Liberal imperialism was a political doctrine that reached its apogee in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its core tenet was that free trade was the guiding force (both moral and economic) of the British Empire. It therefore stood in opposition to the ‘social imperialism’ of Joseph Chamberlain. This latter movement considered the (re)introduction of protective tariffs vital – in the face of increasing industrial competition – for the long-term welfare of the British worker and the continued strength of the Empire. Liberal Imperialists were, naturally, centred around the Liberal Party, and so counted among their number four past and future prime ministers: Lord Rosebery, Asquith, Lloyd-George and Churchill. As the senior statesman, it was Lord Rosebery who clarified that when Liberal Imperialists spoke of the British Empire, they were primarily referring to the future Dominions. It was the ‘union of races’, the ‘community of memories, object, and of aim’ that was the essential feature of this relationship. With these features in mind one ought also to add America to those countries seen by Liberal Imperialists as falling within the Dominion sphere; for the ‘tie of kin and sentiment’ was a bond most believed transcended the mere structural formalities of empire. It was a bond that, say, India – for all its grand imperial lustre – could never possess. Free trade being therefore the defining characteristic of the Empire, race was viewed by Liberal Imperialists as the primary determinant as to whether one ascribed to this character.
The Victorian jurist and historian, Henry Maine, noted that the idea of ‘progress’ was a Western concept. It was a concept, he said, ‘too often reckoned in terms of expansions of trade and wealth, inventions of new machinery, and discovery of new resources of the earth’. Such is the beating heart of free trade: it was the one true path towards progress. So the values of Liberalism naturally meant that the one way of ensuring this path was followed was by education and enlightenment; or, failing that, coercion. Hence imperialism. This is a correlation that should be engraved on English textbooks. Saying this is not to denigrate all Liberals and Liberalism, but to remind oneself of the contradictions inherent in the term. Which brings me, at length, to Douglas Murray’s conclusion to his book, The War on the West.
The book itself is an excellent reminder of many of the idiocies and cul-de-sac logic that has percolated through the academic sieve into the sink of mainstream politics over the last half century. The sink is currently fuller than normal, as it was in the 1970s. In his conclusion, however, Douglas Murray – no longer able to contain his frustration – indulges in a passage of (self-admitted) white triumphalism that is just as poisonous and divisive as anything he has condemned in the preceding pages. And it finds its source in the credo of the Liberal Imperialist.
Citing an interview on the Black News Channel between Marc Lamont Hill and Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute (a leading critic of Critical Race Theory), Murray says that Hill laid Rufo a trap by asking him, “What do you like about being white?” Before the reply had come, Hill stated that if he had been asked the same question about being Black, he would have cited the ‘cultural norms’, ‘tradition’, and the ‘commonalities around the diaspora’. Pretty vague stuff. Anyway, Rufo’s reply was to reject the census term of whiteness: he preferred to think of himself as an individual with his own capabilities: he hoped they (Hill and Rufo) should be able to judge each other as individuals and on common values. This apparently reasonable response was dismissed by Hill as an example of white privilege. This response was, nonetheless, Murray contends, the only permissible way for Rufo to have avoided the trap, by indicating that ‘white culture’ (we’ll come to that) was open to everyone. But if there was indeed a trap laid by Hill (and it was a very simplistic one, if it was), Murray proceeded to leap at the bait like a malnourished tiger.
The ‘good things’ that white people had done, Murray said, included: ‘Every medical advancement that the world now enjoys’; the ‘oldest and longest established educational institutions’; leading the world in ‘invention and promotion of the written word’; ‘all the world’s most successful means of commerce’; the ‘principle of representative government’ and the ‘practice of political liberty’. Da Vinci, Bernini, Michelangelo and Bach were but prima facie evidence of the superiority of white (viz Western) cultural achievements.
One could write multiple theses to counter each one of Murray’s assertions. I will be succinct and broad with my stroke. To the last of these first.
It is without doubt tendentious to claim that any of the artists above would have considered themselves ‘white’, let alone ‘Western’ – whatever that might have meant to Da Vinci. Michelangelo and the Florentines would have surely ridiculed the notion that they had anything in common with the dark lands of northern Europe and the British Isles. Their vistas, materials and inspirations came from the East. Nor, as far as I can recall, did Herodotus fill his Histories with tales from Saxony or the Shires. And, if he didn’t, then surely Persia and the East (if one follows a west European orientation) were the progenitors of our literary traditions. Certainly, the value of the purely written literary form (which Murray extols) is entirely gossamer when one considers that the oral tradition has been the driving – indeed, only – creative force for the majority of human history. To therefore decry it as inferior is verging on obtuse.
And so, like the whirlwind, to science. The discoveries of the Enlightenment were of course only ‘enlightening’ from the aspect of darkness that shrouded Western Europe in the 15th century. None of them manifested from a puff of thin air. They were rooted in the mathematical, anatomical and astronomical knowledge acquired over early centuries, across many lands and civilisations, products of the insatiable curiosity that has defined human existence. If advances may be seen to have taken greater leaps in the last half millennium, this judgement must only ever be subjective. And on the subject of ‘dark ages’, a brief digression to consider China might find it equally straightforward to propose that the country’s current bleak state is a direct result of western imperialism and the theoretical Marxism that was its stablemate; both ideologies being 19th century imports that were completely alien to Chinese history. It is indicative of this lack of cultural understanding that free marketeers have been consistently flummoxed by how tenaciously China (and, to a lesser extent, Russia) have clung to these ideologies.
Finally, let’s to Christianity. It might be a lazy trope to suggest that only Hollywood producers still believe the early Christians were in any way white, but it is certainly true that the Old Testament shares sources with other ancient histories. Christianity has arguable laid the foundations of every single one of the western achievements Douglas Murray cites. Indeed, the purported ‘civilising virtues’ of Christianity are probably the defining characteristic of western society.
None of all this is to refute the scientific and artistic accomplishments of western European peoples over the last five hundred years. You could even contend that it is churlish to critique any attempt at listing them, given that I have benefitted from them by writing this now. But this is to suppose that were I to transport myself to rural India, or West Africa, or China, or the Mayan hills of the 5th century (a concept itself with little meaning to those peoples then) I would inevitably be leading a life of ignorant suffering and misery. This is, at root, the conviction of the Liberal Imperialist: without them the world dwells in darkness. Progress is a quest in which the winners have been pre-determined by their principles and race.
To argue that the world is, and has been, one of seamless continuity is nowadays almost incomprehensible – indigestible – to the majority. Yet this is what it is. Dates, ages and eras are no more than cake slicers to help consume the enormous gateau of history. But the slices still come from the whole. The cross-pollination of ideas and advances has occurred across millennia, mixing all manner of skin tones and cultures. For anyone to categorise themselves as part of either a ‘black’ or ‘white’ culture is therefore equally myopic and redundant. By falling into Marc Lamont Hill’s ‘trap’, Douglas Murray has been suckered into the very race one-upmanship which he has claimed to abhor. It belongs to the same cast of thought that created the Liberal Imperialist over a century ago. Its link between race and culture is inherently superior, divisive, and dangerous. For the present and future harmony of society, all sides must therefore disavow it completely, however great their frustrations.
Simon Marshall 