Ferguson snazzily summarizes the reasons for this reversal in six “killer apps”: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic. Against such tools – unique products of Western civilization – the rest had no chance. From such a perspective, imperialism, old and new, has been a beneficent influence, because it has been the means of spreading these “apps” to the rest of the world, thereby enabling them to enjoy the fruits of progress hitherto confined to a few Western countries.
Understandably, this thesis has not met with universal approbation. The historian Alex von Tunzelmann accused Ferguson of leaving out all of imperialism’s nasty bits: the Black War in Australia, the German genocide in Namibia, the Belgian exterminations in the Congo, the Amritsar Massacre, the Bengal Famine, the Irish potato famine, and much else.
But that is the weakest line of attack. Edward Gibbon once described history as being little better than a record of the “crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” Imperialism certainly added its quota to these. But the question is whether it also provided, through Hegel’s “cunning of reason,” the means to escape from them. Even Marx justified British rule in India on these grounds. Ferguson, too, can make a sound argument for such a proposition.