Why Andrew Roberts Wants Us to Reconsider King George III

In 2007, the British historian Andrew Roberts was invited for a one-on-one meeting with President George W. Bush. Roberts’s book “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900,” with its unapologetic embrace of the legacy of Anglo-American history, had been promoted by Vice-President Dick Cheney, and captured the conservative Zeitgeist in the U.S. amid the war on terror. Roberts wrote the book as an homage to one of his heroes, Winston Churchill, who had written his own book on the subject bearing essentially the same title. (Roberts has gone on to write extensively about Churchill and his legacy, seeking to rescue the former Prime Minister from recent attempts to scrutinize his racism and imperialism.) “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” which drew criticism from liberals for sanitizing imperial atrocities in India and southern Africa, established Roberts as a favored chronicler of history for American conservatives.

Since that time, Roberts has produced voluminous history books on the Second World War and Napoleon, and also a steady stream of political columns in British newspapers and magazines. His latest book is “The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III,” a biography of the maligned monarch and a reappraisal of the years leading up to American independence, which emphasizes his cultural contributions, and makes the case that he was a man of honor and artistic refinement. I recently spoke by phone with Roberts, who is a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how to view the history of British imperialism, some controversies from Roberts’s past, and how he balances the tasks of writing history and making provocative commentary on the news of the day.

Do you have a larger theory of history? What is it that your work, across all your books and essays, seeks to get across to readers?

I try to have one, yes. I’m a huge doubter of the Whig interpretation of history, in which progress is at the center of human development. I don’t believe that. I don’t think anyone post-Auschwitz can believe that mankind is on any kind of a prearranged path. I think that contingency and chance and luck play far more of a role than these didactic Whig historians believe.

You have often focussed on people who are considered the “great men” who have changed history in some way. But it seems like you’re saying that, even if those men exist, history is not going in one direction.

Precisely that, yes. Also, I know it’s quite unfashionable to believe in the “great man” theory of history. Things like the Industrial Revolution, or the decline of magic and the rise of science, are not just about great men, but neither are they predetermined. So I do like to look at the influence that individuals have without believing in the idea of a prearranged past. That’s, I suppose, my totally unoriginal view of history.

What did you want to accomplish with a book about George III?

I don’t for a minute consider George III to be a great man in the same way that Churchill and Napoleon were. But it struck me that it did fit in very well with the whole contingency aspect of American independence, because, although you clearly were in the right place to become an independent nation in the seventeen-seventies, there were loads of other ways that it could have developed. You had a burgeoning economy, and two and a half million people. It was the right time for America. But, equally, you had to have the right people in the right place at the right time for it to actually happen. Some of those people were a whole load of Britons who managed to speed things up. George III was not the primary example of that. He has been tremendously misunderstood—officially in your country, of course, because of the Declaration of Independence.

What is it about him as a man and monarch that you think should be rescued from the standard historical account?

I think he’s very clearly not the tyrant that Thomas Jefferson made out in the Declaration of Independence. It’s a beautiful piece of writing—the first third of it makes you proud to be a human. But the next two-thirds of it are a catalogue of charges against George III, twenty-seven charges in all, twenty-six of which I believe he’s innocent of. You have for the last two centuries—not just in America but in Britain, as well—a belief that he was a tyrant, where I believe that he was an enlightened monarch, in many ways a benevolent ruler. And certainly in his private and personal life, in his cultured life, he was something of a Renaissance prince. He was a driving force behind Georgian architecture, the neoclassical form of architecture, which I certainly think of as being a moment of the height of civilization, really. He could play lots of musical instruments. So for him to be called the “royal brute of Great Britain” by Thomas Paine is an appalling misrepresentation of a much more accomplished human being.

How should we think about the American Revolution today, morally or otherwise?

I don’t think that you should be concentrating as much on the supposed oppressions of colonial rule, because I think that, in fact, America was one of the freer societies in the world in the seventeen-sixties and seventeen-seventies. Instead, you should be concentrating on the advantages of independence and self-government, which obviously led the United States to become the most powerful nation in the world.

I very much think that it was a good thing for America to have become independent, undoubtedly, and that the Founding Fathers should be heroes to the Americans because of their courage and because of their foresight in the advantage of independence. However, you mentioned morality. They absolutely can’t consider themselves to be morally superior to King George III, because George III never bought or sold a slave in his life. He never invested in any of the companies that did such a thing. He signed legislation to abolish slavery. [George III signed the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the trading of slaves. Slavery itself was not outlawed by the United Kingdom until 1833, after George III’s death.] I have discovered a paper that he wrote in the seventeen-fifties denouncing all of the arguments for slavery, and calling them an execration and ridiculous and “absurd.” So I think we’ve got to get far beyond the idea that Washington and Jefferson and people like that were, in a way, better people than George III, however brave they were.

