty. And partly because inadvertently Europeans have brought disease to North America, native peoples had died out in droves and land that had been occupied was then vacant. And it suited native Canadians to see this land that they had no use for. It depends on the case.

Number five is cultural assimilation and genocide. How did the British Empire involve genocide? I mean, this is a hot issue in Canada because our own Prime Minister has basically defined our country and our culture as intrinsically genocidal. And that's an accusation that's causing no end of trouble, but nowhere near as much trouble as it's going to cause. And so it's a crucial issue. And so what did you conclude on that front? So everything depends on how we define genocide, Jordan. I think first of all following what the international law says about genocide,

genocide has to be intentional, right? So if you're talking about the mass annihilation of real people, my understanding is that no genocide occurred with the British Empire, not even in Tasmania, and I'm not alone in thinking that there are Australian historians who also think the use of the word genocide to discuss, to describe the annihilation of the virtual annihilation of Tasmania, Aboriginalist was, was genocide that's not appropriate. Um, as for Canada, why not in Tasmania? If that's the most crucial case, that, I'll obviously be a reasonable place to focus. So why is that inappropriate in the case of Tasmania if that's the most crucial case that there will obviously be a reasonable place to focus? So, why is that inappropriate in the case of Tasmania?

Because it's quite clear that the colonial government sought to protect Aborigines. There was no intention of the part of the colonial government to exterminate Aborigines. And the evidence I've read says that even among settlers, yes, there were some who were so hostile to natives, they wanted to exterminate them, but that was not a majority opinion. So to describe the reason, to describe the reason their aborigines were virtually annihilated, not completely, because of an intentional campaign to exterminate them, it's just not true. Many of them of course died because of disease and because of displacement, but it was not an intentional campaign of extermination. In Canada, predicated on explicit state policy?

No, not at all. And the state did its best to prevent the abuse of natives by settlers. The problem was, as was often the case with colonial government, it was too weak, not too strong. It didn't have the power, the manpower, other resources to stop what was going on the frontier, which was wild and lawless. Right. Well, we should point out, as in the case of slavery, that explaining ethnocentrism isn't actually a problem.

The problem is explaining any resistance to ethnocentrism. That's the miracle. I mean, human beings have very distinct in-group propensities, and that seems to characterize us at every level of social organization. And so, the probability that when one group meets another, there's going to be a certain degree of dehumanization of the other to use the leftist tropes, that's almost certain. But there is that countervailing position that we've been elaborating, which extends a hand of welcome and an invitation to trade to people who aren't part of our particular ethnic group. And that's a non-trivial modifying force to the expression of that desire to dominate and destroy.

Absolutely. And just to expand a bit on that, yes, the human propensity to identify with one group against another and to feel superior to the other, whether it's football clubs or nations or races or churches, whatever have you, that's a universal human propensity. We all like to do it because it makes us feel bigger and better. But when you're thinking about what happened when Europeans encountered natives in aboriginals in Australia or Native Americans or Canadians in North America, you should do two things in mind. First of all, the cultural gap was vast. I mean, Europe at that time was at the pin point of modernity, in terms of technology and science and weaponry and whatever, and that they met people who in terms of

cultural development were much less developed. And so the cultural gap was just vast, and these people don't understand each other. And you have weak government authority. So there's not much to control your encounter. And so the sense of threat was high. And where people feel insecure, they don't understand each other. They don't have the same customs. Conflict is almost inevitable, and it's uncontrolled. And that was tragic.

is almost inevitable and it's uncontrolled. And that was tragic. But when you're thinking about this encounter between different ethnic groups, then the inclination to be dismissive and hostile to another group is intensified because of worst conditions. Right. Yes, well, and I would also say too, we don't want to underestimate the degree to which many of the earlier, earliest adventurers on the colonial frontier were Nerdy Wells and psychopaths who left their own country because no one could tolerate them.

And so there is a certain heightened percentage of the worst who left first because no one could stand them where they came from. And they had the opportunity to let their sadistic motivations run free on the frontier. So when we talk about colonialism, and I try to avoid theism because it implies again something that was unitary, we're talking about colonial, imperial government, colonial government in Ottawa and missionaries and traders and adventurers. We talk about all sorts of different people with different attitudes. And you're right. The story in North America and Africa was sometimes of independent private adventurers. And part of the reason for imposing colonial government is to try and control the encounter between Europeans

and natives in the hope that you might be able to protect natives. Right, great. Well, number seven, or number six, was free trade investment exploitation. Was it the Empire driven fundamentally by the mode of economic exploitation? I think we've covered that. So let's move to number seven, government legitimacy and nationalism.

