The Truth About Empire w/ Alan Lester & Nigel Biggar

This debate addresses one of the most contentious issues in global politics today: to what extent do formerly colonising countries such as Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and the United States owe a debt for their role in the Atlantic Slave Trade?

Nigel Biggar, author of Reparations, Alan Lester author of The Truth about Empire and David Lascelles who has joined a coalition of aristocratic descendants calling for the British government to apologise officially and atone for Britain’s role in the slave trade.

About the book

The Truth About Empire comes from expert historians who believe that the truth, as far as we can pinpoint it, matters; that our decades of painstaking research make us worth listening to; and that our authority as leading professionals should count for something in today’s polarised debates over Britain’s imperial past.

In the culture wars, the public’s understanding of colonial history is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. With their fight to highlight Empire’s horrors, communities whose voices once went unheard have alienated many who would prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has produced a concerted denial of British imperial racism and violence—a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.

From Australia and China to India and South Africa, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a shield against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire’s culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain’s colonial past.

About the author

Alan Lester is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor of History at La Trobe University. He has written eleven books on British colonialism, most recently Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century British Empire; and Deny and Disavow: The British Empire in the Culture War (co-authored; 2nd edition).