Debates about western civilisation and colonialism often fail because they demand a single verdict, when history can carry achievement and injustice at the same time.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott recently urged Australians to preserve and celebrate western civilisation rather than be ashamed of it. Many friends who lean politically to the left hear little more than a defence of empire. Others hear an affirmation of liberty, scientific inquiry and democratic government. Listening to both, I sometimes feel they are arguing across rather than with one another.

Those debates remind me of the years I spent researching Britain’s railways in colonial Ghana for my doctoral thesis. I began with assumptions of my own. As an African, I expected to uncover another story of colonial exploitation. I certainly did. But I also found something that made the history far more complicated than I had anticipated. My research did not make me admire empire. Neither did it allow me simply to condemn it. Instead, it forced me to ask a more difficult question: can two uncomfortable truths exist at the same time?

The first is one many critics of empire understandably hesitate to acknowledge. Britain’s Industrial Revolution transformed the human condition in ways unprecedented in history. Steam power, steel production, railways, mechanised manufacturing, modern engineering and scientific institutions dramatically expanded what human societies could produce and achieve. Advances in medicine, sanitation and communications eventually spread far beyond Britain itself. Technologies first developed in Britain became part of humanity’s common inheritance. They shaped industrialisation across Europe, North America, Japan, China, India, Australia and, eventually, Africa.

Technology, however,........

© Pearls and Irritations