Chapter seven, since colonial government was not democratic, did that make it illegitimate? So what I say about that, Jordan, is I mean, I think any good government has to be government for the people and any government that wants to serve the people's interests needs to understand what it is the people need and it needs to be able to hear from the people so that it forms policy that serve the people's interests. So there needs to be communication between the top, the bottom and the top. And democracy is one way of doing that,

and it's one way of holding executive government to account, but it's not the only way. And I just think it is quite implausible to suppose that sufficient political justice only visited the earth with the birth of the American Republic in the late 1700s, early 1800s. So the fact that a government isn't democratic, to my mind, doesn't make it illegitimate. And mass democracy, mass democracy, was only developing in the Western world in the 1800s and in Europe the late 1800s. I mean Britain didn't give the vote equally to men and women until

1928. So if the empire wasn't democratic, it was partly because Britain was only becoming democratic. And the last thing I'd say about that is that native people sometimes recognize that even the government that isn't democratic is good enough. So in the 1950s and 60s, no one knows how many, but there were several million Chinese who fled the Chinese mainland because it was then in a state of civil war or anarchy. Where did they flee? They fled into the British colony of Hong Kong. They did it voluntarily, not because Hong Kong was democratic, but because at least there was

the rule of law and there's sufficient stability to build a decent life. So your case essentially is, I think, is that even if there is a hierarchy of legitimate government with highly functional democratic states being at the pinnacle, that doesn't mean there's no differentiation whatsoever between states that haven't reached that level of development for one reason or another. That would be well exemplified in the case of Hong Kong. And so it's not obvious to me at all that Hong Kong was well served by being returned to the Chinese communists, for example. I mean, I know that was a transition away from democracy, but as well. People had been voting with their feet long before that.

On the inside of the cover of my book, I insisted there be a photograph of young Chinese student protestors in Hong Kong with a placard saying, Hong Kong is British. Just to make that point. with a placard saying Hong Kong is British, just makes that point. Right, right, right. Well, so what do you think it is that lens a government legitimacy, if it can be legitimate to some degree outside of the formal structures of the kind of democracy, we more or less take for granted now? It's because it provides just government and just government means that the genuine interests of the people are well served. And the thing about democracy, we all know government can go bad and democracy, liberal democracy is a way of constraining that. It doesn't remove the possibility of democratic government to go bad.

But sometimes, without the democratic constraints, non-democratic governments can rule justly. And that's why people, that's why people, if that worked the case, Chinese people would not have entered Hong Kong. Right, right. Well, we could go back to our early discussion and presume that non-democratic governments that are still predicated on the idea that there's something intrinsically valuable about each individual and that each individual is responsible for the safekeeping and safeguarding of other individuals. That's not a bad step in the legitimate government direction.

Absolutely. I did just to go back to your biblical illusions earlier, Jordan. Of course, the in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, a common metaphor for the king is shepherd. So even back there, there's a notion that a king, a good king, is a shepherd of his people. And sometimes, sometimes it happened. He's also subordinate to a higher authority. And you even saw that among the Mesopotamians.

So this is not in the Judeo-Christian line of thinking, but the Mesopotamians regarded their emperor if he was exercising his sovereignty properly, he was an avatar of Marduk, and Marduk had eyes around his head so he can see in all directions, and he could speak truthfully and magically. And so the mess of Damien's had already figured out that there was a principle of legitimate sovereignty, and it had something to do with the ability to pay attention to everything and to speak honestly. Yes, so this goes back to our earlier discussion, Jordan, because, yes, a good ruler is one who recognizes that he is subject to the requirements of goodness, truth

and beauty. And, you know, human conscience is not always sensitive, but sometimes, I rule as conscience is sensitive, And that's why one reason's why I remain a supporter of the monarchy in Britain, because as we saw at the coronation ceremony a few days ago, the symbol of the head of state gets on his knees to receive authority from above, which is given to him. And I think that's a fantastic, a really important political symbol. Right, well, and it's comprehensible too, when you put it in terms of something like an aggregation of virtues, say, well,

