It has been argued and continues to be argued that, at least in some cases (notably the British, whom I like to think did the best job among Western nations in civilising their overseas possessions) the real problem was that we left too soon.

The imperial West had a habit of drawing boundaries without very much regard for natural boundaries between ethnic groups – and we didn’t hang around long enough to make them stick.

It may be that Gandhi was a force for evil in the world, taking everything into account. This sounds extreme, but consider: India was probably the most ready of Britain’s overseas possessions to become independent, and in due course it did. However, that left many other “colonies” with an example to follow and no infrastructure to make it work; such trifles as the rule of law, an education system with reasonable coverage, half-decent living standards… were missing.

We should have stayed, and ignored the people with an ersatz guilty conscience. We should have stayed long enough to make the colonies, primarily in Africa, into real countries. That’s the real colonial guilt. We broke the established order and weren’t prepared to hang around to clean up the mess.

Social relativists have questions to answer there.