Colinxy: The Case for Colonisation

When Associate Professor Bruce Gilley published The Case for Colonialism in Third World Quarterly in 2017, the reaction was nothing short of volcanic. “Controversial” doesn’t begin to describe it. The editorial board resigned in protest, activists demanded the article’s retraction, and Gilley was pressured into issuing an apology. His crime? Violating the unwritten Romantic commandment:

“Thou shalt never say anything positive about colonialism.”

For those interested, Gilley’s original article can still be found here.

This essay is not a defence of every colonial act ever committed, nor is it an attempt to dismiss the harms that occurred in certain contexts.

Those criticisms have been rehearsed endlessly by Critical Theorists and other Romantic idealists who treat colonialism as a uniquely European moral failing. Instead, this essay examines two things:

1. The universality of colonisation throughout human history, and
2. Some of the positive impacts of modern colonisation, particularly in the British context.

Colonisation: A Universal Human Behaviour

One of the great myths of contemporary discourse is that colonisation is a European invention. It is not. Colonisation is as old as humanity itself. Archaeology, anthropology, and comparative history all show that:

• tribes displaced other tribes,
• cultures absorbed weaker cultures,
• empires expanded and contracted,
• migrations overwhelmed indigenous populations,
• and human groups have been competing for land, resources, and influence since prehistory.

Colonisation is not an aberration. It is a human constant.

Romantic idealists often fall into the classic Ought vs. Is fallacy: “Human beings ought not to colonise, therefore colonisation is unnatural.” But history does not bend to moral wishes. Colonisation is not going away because it is woven into the fabric of human behaviour.

Even today, colonisation continues—only the methods have changed. Marxists, for example, openly celebrate the Long March Through the Institutions, a deliberate strategy to colonise academia, media, and bureaucracy. The language is metaphorical, but the logic is identical: enter, dominate, reshape, and control.

The Selective Outrage of Modern Critics

Modern Western critics focus obsessively on European colonisation while ignoring or sanitising non-European examples that do not fit their moral narrative.

A glaring case is the Māori colonisation of the Moriori in the Chatham Islands. This was not a gentle cultural exchange. It was a violent conquest involving enslavement and near‑extermination. Yet this event is often downplayed or reframed because it violates the simplistic oppressor‑vs‑oppressed binary that dominates contemporary ideological thinking.

In New Zealand, certain ideological factions insist that Māori must always occupy the role of the oppressed class. Therefore, acknowledging Māori as historical colonisers becomes politically inconvenient. The narrative must be protected, even at the expense of historical truth.

This selective moral outrage reveals the underlying problem: colonisation is condemned not because it is colonisation, but because it is European.

What Modern Colonisation Actually Achieved

If we are going to discuss colonisation honestly, we must acknowledge both sides of the ledger. Critics have spent decades cataloguing the harms—some real, some exaggerated, some invented. But the benefits are rarely mentioned, even when they are historically undeniable.

Consider just a few examples from the British Empire:

1. The Abolition of Slavery

The British Empire did not invent slavery; it inherited a global institution that existed on every continent. But it did something unprecedented: it abolished slavery worldwide and enforced that abolition with its navy. This alone reshaped the moral landscape of the modern world.

2. Infrastructure and Public Works

British colonial administrations built:

• railways
• ports
• roads
• telegraph lines
• irrigation systems
• sanitation networks

Many of these remain the backbone of modern States.

3. Agricultural and Scientific Improvements

Colonial administrations introduced:

• new crops
• modern farming techniques
• disease control
• scientific forestry
• modern medicine

These innovations dramatically increased life expectancy and food security.

4. Global Trade and a Shared Language

English became the lingua franca of international commerce, diplomacy, and science. This was not an accident; it was a direct consequence of British global influence.

5. Legal and Administrative Systems

Common law, civil service structures, and parliamentary institutions were exported globally. Many former colonies retained these systems because they worked.

European vs. Non-European Colonisation


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1. Colonisation is universal, not European.

Every major culture has colonised others when given the opportunity.

2. European colonisation is uniquely scrutinised.

Not because it was uniquely harmful, but because it is ideologically useful to frame it that way.

3. Non-European colonisation often involved equal or greater brutality.

The Mongols, Zulu, Aztecs, Japanese, and Māori all engaged in violent conquest, enslavement, or extermination.

4. European colonisation produced global systems still in use today.

Common law, English as a trade language, railways, medicine, and the abolition of slavery are not trivial footnotes.

5. Modern ideological narratives require selective memory.

To maintain the oppressor/oppressed binary, non-European colonisation must be ignored or sanitised.

