The Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley
Summary and takeaways from the book.
Keywords:
Informed
Golden Age
Better Life
Jul 19, 2026
Bruce Gilley is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Portland State University.
In this book, the author lays the case for Colonialism.
"The case for European colonialism is simple. It is the case for humanity itself, for the ways that human beings have always acted rationally to better their situations in life, and those of their children."
Rather than an emotional argument, the author asks the reader to decide if colonialism was good or not based on whether it was good for the colonized, and how it compares to alternatives before colonialism and after it.
"It is the case for peace, progress, and running water. It is the case for living in a place where life is better and escaping from a place where life is worse. It is the case for human agency and freedom. In short, it is the case for a humble submission to the facts of life rather than the worked up intellectual fantasies of the scholar class."
Legitimacy of Colonialism
Locals and natives were fed up of bad governance by their own local rulers. They supported the colonials.
"
Brooke family rule in Sarawak showed how a culturally-informed external actor could gain legitimacy by delivering good governance—in this case an end to piracy, head-hunting and slavery as well as expanded foreign trade and wage labor opportunities. European rule was established with remarkable ease throughout the world because local elites believed that on balance, it would be better than the alternatives—the “preservers,” “facilitators,” and “collaborators,” as the Stanford political scientist David Abernethy called them, far outnumbered the “resisters.”"
They key point here for the colonizer is to deliver 'culturally-informed' good governance.
There is nothing inherently illegitimate about colonialism. "
American philosopher Christopher Morris wondered in a 2006 essay... All systems of governance involve some kind of 'domination'... “Nice empires are 'not so bad', Morris wrote, “and empires are not harder to justify or to legitimate than states."
"
The famous paired comparisons of colonized versus non-colonized countries like Belize-Guatemala, Jamaica-Haiti, Malaysia-Thailand, Kenya-Ethiopia, Liberia-Ghana, or Pakistan-Iran provide one approach. These comparisons suggest that the only thing worse than being colonized was not being colonized."
The author quotes late Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, "
The British governed their colony of Nigeria with considerable care. There was a very highly competent cadre of government officials imbued with a high level of knowledge of how to run a country". Nigerian author Chinua Achebe used words 'competently' and 'expert' to describe British governors.
How colonialism helped the colonized
Colonialism helped the colonized by freeing them from their own rulers who were usually much worse than the colonizers.
Colonialism enabled entrepreneurs and traders from the colonized to participate in the global economy. Similar arguments are given for Globalization.
"
Cambridge economic historian David Fieldhouse, born in India to missionary parents, showed that the main gift of colonialism was to have conjoined backward areas to the world capitalist system."
Post-Colonial Third World misrule
Some States like Singapore, learned from the colonials. They excelled.
Most third world states like Burma did not learn and descended into backwardness and autocracy.
The author blames it on 'Third World misrule'.
The third world blames its problems on lasting damage of colonialism.
The author quotes Singapore's foreign minister, S Rajaratnam, "
To reverse this drift towards disaster, it is necessary for the Third World to recognize that it has and it is committing errors—instead of attributing its difficulties to its imperial past and to the machinations of the rich advanced nations. More broadly, the notion that Third World countries were hapless victims of “structural conditions” rather than of their own mismanagement lost credibility."
"
It did not take a Ph.D. to realize that the countries which had preserved their colonial legal orders, economic systems, bureaucracies, and political pluralism were the ones that were doing better. In Southeast Asia, Singapore and Malaysia carried on the colonial system with great success while anti-colonialists laid waste to Burma and former French Indo-China."
End of Colonialism
It was not the freedom movements that ended colonialism.
"
The reason was not noble anti-colonial “resistance” but ignoble European resignation. A by-product of the two world wars was a deep turn inwards for Europe. Material deprivation and national confidence were at a low point.
Any group or Nation that asked for freedom at the end of Second World War got their freedom. "
“It can’t hurt to ask!” became the motto for disgruntled native politicians everywhere. To their surprise, the colonial rulers usually said, “Yes.”"
Reclaiming Colonialism
The author suggests some ways we can get back some of the benefits of colonialism.
"
One is for governments and peoples in developing countries to replicate as far as possible the colonial governance of their pasts—as successful countries like Singapore, Belize, and Botswana did."
"
A second way is to recolonize some regions."
"
Thirdly, in some instances it may be possible to build new Western colonies from scratch."
Charter Cities are another option. These can start as Network States - an online community that gains power and wealth, and then acquires land in the form of Special Economic Zones (SEZ's). Hong Kong is an example.
Another option is "
a “market in transnational governance” which we might call less euphemistically “colonialism for hire.”" This '
governance as a service' is likely to be more politically acceptable.
In all cases, the author stresses that "
I make clear that the precondition for any such shift is “the consent of the colonized.”"
There is support for recolonization. The author shares an anecdote, "
As one young man on the streets of Kinshasa asked Van Reybrouck in his seminal 2010 book on the Congo: “How long is this independence of ours going to last anyway? When are the Belgians coming back?”"
* * *
"
We all want human dignity and flourishing". The author asks us to support the model which delivers more of the good things.
"A preposterous idea? Perhaps. But not so preposterous as the anti-colonial ideology that for the past hundred years has been haunting the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the Third World. A hundred years of disaster is enough. It is time to make the case for colonialism again."
Related articles
From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order
External Links