even if you're not explicitly religious in the classic monotheistic sense, you could say, well, a good ruler should be subordinate to the principles of truth and beauty and justice and courage and the panoply of more or less universally recognized virtues and that those are in some sense rulers above him or her. Yes, yes. Chapter eight, justified force and pervasive violence, was the empire essentially violent and was its violence pervasively racist and terroristic? Okay, the first thing to say is, all states depend upon the threat of the use of violence

because states are in the business of suppressing unjust behavior, whether within or threats from without. And unfortunately in the world we have, some people do abuse others and sometimes they have to be forced to stop and therefore force and sometimes violent force has to be used. So let's recognize that as true of all states. Next thing to do is to recognize that, as I said, in the past, whether in Britain or in Britain's colonies, governments and the 1700s and 1800s were compared to the states we have now, very weak, limited resources. And we've got a weak state limited resources. And we've got a weak state that the threat of violence erupting and the whole system disintegrating is high. And therefore, in greater insecurity, the greater

use of violent forces is morally permissible. The only reason that we in Canada or the States or in the West and Europe, we can afford to be very restrictive in the use of force within our own territories. The only reason we can afford that is because we have very strong states and where we don't have a lot of violence in the streets, but in the past that wasn't so. So there's that. And then the third thing to say whether violence is justified or not depends on the circumstances of the case. So I give some instances in that chapter of imperial violence that I think was quite unjustified. But then I say the British Empire was at its most violent between 1939-45. During the Second World War, when as Canadians and Australians and Indians and Africans well

know, the British resistance to Nazi Germany was an imperial effort. And between May 1940 and June 1941, May 1940, France fell, June 1941, Germans unwisely invaded Russia. In that period, the British Empire, with a sole exception of Greece, offered the only military resistance to the massively murderous racist regime in Berlin. So, yes, the empire was often violent. Sometimes, and in that latter case, its violence was well justified. Well, let's wrap up on with the conclusion and the epilogue. I mean, one of the things that I've noticed is that this insistence that our ancestors, let's say, were motivated by nothing but oppression and power our ancestors, let's say, were motivated by nothing but oppression and power

and is perhaps designed to be something that's profoundly demoralizing to modern people. And I think that's especially true of young men because the implication is that their ambitions are nothing but the manifestation of a sort of narrowly self-centered greed, that they're feeding nothing but patriarchal oppression at every level of social organization from marriage up to the state itself, and that even if they manage to, and not only are their ambitions, manifestations of that patriarchal oppression, say, it's also part of a planetary, a destructive planetary force. And that seems to me to be profoundly demoralizing if, if we lose respect for our ancestors, like a balanced respect, I think we simultaneously lose respect for our institutions and for ourselves. And I really think that's happening in a widespread manner at the moment.

And that seems to me to be nothing but bad. And so you wrote your epilogue and your conclusion. What did you conclude overall in terms of what you would hope for and recommend for the future? future. So just in the conclusion, I crafted an overall judgment about the British Empire and I say, we end up with a list of evils and a list of goods. There's no way we can say that one outweighed the other, you can't do it that way. How many emancipated slaves are worth how many people killed at Amrit's in 19, you can't do it that way. What you can do, and I see to demonstrate that is to say that the empire was not essentially racist or exploitative or given to unjustified violence, and then in addition you've got these growing humanitarian strands in the 1800s, and the liberal political strand whereby the empire relaxes into independent states. And then when does the empire exhaust itself

during the Second World War fighting Nazism, which has to say something good about what it had become. So that's how I, what's what I conclude about the empire. But to your question about the present relevance of all this, and this is why I wrote the book, it wasn't just for historical reasons at all. It was because, I noticed that in current debate and in the English speaking world, the focus is entirely by the postmodernist or anti-colonial critics.

They entirely on European British empires, the fact that Arabs and Africans and Native Americans did empire, the Chinese or the Japanese, doesn't matter. It's all about the white empires. Why is that? And I read that as being because this is an assault on the record and the self-confidence of the West. Because if it's true that our countries, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, if our countries were built on racism, exploitation, then that surely undermines our confidence in the institutions that we've created.

