John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable book shows how diverse, contradictory and in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength.
John Darwin's interest lies in the history of empires, both their rise and fall.He has written extensively on the decline of Britain's empire and teaches imperial and global history at Oxford, where he is a Fellow of Nuffield College. Most recently he is the author of After Tamerlane- The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, which won the Wolfson History Prize, and The Empire Project- The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970.
A breadth of perspective few other imperial historians can boast.
The British Empire really does look different in the light of it
... Breadth of vision, fizzing ideas and a brilliant style as well
as superb scholarship ... It deserves to supplant every other book
on this topic, including - though my publisher and bank manager
won't thank me for saying this - my own. It is British imperial
history at last without hang-ups; the one we've been waiting
for
*History Today*
A brilliantly perceptive analysis of the forces and ideas that
drove the creation of an extraordinary enterprise ... Bringing
together his huge erudition, scrupulous fairness and elegant prose,
Mr Darwin has produced a wonderfully stimulating account of
something that today seems almost incredibly yet was, in historical
terms, only yesterday. It is also a much-needed antidote both to
the leftish consensus of the past 50 years that Britain's empire
was unrelievedly awful ... and the recent triumphalist revisionism
of more conservative historians
*Economist*
Engrossing ... What Darwin adds to this insight is a rare,
wonderful capacity for comparison. Empire here is a jigsaw of
dreams and anxieties, conquests and loss of faith ... Seeing the
imperial experience in the round like this does gives us a clearer,
more subtle appreciation of the range of power and violence at
play. It raises the historical writing on empire to another
level
*BBC History Magazine*
How incredibly refreshing it is when as distinguished an historian
as John Darwin ... writes something as thoughtful, well-researched
and persuasive as Unfinished Empire, which explains the
half-millennium-long expansion of Britain across the globe in terms
that genuinely make sense ... The author's deep familiarity with
all the key sources of this vast subject allows him to pluck
examples for his arguments from across the centuries and continents
... Best of all ... is the thought that Darwin's book might at long
last herald the victory of the post-Marxist phase of imperial
historiography, and not a moment too soon
*Sunday Telegraph Book of the Week*
Balanced, original and impressive ... Subtle ... intelligent
*Literary Review*
Comprehensive ... Darwin's erudition allows him to skirt around the
narrow orthodoxies of apologist v critic and provide an insightful
account of Britain's unlikely period of global hegemony
*Sunday Times*
Nostalgic Brits esteem the Empire as a redemptive "civilizing mission," others as an exercise in greed on a global scale. Oxford historian Darwin (After Tamerlane) argues convincingly that it was an ad hoc, largely private enterprise pursued by traders, migrants, soldiers, missionaries, and entrepreneurs with sporadic official support from the Crown. The book begins with Elizabethan England, at the time an outsider on the world stage: Spain enjoyed a "silver-rich empire" in the Americas; Holland controlled Asian spice islands; and Portugal had an outpost on the west coast of India. But by 1700, an "English Atlantic" was prospering with settlements strewn from Jamaica to Newfoundland, and though colonists played a minor role in Asia, traders there used military aid to assume control of the Indian subcontinent. By century's end, America had broken free, but the defeat of France at Waterloo in 1815 ushered in a golden age of trade and enlargement for the U.K. Though U.S. and German economies surged around the dawn of the 20th century, British expansion continued until WWII, when the unwieldy and far-flung agglomeration of territories began to finally break free from the shackles of colonialism. Temporally and geographically sprawling, Darwin's study is as expansive as his subject, yet his lucidly rendered project holds together remarkably well. Maps, illus. Agent: Adam Eaglin, the Wylie Agency. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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