Niall Ferguson is a dangerous man. Victor Vijay is right to lambaste him for being an apologist for imperialism. Alex Von Tunzelmann is no less damning. Why is Ferguson so dangerous? After all there is no shortage of history texts whitewashing the brutalities of the British Empire. No, Ferguson is dangerous because he has the ear of the current Tory government and is advising the government, officially or otherwise, on the history curriculum in schools.

Think about it. If Ferguson gets his way, countless thousands of young British students are going to come out of secondary school believing that the British Empire was primarily a force for good, and that any rough stuff was probably the work of a few bad apples. We’ll be back to an era of imperial history at the very time that we desperately need a global history that lays bare the realities of the past five hundred years of barbaric European colonialism.

Tunzelmann is deadly accurate in her criticism of Ferguson. Just listen to Ferguson waxing lyrical about the ‘civilising’ effects of European Empire; Before we rush to condemn the Western empires as evil and exploitative we need to understand that there was more than a little substance to their claim that they were on a civilising mission.

Tunzelmann then retorts:

A lot of hard facts must be left out so as not to spoil this rosy view. Professor Ferguson blames the Chinese for getting addicted to opium in the 18th and 19th centuries and losing their competitive spirit but doesn’t mention the Opium Wars.He doesn’t mention that as the British took over India, the app they installed in its operating system was not competition, but a brutal system of political and economic monopoly.

Tunzelmann is in no mood to let Ferguson off the hook and for that she should be roundly applauded. She continues her refutation of Ferguson’s phoney thesis with this broadside:

Professor Ferguson has a right wing agenda so large that it can probably be seen from space. Still you don’t have to be Karl Marx to think that the foundations of British power in the East were oppression and domination. (Ferguson’s) ‘Civilisation’ is imperial history without the nasty bits; a comforting bedtime story for neoconservatives to indoctrinate into their children.

Tunzelmann then lists just a few examples out of the huge catalogue of barbarous acts that Ferguson would have us believe were part of a civilising mission. It’s a sobering list for those who genuinely wish to grasp the full picture of our collective world history. Try this for an opening gambit:

Here are some other things about Western empires that aren’t in the book: the Black War in Australia, the German genocide in Namibia, the French reparations forced upon the liberated slaves of Haiti, the Belgians exterminating 10 million people in the Congo Free State, the British ordering 1.5 million Kikuyu into detainment camps during the Mau Mau uprising, the indenture system, the Amritsar Massacre, the Setif Massacre, Manifest Destiny, the Trail of Tears, the Bengal Famine, the Irish Potato Famine, any famines, and the creation of third world debt.

Michael Gove should realise that Ferguson is not the only one to have a claim to historical expertise. Clearly he might wish to consult Tunzelmann and the growing army of Ferguson’s critics before launching into a wholesale imperialist revamp of the current school history curriculum. Mr Gove might think he can swiftly sweep this manoeuvre under the carpet while nobody’s noticing, but we can assure him we are watching and waiting. It will be an historic battle Mr Gove, be sure of that.