The British Empire Failed on Its Own Terms.

• Author: Davies, Stephen
• Position: Caroline Elkins' "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire"

HISTORIES OF IMPERIALISM, especially the European imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries, were long dominated by purportedly neutral accounts that sanitized the often bloody practice. More recently there has been a resurgence of apologias for empires in general and the British empire especially, from such writers as Niall Ferguson, Ian Morris, and several of the neoconservative intellectuals who enjoyed a moment in the sun during George W. Bush's presidency.

Their work is not of interest only to historians. These books explicitly address contemporary politics. Empire, they suggest, is the most practical and effective way of organizing political life on a geographically large scale and of bringing progress to places that otherwise would be stuck in tribalism and barbarism. The British Empire in particular is presented as essential to the appearance of a modern and liberal world order, usually with the argument that the United States should now take up that mantle. These ideas have had a seductive appeal to some social democrats and liberals, as the Bush years showed.

Caroline Elkins' Legacy of Violence should put such fantasies to rest. Elkins, a Harvard-based historian, shows in exhaustive detail what British imperial rule repeatedly involved for the subject peoples: systematic brutality, repression, and violence. As she traces this history of mass killings, forced population removal, concentration camps, and arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture, no reader should be left with any illusions about the empire. This violence was not incidental to imperial rule or an egregious departure from normal practice; it was an essential feature of it.

The book takes us from India to South Africa to Ireland to Palestine and beyond, with the same cast of characters appearing in each location as the system is perfected. A central aspect of Elkins' story is the way lawless action was authorized by a form of law, producing what she calls "lawful lawlessness."

Clearly, there is an inherent contradiction between such an empire and the principles of liberalism--universal human rights, the liberty and dignity of all individuals, the rule of law, limited government based on the consent of the governed. Yet as Elkins shows, the British empire, like its French counterpart, justified itself on liberal grounds. In this liberal imperialism, empire is seen as a means of raising "undeveloped" populations to the heights of liberal civilization. It imposes a...