In depicting the British Empire as peaceful, Robbins obscured not only the great naval force that ensured its supremacy over its rivals, but also the genocidal violence wielded against indigenous and First Nations peoples in the process of establishing its distinctive white-settler colonies. Also absent from his narrative was what Mike Davis refers to as the 'late Victorian holocausts' by which British exploitation and commitment to Malthusian doctrines and free trade dramatically exacerbated the effects of climate to produce extraordinary famines, notably in India. In praising the peaceful trade of the British Empire, he engaged in an imperial politics of 'deflection' that turned attention away from empire's violence by insisting on its fundamental liberality.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 260