Nigel Biggar

Theologian and priest Professor Nigel Biggar talks about his new assessment of colonialism and questions the decolonisation movement’s claim that colonial dominance was a litany of racism, exploitation and murderous violence.

Biggar looks at whether the British Empire was driven by greed and lust to dominate, whether colonialism and slavery should be spoken of in the same breath, whether empire was based on the theft of land and economic exploitation, and whether it ever involved genocide? Biggar says that while the British Empire involved sometimes appalling injustice, it was committed to ending the slave trade from the early 1800s, ended inter-tribal warfare, opened places to global trade and established rule of law and liberal institutions.

Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and an ordained priest and canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. His books include What’s Wrong with Rights?