Henry Kissinger said that you’re “a great historian who’s always relevant to contemporary thinking and contemporary problems.” Were there contemporary resonances you were trying to capture with this book?

No. I have to say I hadn’t really thought about it until now, and it’s very sweet of Henry to say that. I’m not sure it’s true, necessarily.

It may not be true, but you can’t stop Kissinger from being sweet.

No, no, no. Absolutely. It was adorable of him to say it. But I think possibly the advantages of independence and self-government are something that the British have managed to take since the Brexit referendum in 2016, and we are self-governing, for better or for ill. There are all sorts of problems that have come as a result of it, but over all I think it’s going to be a good thing for my country, just as 1776 was a good thing for yours.

Where do you think the debate about British imperialism is right now, and what is your role in it?

I don’t agree with the automatic assumption that the British Empire was evil. I think that a large majority of the time, in the large majority of places, it wasn’t evil at all. In fact, I think it was very helpful for the development of the native peoples of the Empire. So there is a massive debate, but I’ve lost it, and I have absolutely no feeling that I am ever likely, probably for the rest of my lifetime, to win it again, not least because the whole educational establishment in England is completely convinced that the British Empire was a bad thing. It’s just one of those things, isn’t it?

I guess it is. In “English-Speaking Peoples,” you wrote about British concentration camps during the Boer War, and referred to “supposed” atrocities in them. Do you feel that you have a rosy view of the British Empire?

No, I don’t think so. I genuinely think I’ve got an objective view of the British Empire. The argument was basically taken over by anti-imperialists who think that the whole thing was a sort of scam—an attempt to exploit the rest of the world—and don’t take into account any of the other aspects of it. Which is the dominant narrative now. But I think it’s wrong.

A figure at the center of so many of these debates now is Churchill. How should—

Yeah, he’s on the front line of the culture war, basically, and he was always very happy being on the front line of every war, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. [Laughs.] I think we should think about him as a man who made a lot of mistakes, a lot of blunders again and again in his career, but as somebody who learned from them. He saw three things—the rise of Prussian militarism, the rise of the Nazis, and then the domination of Eastern Europe by Soviet Communism—that very few other people saw at the time. He warned against those things as soon as he saw them. And he was eloquent, he was brave. He was very often the only person who was saying them, and all three of them together completely eclipse the things that he got wrong.

There has been a lot of controversy about his racial attitudes, how he dealt with the Bengal Famine and talked about Indians—

For me, it’s not Indians—it’s specifically Hindus. When he talked about the “beastly religion”—India has thirty-plus religions—he used the singular because he meant the Hindus, who were at the time trying to force Britain to quit India during the Second World War, at the time that the Japanese were actually threatening to invade India. And these are appalling comments, and no one would for a moment defend them nowadays. Of course not. But, as far as the Bengal Famine is concerned, the suggestion that Winston Churchill deliberately made it worse is only made by people who haven’t read the letters that he was writing to President Roosevelt, the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, to the Viceroy, asking for grain and so on. It’s an abomination in my view—this complete canard about him being a war criminal, essentially.

It is just striking to read about Churchill being alerted to the massive number of deaths of Indians in territory that his government ruled, and asking questions like why Gandhi hadn’t died—which he hoped for—if things were so bad.

Maybe he did say all of that in exactly the way that he’s been made out to, and it’s dreadful if he did. He did believe in a hierarchy of the races, with whites on top and the British on top of the whites. But the idea of the hierarchy of the races was considered a scientific fact when he was a young man. Unfortunately and sadly, it wasn’t unusual for someone of his age and class and background to believe these thoughts.

Yes, although you yourself have said that Churchill was more profoundly racist than most of his era.

Well, the trouble with the word “racism” is that it implies you want bad things to happen to nonwhite people, and what I was trying to say is that he saw the world in terms of race more than other people. He saw everything in terms of race, and then you break down race internationally. And, by the way, in May, 1940, it wasn’t a bad thing that he assumed that British people were superior to Germans. We needed that sense of superiority. It was a time of existential crisis.

I read a piece that you wrote, from sixteen years ago, called “Recolonize Africa,” in which you wrote, “Indeed, far from being the problem besetting Africa, imperialism can well be the solution.” I thought you might want to weigh in on that.

I can’t even remember. Did I write that? I’m sorry. It’s literally—oh, God, I’m trying to work out if I wrote an article fifteen years ago. I don’t suppose I’d write something like that again. I’m afraid fifteen years ago I was a bit of an enfant terrible, or at least pretending to be one. Now I’m a much more solid and boring establishment figure. I’m not sure I could write anything like that again. So apologies. [Laughs.]

