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The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns' Epic Defense of the British Empire Bruce Gilley Regnery Gateway, 2021
Professor of political science Bruce Gilley provides a page-turning biography of Sir Alan Cuthbert Maxwell Burns (1887-1980), a British patriot and staunch proponent of the British colonial system that markedly raised the standard of living of underdeveloped peoples. From the lowest rung on the Colonial Administrative Service ladder as a junior revenue officer in his place of birth, St. Kitts, he advanced to positions of increasing responsibility in the Caribbean. During World War I, he commanded colonial African troops in Nigeria. After posts in colonial administration in Nigeria before and following the war, Burns became Colonial Secretary of the Bahamas, Governor of British Honduras (Belize) and, during the Second World War, Governor of the British Gold Coast (Ghana). Following World War II, the US repeated its wartime insistence that its European allies decolonize, while "progressive", anti-colonialism movements prodded reluctant colonialists with terrorism. During this period, Burns served as the Permanent Representative of the UK to the Trusteeship Council, mandated by the UN to create functioning states out of colonial possessions in various degrees of development, and was the sole voice in the UN for patience and gradual independence rather than the flashindependence demanded by the Third World, Communist states and the US.
Highly traveled, and a skilled negotiator, Burns never completed his primary education. Poverty ensued when his father died-Alan was 9. He dropped out of St. Edmund's College (a Catholic boys' school in England) so that his younger brother Emile could attend. Indeed, what helped Burns excel at his job as colonial administrator was not empty learning but hands-on experience and "sound common sense." Today, "sound common sense" based on observation and deduction is quaint and so "Eurocentric". The norm in most of academia today is, in fact, empty learning, along with "correct" ideology and groupthink. These traits well-describe modern social scientists, who uniformly state that no good whatsoever came from European colonialism.1
Gilley points out that Burns faithfully served the interest of the British government. By the late nineteenth century, British goal were to transition colonies to independent states with constitutional governance while raising standards of living. To achieve these goals, the colonial administrators were to...