And ourselves. And as a recipe for, as it were, year zero revolution, which generally speaking of humanity very well. So that's why I... Okay, so I see two things driving that, and I'd really like your comments on this. And then maybe we could turn finally to the issue of critical reviews of your book. So the first thing I see in that enterprise is an attempt to revive the Marxist doctrine of oppression and victim is that if you can point to the West as fundamentally exploitative and the rest of the world say as fundamentally victimized, you breathe new life into the corpse of Marx and can maintain that monomonial fixation on power as the

fundamental motivating, the fundamental motivator of humanity. But I see something deeper going on there too, you know? And this is a trickier problem. You know, I've been writing about the story of Canaan Abel and Canaan Abel or of course the first two real human beings in history because Adam and Eve were made by God. And they locked themselves in a fragile, relationship that degenerates into chaos as the story progresses. And

the fundamental story is envy and revenge, the spirit of bitterness envy and revenge against the spirit that prevails as a consequence of making proper sacrifices. And I see that battle, and I'm not alone in this, I mean people who analyze mythological stories have noted the trope of the hostile brothers as a universal trope for decades. But it is something like the spirit of envy against the spirit of productive generosity. And I see the Marxist enterprise itself as a manifestation of that more fundamental resentment and envy, and this as a continuation of ideological

or religious battle that's been going on essentially as long as there's been human beings. It's the attempt by those who refuse to produce and refuse to share, to tear down and destroy the accomplishments of those who have done it to some degree, even however badly. And so I'd like your reflections on those suppositions, if you wouldn't mind. Yeah. So in the epilogue, I, having decided that the story that has been put about about colonialism

is historically untrue and quite unfair. I then asked myself, well, why are people going beyond the evidence and the truth here? So the evidence says the record was mixed, they say it was all essentially racist, etc. What propels these people to go beyond what reason and evidence and the truth permit? And I end up thinking of it maybe as you do too, it's a kind of spiritual thing. One speculation is, we all like, we like to big up our little lives by making ourselves into the nights in Shaniaama and we like to put down other people. It's a very human thing. And so there's a bit of kind of self-hyde-grant disment here where I get to be the social justice warrior.

And there's the wicked evil bigger, and there's the wicked evil Peterson, and we're going to smash them. It feels great, doesn't it? So there's a bit of that going on, I think. I think it's also perhaps a kind of degenerate Christianity in that, you know, it's going to Christianity. It's always right to confess our sins. And the self-righteous, ironically, the saint is one who knows just

how sinful he really is. Right. And I wonder if he doesn't know how sinful others are. That's the thing. Well, I do think it is an attempt to acquire, and this isn't particularly original observation, but it's an attempt to acquire unernd moral virtue. And it's a demented messianism, and it's unernd moral virtue because the confession is on behalf of the group and not the individual. It's like, here's how we were wrong.

And most of those we wasn't me, that was my ancestors. And I'm clearly morally superior to them. And I've done all the necessary work of repentance and transformations. Like, yeah, I don't think so. That's a lot more difficult than you might think. And I think it's a desire to avoid that responsibility and to adopt the guise of the cloak of messionism without any of the work that's driving this in one of the most fundamental ways. Yeah. And then some of these people, I mean, they're often they're often white, they're often highly privileged, and they presume to speak at behalf of the oppressed of the world.

And when some members of the oppressed of the world with non-white skin stand up and say, we don't agree with you. I've had, soon after I got into trouble in 2017, I got an email from an Indian, ethnically Indian Britain, who I've met 10 years before. He was a medic. And he said to me, now, I don't know if you know, but my grandfather was among those in the Jolly and Wallabug in Amritor in 1919 when General Dyer opened fire for six to fifteen minutes and and shot 350 unarmed Indians. My grandfather was among them. But he said, nevertheless, I think the British Empire could attain good as well as bad. So that there was one of the oppressed,

speaking to me and saying, on your side, but my critics, they think they stand for the oppressed. There's an ironic, patronizing, condescending quality to the attitude to those they think they represent. It's also a bit much for me. It's like one of the things I did notice among the radicals, say at Ivy League institutions in the United States is not only did they want all the privilege of being privileged, which they certainly have merely as a consequence of being in an Ivy League institution, but they want all the privilege and moral glory of being oppressed at the same time. And there's a kind of grasping narcissism and that's really overwhelming.

It's like, I see what you want. You want everything that goes along with wealth and power. And you want to have all the virtue, whatever that might be, of being associated with the victimized and oppressed. That's too much. That's too much, that's too much, that's agreed that is bottomless in its narcissistic extent. And so I can't help but see that. I agree. So you end up with some people claiming to have indigenous heritage that it's a discovery they don't have at all. Because I take it the attraction of identifying yourself as a victim is certainly political

now because it will gain you political points in terms of your career, in terms of your status. So that there are material, you know, when can turn the postmodernist cynicism back on these postmodernists and say, well, actually, what are your interests here? Are they legitimate? Yeah, yeah. So now, here you are. You're not being mobbed horribly as we speak. You published this contentious book a few weeks ago. As the mob come for you in any profound and unsettling way. And that's the first question.

