Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire
Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire

Author: Antoinette Burton

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2015-02-14

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0822375923

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Combining insights from imperial studies and transnational book history, this provocative collection opens new vistas on both fields through ten accessible essays, each devoted to a single book. Contributors revisit well-known works associated with the British empire, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, and Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. They explore anticolonial texts in which authors such as C. L. R. James and Mohandas K. Gandhi chipped away at the foundations of imperial authority, and they introduce books that may be less familiar to students of empire. Taken together, the essays reveal the dynamics of what the editors call an "imperial commons," a lively, empire-wide print culture. They show that neither empire nor book were stable, self-evident constructs. Each helped to legitimize the other. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Elleke Boehmer, Catherine Hall, Isabel Hofmeyr, Aaron Kamugisha, Marilyn Lake, Charlotte Macdonald, Derek Peterson, Mrinalini Sinha, Tridip Suhrud, André du Toit

Empireland
Empireland

Author: Sathnam Sanghera

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0593316681

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A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. "Empireland is brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It’ll stay in your head for years.” —John Oliver, Emmy Award-winning host of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" With a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Booker Prize-winner Marlon James A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. Empire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do. From common thought to our daily routines; from the foundations of social safety nets to the realities of racism; and from the distrust of public intellectuals to the exceptionalism that permeates immigration debates, the Brexit campaign and the global reckonings with controversial memorials, Empireland shows how the pernicious legacy of Western imperialism undergirds our everyday lives, yet remains shockingly obscured from view. In accessible, witty prose, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Sathnam Sanghera traces this legacy back to its source, exposing how—in both profound and innocuous ways—imperial domination has shaped the United Kingdom we know today. Sanghera connects the historical dots across continents and seas to show how the shadows of a colonial past still linger over modern-day Britain and how the world, in turn, was shaped by Britain’s looming hand. The implications, of course, extend to Britain’s most notorious former colony turned imperial power: the United States of America, which prides itself for its maverick soul and yet seems to have inherited all the ambition, brutality and exceptional thinking of its parent. With a foreword by Booker Prize–winner Marlon James, Empireland is a revelatory and lucid work of political history that offers a sobering appraisal of the past so we may move toward a more just future.

Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire
Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire

Author: Antoinette Burton

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780822358138

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Combining insights from imperial studies and transnational book history, this provocative collection opens new vistas on both fields through ten accessible essays, each devoted to a single book. Contributors revisit well-known works associated with the British empire, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Thomas Macaulay's History of England, Charles Pearson's National Life and Character, and Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. They explore anticolonial texts in which authors such as C. L. R. James and Mohandas K. Gandhi chipped away at the foundations of imperial authority, and they introduce books that may be less familiar to students of empire. Taken together, the essays reveal the dynamics of what the editors call an "imperial commons," a lively, empire-wide print culture. They show that neither empire nor book were stable, self-evident constructs. Each helped to legitimize the other. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Elleke Boehmer, Catherine Hall, Isabel Hofmeyr, Aaron Kamugisha, Marilyn Lake, Charlotte Macdonald, Derek Peterson, Mrinalini Sinha, Tridip Suhrud, André du Toit

The British Empire
The British Empire

Author: Stephen W. Sears

Publisher: New Word City

Published: 2014-09-10

Total Pages: 759

ISBN-13: 1612308090

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In 1815, the British controlled the seas. Before the end of the nineteenth century, they ruled Australia, India, New Zealand, half of Africa, half of North America, and islands all around the globe. Theirs was the most powerful empire the world has ever known. Here is the story of how the English acquired their vast domain; how they ruled, maintained, and exploited it; and how, within decades, they presided over its dissolution. Here are Britain's triumphs and also her stinging defeats, her heroes and her scoundrels. It is a full and fascinating chronicle of the growth of the British Empire and its people and of the impact that empire had on the rest of the world.

Heroes and Villains of the British Empire
Heroes and Villains of the British Empire

Author: Stephen Basdeo

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2020-07-30

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1526749424

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From the sixteenth until the twentieth century, British power and influence gradually expanded to cover one quarter of the world’s surface. The common saying was that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. What began as a largely entrepreneurial enterprise in the early modern period, with privately run joint stock trading companies such as the East India Company driving British commercial expansion, by the nineteenth century had become, especially after 1857, a state-run endeavor, supported by a powerful military and navy. By the Victorian era, Britannia really did rule the waves. Heroes of the British Empire is the story of how British Empire builders such as Robert Clive, General Gordon, and Lord Roberts of Kandahar were represented and idealized in popular culture. The men who built the empire were often portrayed as possessing certain unique abilities which enabled them to serve their country in often inhospitable territories, and spread what imperial ideologues saw as the benefits of the British Empire to supposedly uncivilized peoples in far flung corners of the world. These qualities and abilities were athleticism, a sense of fair play, devotion to God, and a fervent sense of duty and loyalty to the nation and the empire. Through the example of these heroes, people in Britain, and children in particular, were encouraged to sign up and serve the empire or, in the words of Henry Newbolt, “Play up! Play up! And Play the Game!” Yet this was not the whole story: while some writers were paid up imperial propagandists, other writers in England detested the very idea of the British Empire. And in the twentieth century, those who were once considered as heroic military men were condemned as racist rulers and exploitative empire builders.