The Moral Evolution of Empires

One of the most striking features of human (written) history is not merely that empires existed, they always have, but that empires changed. They evolved morally, legally, and administratively in ways that reveal a long arc of development rather than a static pattern of domination. To speak of “colonialism” as a single, monolithic evil is to flatten thousands of years of human complexity into a cartoon.

Empires have always existed. What changed was how they ruled.

1. The Ancient Model: Conquest as a Natural Right

In the ancient world, conquest was not morally questioned. It was assumed.

• The Assyrians deported entire populations.
• The Romans enslaved and conquered peoples by the hundreds of thousands.
• The Chinese dynasties absorbed neighbouring tribes and kingdoms.
• The Aztecs demanded tribute and human sacrifice from subject peoples.
• The Zulu empire expanded through military domination and absorption.

In this era, might was morality. Victory conferred legitimacy. The conquered had no rights beyond what the conqueror granted out of convenience.

There was no concept of “indigenous rights,” “self-determination,” or “humanitarian governance.” These ideas simply did not exist.

2. The Medieval Model: Empire as Divine Mandate

By the medieval period, empires began to justify themselves not merely through force but through religious or civilisational missions.

• The Islamic Caliphates expanded under the banner of religious duty.
• The Byzantine Empire saw itself as the guardian of Christian civilisation.
• The Holy Roman Empire claimed divine sanction for its authority.
• Chinese dynasties invoked the Mandate of Heaven to justify expansion and rule.

This was a step forward from pure conquest, but still fundamentally hierarchical. The empire existed to spread a divine or civilisational order, not to uplift the conquered.

3. The Early Modern Model: Empire as Commercial and Strategic Enterprise

With the rise of European maritime powers, empire became tied to:

• trade
• navigation
• resource extraction
• strategic competition

This period produced both exploitation and innovation. But it also introduced something new: administrative rationality. Empires began to build:

• courts
• bureaucracies
• infrastructure
• codified laws

The idea that an empire had obligations, not just rights, began to emerge.

4. The Enlightenment Shift: Empire as a Civilising Mission

By the 18th and 19th centuries, European empires underwent a profound moral transformation. Influenced by Enlightenment thought, they began to articulate a new justification:

Empire exists to uplift, educate, and modernise.

This was not always achieved in practice, but the shift in moral language matters. It introduced concepts that had never existed in earlier empires:

• universal education
• abolition of slavery
• rule of law
• public health
• infrastructure for public benefit
• religious toleration
• codified rights

The British Empire, in particular, became the first empire in history to:

• abolish slavery across its territories
• use its navy to suppress the global slave trade
• establish legal equality (at least in principle) for subjects
• build railways, ports, and sanitation systems for public use

This was not perfection. But it was moral evolution — a break from the ancient model of conquest.

5. The Late Imperial Model: Empire as Stewardship

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many imperial administrators saw themselves not as conquerors but as stewards. They believed they were responsible for:

• maintaining order
• preventing tribal warfare
• improving agriculture
• expanding literacy
• introducing modern medicine
• preparing colonies for eventual self-government

Again, this was unevenly applied. But the moral framework had shifted dramatically from the ancient world.

Empires were now judged by how well they governed — not merely by how much they conquered.

6. The Post‑Colonial Irony: The Moral Standards of Empire Become Universal

The greatest irony of modern anti-colonial rhetoric is that the moral standards used to condemn European empires were invented by those same empires.

• Human rights
• Self-determination
• Equality before the law
• Abolition of slavery
• Universal education
• Public health
• Representative government

These were not indigenous concepts in most of the colonised world. They were the moral innovations of the very empires now condemned for failing to live up to them perfectly.

In other words:

Empires created the moral vocabulary used to judge empires.

This is the final stage of moral evolution: the empire teaches the world to critique empire.

Empires Did Not Disappear — They Evolved

Empires are not gone. They have simply changed form:

• bureaucratic empires
• ideological empires
• economic empires
• cultural empires
• digital empires

But the moral evolution of empires, from conquest to stewardship to self-critique, is one of the most significant developments in human history.

To understand colonisation honestly, we must recognise this evolution. To pretend that all empires are morally identical is to erase the very progress that made modern moral standards possible.

Conclusion: Toward an Honest Conversation

Colonisation is not a European invention. It is a human behaviour. It is not uniquely evil. It is universal. And its legacy is not uniformly negative. It is mixed, complex, and often profoundly beneficial.

The modern taboo against acknowledging any positive aspect of colonialism is not historical analysis; it is ideological theatre. If we want to understand the world as it is, rather than as Romantic idealists wish it to be, we must be willing to examine colonisation honestly, without selective outrage or moral absolutism. Colonisation shaped the modern world. The question is not whether it was perfect—it wasn’t. The question is whether we are willing to discuss it truthfully

Colinxy regularly blogs at No Minister, This article was sourced HERE