Monthly Archives: June 2024

A speech by John McLean at the launch of his new book, 27th May 2024.

So, why have I written this rather lengthy tome on the British Empire? The short answer is that I became increasingly annoyed by the false narrative about the Empire that is propagated by our air-headed media and biased academics with their limited “soundbite” education and their preference for the current fad of anti-imperialism rather than historical truth.

My interest in the Empire – and my pride in being part of it here in New Zealand – stems from when I was a schoolboy stamp collector, limiting my collection to Britain and the British dominions and colonies. Thus did dozens of distant colonies come to my attention and I have had an interest in them ever since.

The book begins where the Empire itself began – with the sailing of three small ships from the Thames to Virginia in 1606 to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. I then deal with each of the thirteen American colonies and the American Revolutionary War, which they call the War of Independence. This was less about taxation – as they claimed – than about having the right to keep their slaves – a right that was increasingly threatened by the growing anti-slavery movement in England which was trying to liberate them.

The chapter on Canada is interesting since the various colonies that were later to comprise Canada were given a huge boost as a result of the American Revolutionary War  because so many Loyalists fled north to Canada – especially to Nova Scotia – rather than remain in the new American republic which was unforgiving to those who did not embrace the new republicanism. Thus for the next century and a half Canada was more or less defined by its resistance to the republicanism across its southern border.

There follow the Caribbean and African colonies that prospered and developed under the light touch of British rule that, unique among empires, had the knack of providing individual freedom within an orderly and safe society.

They were tough men who founded the colonies. Take Lord Lugard for example. In a battle with the King of Nikki’s forces in northern Nigeria he got a poisonous arrow in his head. His men dragged him around the ground by the arrow in their attempts to pull it out but to no avail until someone braced his feet on Lugard’s shoulders and the arrow was extracted with a sizeable piece of his skull attached. Lugard then chewed some antidotal roots to fight off the poison, then led a successful counter-attack and marched thirteen more miles before calling it a day.

In trying to improve and civilise the backward African colonies by building schools, hospitals, railways, ports, roads and dams, and providing clean drinking water and vaccinations against deadly diseases the British – through their doctors, teachers, engineers and colonial administrators – were giving great and long-lasting benefits to their various colonies, making life healthier and more comfortable for the people.

However, not a lot of this was appreciated after the Second World War when various alien forces – the United Nations, the Soviet Union and the United States – ganged up together in an effort to drive Britain out of her African colonies so that they would be ripe for either Soviet communism or exploitation of their resources by American companies. And, sad to say, the British governments from 1960 to 1980 – mainly Conservative – were too cowardly and too unprincipled to resist.

And so a premature – and in almost all cases disastrous – independence was pushed on to them by London without any regard for their readiness or otherwise to govern themselves. The futures and well-being of the masses, which Britain had always safeguarded so well, were now ignored so as to hand over power to whichever indigenous thugs screamed the loudest.

The one thing that Britain never tolerated in its empire was corruption but, as soon as the Union Jack was lowered, corruption began to rot every ex-colony in Africa with the single and honourable exception of Botswana, which alone has preserved the democratic principle and is governed in the interests of its people rather than the interests of the tribal elites as is the case elsewhere.

There is a chapter in the book on slavery, in which Britain was involved through the Atlantic slave trade, as well as a chapter on Britain’s long, selfless and principled campaign to abolish both he slave trade and the institution of slavery itself. No other nation or empire had the power or the will to abolish slavery and it took Britain nearly a century of expensive naval and other activity to do so. This, I believe, is the most noble achievement of the British Empire.