Three Victories and a Defeat
Three Victories and a Defeat

Author: Brendan Simms

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2008-12-09

Total Pages: 836

ISBN-13: 0786727225

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In the eighteenth century, Britain became a world superpower through a series of sensational military strikes. Traditionally, the Royal Navy has been seen as Britain's key weapon, but in Three Victories and a Defeat Brendan Simms argues that Britain's true strength lay with the German aristocrats who ruled it at the time. The House of Hanover superbly managed a complex series of European alliances that enabled Britain to keep the continental balance of power in check while dramatically expanding her own empire. These alliances sustained the nation through the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War. But in 1776, Britain lost the American continent by alienating her European allies. An extraordinary reinterpretation of British and American history, Three Victories and a Defeat is a masterwork by a rising star of the historical profession.

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997

Author: Piers Brendon

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-02-09

Total Pages: 850

ISBN-13: 0307388417

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A WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD NOTABLE BOOK After the American Revolution, the British Empire appeared to be doomed. Yet it grew to become the greatest, most diverse empire the world had seen. Then, within a generation, the mighty structure collapsed, a rapid demise that left an array of dependencies and a contested legacy: at best a sporting spirit, a legal code and a near-universal language; at worst, failed states and internecine strife. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire covers a vast canvas, which Brendon fills with vivid particulars, from brief lives to telling anecdotes to comic episodes to symbolic moments.

Ten Cities that Made an Empire
Ten Cities that Made an Empire

Author: Tristram Hunt

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781846143250

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Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and the end days of Empire, Britain's colonial past has been the subject of passionate debate. Tristram Hunt goes beyond the now familiar arguments about Empire being good or bad and adopts a fresh approach to Britain's empire and its legacy. Through an exceptional array of first-hand accounts and personal reflections, he portrays the great colonial and imperial cities of Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and twentieth-century Liverpool- their architecture, culture, and society balls; the famines, uprisings and repressions which coursed through them; the primitive accumulation and ghostly bureaucracy which ran them; the British supremacists and multicultural trailblazers who inhabited them. From the pioneers of early America to the builders of modern India, from west to east and back again, Hunt follows the processes of exchange and adaptation that collectively moulded the colonial experience and which in their turn transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles. This vivid and richly detailed imperial story, located in ten of the most important cities which the Empire constructed, demolished, reconstructed and transformed, allows us a new understanding of the British Empire's influence upon the world and the world's influence upon it. 'In this ingenious, gripping and unorthodox book Tristram Hunt tells the story of the British Empire in a way we have never had it before. Hunt has a talent for the vivid and the specific which is almost novelistic. We learn about the growth, effects and motivations of Empire not through statistics or the story of British legislators, but by being guided on the ground, taken by the hand through the streets of Liverpool and Melbourne, waterfronts from Hong Kong to Cape Town, and learning the stories of some of the most extraordinary - and often outrageous - people in our history.' Andrew Marr 'This eminently readable book tells the story of the expanding British empire through a history of its key cities across the world, providing fresh insights and fascinating details. It ranges from the Americas to India and back to Britain- an exhilarating ride - and an important contribution to its subject.' C. A. Bayly

The British End of the British Empire
The British End of the British Empire

Author: Sarah Stockwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-08-30

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1107070317

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The end of empire in Britain itself is illuminated through explorations of its impact on key domestic institutions.

The British Empire
The British Empire

Author: Philippa Levine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-25

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1351259660

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The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset is a broad survey of the history of the British Empire from its beginnings to its demise that offers a comprehensive analysis of what life was like under colonial rule, weaving the everyday stories of people living through the experience of colonialism into the bigger picture of empire. The experience of the British Empire was not limited to what happened behind closed doors or on the floor of Parliament. It affected men, women and children across the globe, making a difference to what they ate and what kind of work they did, what languages and lessons they learned in school, and how they were able to live their lives. This new edition expands its coverage and discusses the relationship between Brexit and empire as well as the recent controversies connected to empire that have engulfed Britain: the Windrush scandal, the fight over the Chagos Islands and the Mau Mau lawsuits, bringing it up to date and engaging with key debates that govern the study of empire. Painting a picture of life for all those affected by empire and supported by maps and illustrations, this is the perfect text for all students of imperial history.