The arguments on this site draw on a substantial body of historical, legal, economic, and political scholarship. This section provides guidance to the most important sources for readers who want to explore the evidence in more depth.
The sources are organised by section, corresponding to the main areas covered by the site. We have tried to include sources representing a range of perspectives, including sources that support elements of the reparations case, so that readers can assess the evidence for themselves rather than relying on our interpretation alone.
Essential reading
Nigel Biggar, Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt (Forum/Swift Press, 2025)
The single most directly relevant book on this debate. Biggar, Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas and Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at Oxford, takes apart the reparations case with the precision of an ethicist and the evidence of a historian. He examines why the claims are being made now, how far they make sense, and why the moral foundations are weaker than advocates admit. The book covers the universality of slavery across cultures, African complicity in the Atlantic trade, the selective outrage of the reparations movement, and the ethical case against collective intergenerational liability. Described as a major contribution to the debate by Professor David Eltis of Emory University, and as compelling and timely by Professor Tirthankar Roy of the LSE.
Nigel Biggar, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (HarperCollins, 2023)
The essential companion to Reparations. Where the later book focuses specifically on the reparations claim, this one provides the full historical and moral context: slavery, abolition, racism, cultural aggression, economic exploitation, and the real drivers of British imperial power. Biggar examines the standard charges against the British Empire one by one, acknowledges what is justified, and dismantles what is not. Became a Sunday Times bestseller despite initially being dropped by its publisher under pressure. Praised by Trevor Phillips as carrying the intellectual force of a Javelin antitank missile.
