Nigel Biggar CBE is author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, a Sunday Times bestseller. He chairs the board of trustees of the Free Speech Union. @NigelBiggar
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Biggar fearlessly goes where few other scholars now venture to tread: to defend the British empire against its increasingly vitriolic detractors … Those who wish to accuse the Victorians of genocide – who seek gulags in Kenya or Holocausts in the Raj – will probably not risk being ‘triggered’ by reading this book. But they really should.’
Niall Ferguson, Stanford University
and author of Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
News
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The Bishops are wrong: there’s nothing immoral about controlling our borders
26 May 2023. Nigel Biggar for The Telegraph. The end is just and the means, while severe, are not immoral Earlier in May, the Archbishop of Canterbury described the Government’s illegal migration bill as “morally unacceptable”. This week, he advanced his opposition to the bill’s proposal to remove illegal cross-Channel migrants to Rwanda, by tabling…
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Jordan B. Peterson Podcast: Separating Good from Evil in the British Empire
22 May 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…
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Was the British Empire evil?
22 May 2023. Nigel Biggar for The Hub. A look at the global historical context tells a more nuanced tale than black and white judgements allow for. Today the country is taking a statutory holiday in honour of Queen Victoria, the figure perhaps most emblematic of colonial empire. It requires a bit of cognitive dissonance given that…
BOOKS
‘One of the leading living Western ethicists’
John Gray, New Statesman
articles
SEARCH ARTICLES
in depth
Ethics & empire
‘Nowhere have I argued that the sins
of empire are out weighed by its
benefits. Empire is morally
complex and ambiguous’
MEDIA
‘Uncompromising and compelling’
Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge,
and author of The English and their History
