Kemi Badenoch (Image: Getty)
Britain's economic success is the result of “ingenuity and industry” not colonialism, Kemi Badenoch has said.
The Business Secretary said the significance of the empire and slavery to the United Kingdom’s development have been “exaggerated” over the years.
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Ms Badenoch made the comments in praise of a book published by the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, in which its author claimed Britain’s growth was not financed by the slave trade or its imperial possessions.
Ms Badenoch, seen as a leading contender for the Conservative leadership should the party lose the coming election, said the book was “a welcome counterweight to simplistic narratives that exaggerate the significance of empire and slavery to Britain’s economic development”.
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She said: “This paper shows it was British ingenuity and industry, unleashed by free markets and liberal institutions, that powered the Industrial Revolution and our modern economy.
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“It is these factors that we should focus on, rather than blaming the West and colonialism for economic difficulties and holding back growth with misguided policies.”
Author Kristian Niemietz has argued that colonialism made only a “minor contribution” to Britain’s economic development, “and quite possibly none at all”, with the benefits outweighed by the military and administrative cost of running an empire.
He added that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was no more important to the British economy than sheep-farming or brewing, and most trade was with North America and Western Europe rather than the colonies, even if some individuals did become “very rich” from “overseas engagement”.
Dr Lawrence Goldman, historian and former director of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, said: “Kristian Niemietz is to be thanked for his lucid and well-evidenced paper showing that Britain's wealth since the Industrial Revolution has neither been dependent on slavery nor colonialism.
“Economic historians have known this for decades; nevertheless, false ideas still circulate, no doubt for political and ideological reasons.
"It was Disraeli in 1852 who called the colonies 'millstones round our necks'. It's to be hoped that Dr Niemietz's paper will circulate widely and re-establish historical truth.”
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But specialist historians have criticised the claims, saying they are based on “cherry-picked” data and “straw man” arguments.
In a blog post, Alan Lester, professor of historical geography at the University of Sussex, said: “Historians have demonstrated in thousands of research publications that British investors’ ability to appropriate land and subordinate people in some 40 overseas colonies, ensuring a supply of commodities such as tea, cotton, opium, rubber, meat and wool produced with free or low-cost labour, made a significant contribution to Britain’s economic growth.
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“Because this is so self-evident, to challenge it would be absurd.”
Prof Lester said the claim that military costs of empire outweighed the economic benefits was “risible”, and while the Government at times thought the cost of empire was too high, they mostly “adjudged that the returns to British investors and settlers made such expenses worthwhile”.
He concluded: “If Britons had continued to invest in the maintenance of colonial rule and the denial of self-determination to their colonial subjects against their own aggregate material interests for over 300 years, what does that say about the spirit of British entrepreneurship.”
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By Kristian Niemietz
Among sections of the woke cultural elite, it has become an article of faith that Britain grew rich on the basis of ill-gotten gains, namely, though colonial plunder and imperialist exploitation.
In this perspective, much of the country’s wealth is illegitimate, and should be seen a source of national shame rather than pride.
It is something to make amends for, through reparations and public apologies, rather something to be celebrated and built upon.
Trade and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch got herself in hot water the other week when she disputed this fashionable idea, leading to howls of outrage in the Guardian and on social media.
This idea is at the core of woke ideology, which has spread far and wide across the country in recent years.
Four years ago, when a group of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists toppled the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, this was not an act of random vandalism.
It was an expression of the above-mentioned ideology, as the organisers made very clear. But while government figures condemned this specific act, the practice of altering cityscapes in line with current ideological fashions quickly caught on.
In the meantime, dozens of monuments, street names and buildings have been altered to reflect the preoccupations of woke progressives.
Few other groups have the power to force their obsessions on the whole country in such a way.
But is this view of modern British history actually correct? Is it true that Britain owes large proportions of its present-day wealth to colonial plunder?
This is the question I am exploring in my new book Imperial Measurement: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Western Colonialism, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
The short answer is no. The numbers simply do not stack up.
The profits earned through colonial trade were simply not big enough to explain more than a minor share of the expansion of Britain’s industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that is before we subtract the cost of colonial administration and a bloated military.
The British Empire made some people extremely wealthy, but it did little, if anything, to enrich the country as a whole. Britain’s Industrial Revolution was mostly homegrown.
As so often, fashionable woke narratives collapse under scrutiny. Unfortunately, though, this does not make them go away.
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