I have (almost) finished reading what I consider to be a very important new book and thought I might share some thoughts in the hope that others might read it as well. Legacy of Violence, A History of the British Empire, by Carolyn Elkins is a kind of scholarly kamikaze mission that is designed to, and successfully does, achieve three things:
i. It thoroughly reshapes our understanding of the English people and the British Empire and, at the same time, depressingly reminds us of the depravities of which humans are capable;
ii. It completely calls into question the legitimacy of positivism as a legal theory in much the same way as Nazi law.
iii. It challenges liberal philosophy with its assertion and, to me, not entirely convincing but persuasively challenging assertion that violence is inherent in liberalism.
So to begin (briefly, I promise).
A caution. This book is very long and very detailed, far more detailed than it needs to be for Professor Elkins to make her points. But it seems obvious to me that this is a strategic decision. Professor Elkins is writing the revisionist history of the British Empire. “When you strike at a king [(as it were)], you must kill him.” Professor Elkin is figuratively committing regicide. She clearly knows that if she is to survive academically she must make her case irrefutable. Difficult enough, since it appears that the British tried to destroy all the evidence when they left each colony. Hence the length. Hence the detail. Or so I think.
I. The British. At the simplest level, Elkins tells a horror story, and one that gets worse as it progresses. I had some sense of the brutality used by the British against the populations of their colonies, but this story of violence is of another order. Brutality in South Africa and Ireland was appalling. But then when we move to non-white colonies, India of course, the former Ottoman Palestine (I consider both Jews and Arabs to be non-white), the means used to torture, murder, and engage in mass killings become worse and worse, even as Elkins reports stories of British soldiers enjoying their work. By the time we get to Malaysia, the story just becomes grotesque and very painful and difficult to read. I’m about to reach the part where we return to Africa, confident that it will continue to get worse.
II. The Law. This is also a story about law, as Elkins describes British behavior as legalized violence. This simply is sad. The Common Law is truly one of the greatest achievements in history. And the British always remain true to the law. As Elkins points out, every time they needed to improve on and increase their violence, they made it legal first.
The irony of this might be lost on non-lawyers. You see, England is also the font of the theory of positivism – if it looks like a law and smells like a law it is a law, regardless of content. (The traditional counterpoint is natural law, which considers the validity of a law to be based on its content). This theory of positivism was slammed after the Nazis and Nuremburg. Nazi law was, after all, law, according to positivism, and adherents of the theory (including prominent English scholars at the fore) rushed to refine it in order to maintain the basic validity of the theory while excluding Nazi and Nazi-like law.
But, as Professor Elkins tells us – the British did exactly the same thing! Well, not exactly. Instead of one man determining the law, you had a Parliament and delegated discretion to ministers but, as is the constitution in England, Parliament’s determination of the law is final and therefore whatever law it passes is constitutional. But the content of the law (leaving aside formal genocide, which is Britain’s only saving grace), was largely as immoral as the law of the Nazis. Positivists really need to get back to work.
III. Liberalism Challenged. Professor Elkins posits the theory that violence is intrinsic to liberalism, intrinsic because, in order to achieve liberalism’s progressive promise, force and restraint must be used on those to whom it is promised. Hence the repulsive “white man’s burden,” articulated as regret every time the British forces engage in torture, mass killings, destructions of towns and villages, murdering children, etc. You get the point. This is the dimension of Elkins' argument of which I am least convinced, not because I am by taste and training philosophically liberal, but because I think it might be possible to use persuasion rather than restraint to achieve what liberals consider to be progress (which might also be a more effective way of infusing real liberal values in people than killing them).
In this I think the United States might be an example. The white people who inhabited North America were not interested in turning the indigenous people into self-governing states, and certainly not Black Americans whom they were terrified would revolt if given the freedom to do so. Despite these disgusting aspects of American history, I think it might be the case that liberal self-governance was achieved there without violent restraint. I need to think some more.
A final point. I am somebody who has always been eternally optimistic about human nature. That has been pretty difficult to sustain over the past decade, but I have tried. After reading Professor Elkins’ book, I give up. I don’t know what will replace my optimism – not despair, I hope – but I can no longer sustain my previous perspective.
This is a truly important book. Read it. I hope Professor Elkins receives all of the accolades she deserves.
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MeierReviewed in Germany on April 19, 2022
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Reviewed in Germany on April 19, 2022
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