Bruce Gilley, “The Case for Colonialism” (2017)
A contested case about the valence of the word itself
Political scientist Bruce Gilley published a “Viewpoint” essay in Third World Quarterly (2017) arguing Western colonialism was “objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate” in most places, and floating “recolonisation.” After mass complaints, 15 of the journal’s ~34 board members resigned, and the essay was withdrawn — the publisher cited “serious and credible threats of personal violence” against the editor, while noting the piece had passed double-blind peer review.
What happened
Third World Quarterly published Gilley’s essay online. An open letter and petition demanded retraction; 15 editorial-board members resigned; Gilley asked for the essay’s withdrawal.
Western colonialism was, as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found… (Gilley, abstract)
Under each definition
Gilley is discussing paradigmatic historical Western colonialism itself; the dispute is over its evaluation, not its classification.
The essay addresses administrative colonialism broadly, not the settler-replacement subtype specifically.
The essay concerns the historical institution, not post-independence control.
This case is about the literal word’s moral charge, not a metaphorical extension.
The case that the label applies
Gilley contends the anti-colonial consensus is an “orthodoxy” that ignores measurable benefits (governance, infrastructure, integration into global markets) and that some post-colonial states did worse by rejecting their colonial inheritance; he argues the word’s blanket negativity is unearned. (This is a case about the word’s valence, not whether the events were colonial.)
The case against
Fifteen board members and many scholars argued the piece “fail[ed] to provide reliable findings,” cherry-picked evidence, ignored colonialism’s violence, famines, and dispossession, and amounted to “academic clickbait”; historians note the objective-benefit ledger omits the catastrophic human costs that define the record.
In their words
WITHDRAWAL NOTICE… the journal editor has subsequently received serious and credible threats of personal violence… this is why we are withdrawing this essay.
15 of the 34-strong editorial board of the journal opted to resign and… called for the paper to be retracted over its ‘fail[ure] to provide reliable findings’.
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.