And the second question is, how has your book been received critically? Okay, let's take those two questions in turn. So has the mob come for me? Yes, insofar as some of the reviews I've received have been extremely hostile. And I confess I took a while to read them because it was all a bit emotionally taxing to read what some people say, particularly since it's almost invariably unfair and distorted. So there are some very hostile reviews. One of them runs to 15,000-word diatribe that the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth

History will publish. Glad to say that I was invited to write a response, and after getting my lines and mastering my courage, I read through this stuff, and I've written a 14,500 word response, and with the exception of three minor points, I don't think it scores. So in this case, and in all the others, once I've worked my way through the hostile responses, I emerge feeling stronger. Right, right. So that's a good doctrine for life actually, if you're trying to live a straight life, is that if you do confront those accusations,

which is very unsettling and requires a lot of soul searching, to the degree that they're unjust and mere accusation, then you can, what would you say, you can fortify yourself in your convictions? Yeah, I mean, to be quite honest, I mean, I have learnt some things. If I were to write the book again, I would change some things, but not big things.

And I mean, I do, I am open to the possibility that I'm completely laughed and that I'm making a huge fool of myself. But as my consistent experience over the last five, six years since 2017 is once I face the opposition and look at it and scrutinize it, I actually think, no, I'm right. As for the reception of the book, generally, tremendous. It was published in the UK in 2nd of February. It went into the Sunday Times newspaper, nonfiction top 10 best-sell list for two weeks. I was told, a week or so ago, that in the first three months of its publication here, it had sold just under 24,000 hardback copies,

and it was published in the Canada and the US only last week, so we get to see what it does there. The good news, Jordan, is from my point of view, in spite of my critics, and in spite of attempts to cancel the book that my original publisher made. There is evidently a large public appetite for a reasonable, even-handed, thoughtful consideration of this contentious issue. Well, that's heartening, I would say, that there is an audience for it, and that the audience is large, and that this discussion can proceed, and that you can manage it, and still, well, and still have your life, you know, you can say these things. Well, that's that's very, it is very heartening, you know, that that's still a possibility, a real possibility,

to have it published and to have it widely appreciated, and at least or widely criticized for that matter, at least available. And so, now, are you still teaching, are you still teaching full time at Oxford? What's your... No, I'm 67 years old, oh, I me, I'm 68 now, but I retire at 67, which was one year earlier than I have to because in Oxford, we still have a mandatory time at age. But I chose, I'd always planned to retire at 67. So I finished being a full-time professor in September last year. But I did that not because I planned to sit in the beach and drink cocktails all day, because there are things I want to do like this, like writing for the press.

And so I wanted to be free to focus on what I really want to do, and I'm doing it. And so what's your next project? Right now, and I just finished two books back to back. I did a book on what's wrong with rights in 2020, and then this book came out, and I'm going to be busy, I think, doing this kind of thing, having these kind of conversations on colonialism, I think, through to the autumn of this year. I'm not set up on writing another book at this point. I may write something on what I've experienced in the last five years in terms of free speech and the way in which communities react to people like me reflect on the silence of colleagues,

and the way which institutions behave, something along those lines. I haven't decided yet. All right, everyone. Well, we have been talking today with Professor Nigel Bigger, Professor of Christian Ethics about his new book Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, which hit the best seller list in the UK and is now widely available in other English speaking markets. And I presume we'll be translated quite widely as the month's progress. Thank you, everyone, who's watching and listening

for attending to this dialogue and to the daily where plus people for facilitating the conversation and adding their level of technical expertise to the film crew here. I'm in Cyprus today to the film crew here in Cyprus. Thank you very much for making this happen. Dr. Bigger, it was good to talk to you again and good luck with the continued pursuit of your endeavors and congratulations on the publication and success of the book. No doubt we'll be in further contact, least I hope so, and it was very good talking with

you today. It's a big, great talking to you, Jordan, thanks for the opportunity. And now, as you know, if you're listening, I'm going to talk to Dr. Bigger, Professor Bigger for another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus platform, and we'll discuss some of the elements of his career and his biography. And so if you're interested in that,

and I think you probably should be, if you found this conversation useful, consider heading over to the Daily Wire Plus platform and picking up that additional discussion. See you all later.