Like its predecessors, this volume in an excellent series breaks
with the practice of writing British Imperial history from an
exclusively Anglocentric newpoint. It also benefits from being
written at a time then the dust has settled on the passions stirred
up by post-war decolonization. The books can now be viewed more
objectively. In these volumes, to which more than 50 scholars from
Britain, the Commonwealth and the USA have contributed, every
chapter is thematic or regional. Much attention is given to the
economics of empire, to patterns of trade, migration and defence,
and to how the Empire was seen by the governed - rather than the
governors. The 'long' 19th century from the 1780s to 1914 saw
British Imperial power at its zenith yet it is clear from these
books that British governments worried constantly about the cost of
empire, many were concerned about its 'ramshackledom' and the
generals feared that co-ordinated risings in India, South Africa
and Ireland would bring it to its knees. In the event it was the
two world wars which were to decide the fate of the empire by the
way they loosened colonial loyalties to Britain and exhausted
Britain's economic and military capacity to resist colonial
rebellions when they finally came in the 1940s and '50s, though the
speed of decolonization also had much to do with the state of
British public opinion and Britain's relations with the USA and the
Soviet Union. (Kirkus UK)
The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. In this new volume on the last century of empire there are chapters on imperial centres, on the geographical `periphery' of empire, and on all its connecting mechanisms, including institutions and the flow of people, money, goods, and services. The volume also explores the experience of `imperial subjects' in terms of culture, politics, and economics; an experience which culminated in the growth of vibrant, often new, national identities and movements and, ultimately, new nation-states. It concludes with the processes of decolonization which reshaped the political map of the late twentieth-century world.
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