Tell me what you mean by “enfant terrible.”

When I came down from Cambridge, I got a job in the city as an investment banker, where it turned out, after a couple of years, that I was functionally innumerate. I chucked it and started writing history books. But, at the beginning, you sort of needed to make your name, and the way you did it was to be extreme. Actually, “extreme” is the wrong word—sort of radical, and that’s the enfant-terrible thing that I did in my mid-twenties. I’m now in my late fifties and I don’t feel like that at all any longer, I’m afraid. I have sort of grown out of trying to shock people.

In a piece this year about January 6th, you divided blame between President Trump and Hollywood, writing, “When a governing class is portrayed as traitors for decades, can we really be surprised when the buildings that house them get assaulted?” Can you talk about taking an event like January 6th and trying to put a historical lens on it?

Maybe it’s far too early to do that, in fact. I think I might have been a bit presumptuous.

To have blamed Hollywood?

No, not the attack on Hollywood so much as in saying anything about what was behind that appalling, appalling moment. I am considered among my friends as a huge Yankophile, so I hold my head in shame on the sixth of January, because so many anti-Americans were using it as a stick to beat America with, and it was a profoundly depressing moment, really.

Let me ask you about speaking at this Springbok dinner, in 2001. [The Springbok Club is a group of white expatriates from southern Africa who openly mourn the loss of apartheid and fly the South African Apartheid flag at meetings. The group is closely associated with a number of white supremacists.] What exactly happened there?

No, no, no. I don’t remember that much about it—even where it was or who asked me—but I was invited to speak about a book that I’d brought out, a biography of Lord Salisbury, the Victorian Prime Minister. Frankly, I accepted every and any invitation when trying to publicize my book, and I didn’t look too closely into who these people were. I turned up and I gave a speech solely about Lord Salisbury, because the capital of Rhodesia was Salisbury.

Rhodesia being what is now Zimbabwe.

I turned up to this dinner, I gave the speech, and went away again. Essentially, it was a history lecture after dinner. And I wish I hadn’t gone, or at least—I tell you what: I wish I’d just sort of looked into it a bit further. I don’t accept every speaking engagement any longer. Largely, actually I think that I’ve probably learnt my lesson over that one.

They posted on their Web site that you finished a speech by proposing a toast to the club as the heir to previous imperial achievements, with a photo of you in front of the Rhodesian flag.

I don’t think that is true at all. Well, first of all, I wouldn’t recognize a Rhodesian flag if I saw one, but, secondly, I would have proposed a toast to the club out of politeness. But how many toasts am I supposed to have proposed at this dinner?

I was just reading from their Web site: “He finished his speech proposing a toast to the Springbok Club, which he said he considered the heir to previous imperial achievements.”

Oh, God. O.K. Literally, I promise you I can’t remember any of this.

The reason I asked about it was because, when I asked you about the “Recolonize Africa” piece from four years later, you said that you might not have written the piece that way. I was curious if there was a connection between those two things.

Oh, no. God, no. No, I’ve definitely made errors in my life, and speaking to the Springbok Club was one of them. Not because of anything I said there, but because just the fact that turning up was going to later prove to be a mistake.

I know you’re an expert on the British Empire. Rhodesia in that period of history is interesting, because they had their Unilateral Declaration of Independence in the mid-sixties without resorting to majority rule, and then Ian Smith’s racist regime eventually gave way to Robert Mugabe.

Yes, and I think the most interesting thing for me was that, back in 1979, what Smith did when he was winding up that regime was to sort of rejoin the Empire for a few months, until Margaret Thatcher handed it over to Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe and Bishop Muzorewa. There was a hope that that country was going to be able to be happy and well organized and well run by Nkomo and Muzorewa. But it died horribly because of Mugabe.

I know you said you didn’t recognize the flag, but you know so much about this area of the world.

Well, I was sixteen when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. It was a huge issue when I was becoming politically conscious, and I’m a Thatcherite. I’m a Thatcherite Tory. That’s my lifetime’s political belief, really.

You are very productive. You write so many books and columns. How—

Yeah. Columns I can’t remember and completely regret later, so I’m not sure that that’s something to be proud of.

That’s actually what I was going to ask you about. How do you balance writing these big history books with doing the weekly column for the Daily Mail or The Spectator? How does that work for you as a writer?

I have a totally different attitude toward writing books than to writing columns and appearing on TV and radio. If it’s between hardcovers, then it’s got to be properly researched and thought about, and it’s something that I think will live for a hundred years, and I worry about whether my grandchildren are going to be proud of it or not. If it’s an article for a newspaper or a magazine—and I’m sorry to say this to somebody who writes for The New Yorker—but it’s for wrapping up the fish and chips the next morning. It’s just a way to pay my mortgage and to get through life.