The British Empire was not all aggression, exploitation and racism, although it was very largely that. It also had a more idealistic side to it, which was why many liberal-thinking Britons supported it at the time. Some of them were even persuaded to go out and run it, including the husband of Virginia Woolf, and the man who later became George Orwell. Both of these later wrote highly critically about aspects of British rule in the Indian subcontinent; but not necessarily about imperialism per se.

In fact most of the constructive criticism of the way the empire was ruled came then from Critics of Empire – not opponents – which is why I decided to use that as the title of my first book: rather than The Anti-Imperialists, which was what I had had in mind when I began researching the subject. Strict anti-imperialists wanted to have nothing to do with the existing British colonies, but to let them relapse into pre-colonial savagery, as they thought (they were usually racists), or be taken over by other empires. It was the ‘liberal imperialists’ who had higher ambitions for a reformed British Empire, seeing it as a force for the spread of freedom in the world, once it had been democratised. They were the internationalists of their time; not the ‘Little Englanders’.

The most notable expression of this skein of imperial thought in the early 20^th century was the ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’, later simply ‘The Commonwealth’; which is still with us today, albeit almost imperceptibly. Of course imperialists of the old aggressive, exploitative and racist kind saw it as a continuation of the Empire they had loved; and then felt highly let down when some of its members – notably South Africa – started telling it what to do. (South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961, because its apartheid policies were seen to transgress the organisation’s values.) Of course, historically speaking the Commonwealth was an outgrowth of the Empire; but – as the South African episode exemplifies – of its more liberal side.

One interesting aspect of the present spat over tariffs and Greenland between Trump and the rest of the world, is the part the Commonwealth is now playing in it. Carney of course is the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth country, and is being backed by two others, as well as by a Europe led by Britain. Carney’s vision of a quasi-federation of widely-scattered states (or economies), standing in opposition to a ‘bullying’ USA, could be seen as the apotheosis of the Commonwealth ideal; and especially if other nations choose to join it – as they had been able to do, theoretically, in the last century. Could this form the foundation of the ‘new world order’ that many are talking about, now that the post-1945 one is so ‘ruptured’: to use Carney’s word for it.

A brand-new ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ might be a better and safer answer to our present global problems than Trump’s strident beggar-my-neighbour nationalism; just as the original Commonwealth was conceived to be by those more idealistic imperialists a century ago. (Greenland would of course be a member.) So a ground plan exists for Carney to build on; back in my realm of British imperial History.