Was European colonial rule good or bad? The subject matter invites normative judgments, for at issue are the lives and livelihoods, the well-being and worldviews of hundreds of millions of human beings.
People do not need to know much about colonialism to hold strong opinions about its moral status.
It is one thing to say that an ethical evaluation of colonialism is appropriate.
It is quite another to decide how to carry out that evaluation in a thoughtfol, sensitive, consistent, and thorough way. The good or bad question is deceptively simple. Even if one retains the narrow definition of colonialism used in chapter 16, the subject’s scope is so vast and the forms colonial rule took so varied that rendering an overall verdict seems fruitless. Edmund Burke told Parliament that “I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.” Is there a method of indicting—or vindicating—the peoples and governments of western Europe for an immense range of activities spanning several centuries? The answer, from the standpoint of social science methodology, is that there is not. But from a broader standpoint this response is unsatisfactory, especially if it excuses one from moral reflection on the past. People make ethical judgments not only on personal and interpersonal matters but also on large-scale phenomena like imperialism and colonialism. The issue is not whether they should engage in macro-level moralizing but how carefully and persuasively they do so. What is their frame of reference? What standards do they use? What evidence do they cite to support their position? How well do they deal with opposing viewpoints?One way to proceed is to convene, as it were, leading critics and defenders of empire and construct a debate between them. Placing their arguments next to one another permits a close examination and critique of each side’s evidence, logic, normative standards, and visions of what might have happened had overseas empires not existed. One can see whether critics and defenders directly engage or talk past each other, are deeply and irreconcilably at odds or agree on many points. The imagined debate that follows shows that protagonists argue past each other much of the time, each side ignoring the claims of the other when it is convenient to do so. This implies that if both sides addressed the same features of colonialism, took evidence from the same historical cases, and were prepared to accept each other’s counterfactual assumptions, they would find they were not as far apart as they think they are.
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