Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Little more than a compilation of Niall Ferguson’s controlled hallucinations and nostalgia
NIALL FERGUSON, the “celebrated” (among a certain crowd) British historian, is celebrated most of all for his ability over the years to cling to a much-diminished Britain as a force in the world. Ferguson is a writer of opinions under the guise of scholarship and always through a white supremacist lens. To be clear, I am not in any way implying that Ferguson is a racist; I’m merely using his work as an example of the nuance and hidden symmetries that lurk within white supremacy culture. His work about the impact of Britain on the world reveals a white supremacist slant that is undeniable in my view.
In his book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, the title itself says it all. “How Britain Made the Modern World” is arrogant, wishful thinking — short-sighted, devoid of rigour, opinionated, and self-serving, with a white supremacist tilt. Ferguson concludes in his book that Britain essentially “built the modern world” and that we should all be grateful for that generous contribution, and overlook or forgive the little things like slavery, colonialism, and genocide committed against indigenous populations everywhere. Ferguson rationalizes away the bad by essentially saying that there was more good done than bad in his analysis, which is a weak whitewashing of history. Ferguson’s views simply romanticize and justify autocratic rule and imperialism, to say nothing of white nationalism — empire building, nostalgia, and European cultural and racial supremacy.
Ferguson begins his 400-year story (which incidentally coincides with the development of slavery; make of that starting point what you will) with a focus on Britain’s trade and commerce — but trivializes this historical development as having been driven merely by the lust for sugar, a quest to satisfy the British public’s sweet tooth. He romanticizes the Caribbean experience, glossing over and leaving out the criminal and brutal acts of theft and murder that characterize the region’s history under colonialism, and conveniently forgets the use of military force against those societies that lacked military and technological advantages. He looks at the role of missionaries and reformers, the church and its institutions as playing the role of “civilizing the savages;” yet he fails to address the church’s prominent role in supporting slavery, colonialism, and mass genocide, along with more specific atrocities such as the abuse of Indigenous children in residential schools. This one-sided telling of history, unfortunately, appeals to the white supremacist crowd which makes up a large part of his audience — and they don’t have to be the Trump-supporting type, either. Educated elites can be just as racist. Ferguson sidesteps the proper telling of history with his version of it.
THE CHURCH robbed enslaved and colonized peoples of their identities, cultures, and traditions; but this was simply the unavoidable collateral damage in the pursuit of building the Empire and modernizing the world, according to Ferguson. He goes on to paint colonial bureaucrats as “patrician proconsuls” — fancy words that are meant to confuse and obfuscate the truth. He associates Britain with sound colonial governance that was supposedly necessary to bring the savage lands into the modern era. Ferguson goes all-in when he says that if not for the stability of the “Empire,” other cultures like Japan may have emerged and dominated the world — and God forbid, for that would have left the world much worse off. Ferguson is implying that whiteness is inherently better than other identities, and tells us unabashedly that white European culture is the best thing that ever happened to the world.
He devotes precious little time to the historical impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade or the institution of plantation slavery, which created massive wealth for Britain and poverty and suffering for others. Massive inequalities, lasting economic imbalances, and political chaos were never covered by Ferguson in his book; therefore, a true telling of history was never his true purpose. But isn’t scholarship supposed to pursue the telling of objective truths? The cultural indoctrination of white supremacy makes it inconceivable for him to confront the truth about Britain and its ill-gotten gains, which it reaped by pillaging many parts of the world and leaving a swath of socioeconomic and political destruction in their wake.
Throughout the book, Ferguson grossly exaggerates the degree to which British imperialism was a force for good. His selective and biased use of evidence is highly subjective, used to make self-serving arguments about how the world benefited from British imperialism and its hierarchical structures. He makes these claims in order to support his underlying thesis about the legitimacy of white supremacy and state-sponsored slavery-based economies — a system crafted through force and thievery, and subsequent enormous intergenerational wealth transfers from those ill-gotten gains. All of this was good and honourable, according to Ferguson.
It is true — as we have already discussed — that the nature of the universe is such that things ultimately boil down to winning. However, we must always tell the truth about how the winning took place! We can accept the historical fact of British “winning” (i.e. geopolitical and economic dominance) from the 17th through the 19th centuries; but we must tell the truth about that too. Making up spurious stories and pseudo-historical analyses for the rationalization of white supremacist culture and ideology must never be allowed to go unchallenged.
Ferguson is, in truth, a conservative pundit who spews right-wing ideology; he is not an intellectual, because intellectuals must hold truth as central, not personal opinions about history. Ultimately, Ferguson is an example of the perverse character of white supremacist academia, with its nostalgia for the white-privileged past. We must not allow such propagandists to go unquestioned as the authority and chief writers of history from the Western perspective.
The nostrums that figures like Ferguson propagate under the guise of “liberalism,” asserting that European culture is mainly responsible for the modern world, are dubious in the extreme. The falsehood of liberal rhetoric must be juxtaposed against the reality of the thievery, violence, and criminality that have characterized European cultures ever since the era of the Vikings. We must talk about history holistically and truthfully, not selectively or self-servingly.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World is little more than a compilation of Ferguson’s controlled hallucinations and nostalgia. History, in the end, consists of stories written by those in power who have the privilege of being able to write it — which is why we must remain highly skeptical of historian storytellers.
The British Empire, while creating massive intergenerational wealth for the British people, also created mass economic destruction, enormous inequality, injustice, and even outright genocide. These are facts — but they are all too often selectively overlooked or even ignored in favour of romanticized and politically convenient narratives. To show the disconnect, as recently as April 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said something like “[Systemic racism does not exist in UK society.]” One imagines that he is likely also a fan of Ferguson’s work.
If you would like to see the concluding analysis, please buy my book when it comes out…lots more where that came from…
“ai — applied intelligence A Renaissance in New Thinking for Caribbean Prosperity in the 21st Century”
Honesty, above all, is a prerequisite for advancement because you can’t build a future on a faulty foundation, the integrity of the structure will surely begin to show cracks, eventually falling apart. Put responsibility and accountability as first principles. Don’t deflect, stand, and deliver in truth, not letting the traumas of the past influence or control your decisions in the present because it’s your present that creates your future.
