“Lord Cromer was a successful consul-general of Egypt. To what extent do you agree?” I read this essay prompt in my A-level history class, wondering what “successful” means. Successful in forcing austerity on Egyptians to line the pockets of British financiers? Successful in civilising a country of people he viewed as “subversive demagogues” and “subject races”?

Thankfully my essay could argue that Cromer wasn’t successful if I tried to frame “success” in terms of how he impacted the Egyptian population: he imposed an unfair land tax system and restricted access to education. But even then I had to write it under the implicit assumption that colonial rulers can be successful for a population – it’s just that this one wasn’t. Why doesn’t discussion around Cromer – and the values he embodied – instead centre on the right to rule?

Like many students at British secondary schools, I have scores of kings and queens and specific weapon limitations of cold war treaties etched into my memory from GCSE and prior. That’s not a complaint – all history is valuable. But there is so much history that is just as, or probably more significant, yet absent from our curricula. And as the Cromer essay prompt highlights, there’s another issue. When British colonial history is studied, what is scrutinised and critiqued is not the principle of colonialism, but the efficiency with which the British colonised.

At a fundamental level, history means investigating the past, piecing together what we know to form the most accurate version. That means examining varying experiences, perspectives and interpretations; challenging orthodox........

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