The ghosts of the British Empire continue to haunt today's international scene and many of the problems faced by the Empire have still not been resolved. In Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong, new difficulties, resulting from British imperialism, have arisen and continue to baffle politicians and diplomats. This powerful new book addresses the realities of the British Empire from its inception to its demise, skewering fantasies of its glory and cataloguing both the inadequacies of its ideals and the short-termism of its actions.

The world was wild for gold. After discovering the Americas, and under pressure to defend their vast dominion, the Habsburgs of Spain promoted gold and silver exploration in the New World with ruthless urgency. But, the great influx of wealth brought home by plundering conquistadors couldn't compensate for the Spanish government's extraordinary military spending, which would eventually bankrupt the country multiple times over and lead to the demise of the great empire.
Gold became synonymous with financial dependability, and following the devastating chaos of World War I, the gold standard came to express the order of the free market system. Warfare in pursuit of wealth required borrowing--a quickly compulsive dependency for many governments. And when people lost confidence in the promissory notes and paper currencies issued during wartime, governments again turned to gold.
In this captivating historical study, Kwarteng exposes a pattern of war-waging and financial debt--bedmates like April and taxes that go back hundreds of years, from the French Revolution to the emergence of modern-day China. His evidence is as rich and colorful as it is sweeping. And it starts and ends with gold.

Britain is at a cross-roads; from the economy, to the education system, to social mobility, Britain must learn the rules of the 21st century, or face a slide into mediocrity. Brittania Unchained travels around the world, exploring the nations that are triumphing in this new age, seeking lessons Britain must implement to carve out a bright future.

In six months, Margaret Thatcher reinvented her political party and redefined modern conservatism in one of the greatest feats of modern political leadership. In 1981, less than two years after she had been elected as Britain's first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was deemed unpopular and out of touch. Unemployment had risen to levels not seen since the 1930s, and the state's finances were foundering. Her chancellor of the exchequer delivered what became known as the 'no hope' budget in March, which marked the beginning of a period of an almost unprecedentedly broad range of political challenges: hunger strikes and violent protests in Northern Ireland, urban riots in London and Liverpool, and visible discontent with Thatcher from within the Conservative Party. And yet by September 14, when Thatcher sacked 4 mutinous grandees from her cabinet, the prime minister had firmly reasserted her authority. These extraordinary six months would come to define the Conservative Party's most successful and modern leader, who reshaped the ideas and direction of conservatism around the world. To her detractors she may have been a harsh, uncaring and dogmatic leader who made the country a more unequal, materialistic and brutal place, but to her supporters, she was nothing less than a Conservative savior who prevented Britain from becoming an ungovernable socialist state. The 1983 general election would prove a triumph. Kwasi Kwarteng intimately captures this shopkeeper's daughter's unique leadership qualities--from her pulpit-style and New Testament imagery to her emphasis on personal moral responsibility--that saw her through some of the most adverse conditions facing any world leader in modern peacetime.

Kwasi Kwarteng is the child of parents whose lives were shaped as subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana, then as British immigrants. He brings a unique perspective and impeccable academic credentials to a narrative history of the British Empire, one that avoids sweeping judgmental condemnation and instead sees the Empire for what it was: a series of local fiefdoms administered in varying degrees of competence or brutality by a cast of characters as outsized and eccentric as anything conjured by Gilbert and Sullivan. The truth, as Kwarteng reveals, is that there was no such thing as a model for imperial administration; instead, appointees were schooled in quirky, independent-minded individuality. As a result the Empire was the product not of a grand idea but of often chaotic individual improvisation. The idosyncracies of viceroys and soldier-diplomats who ran the colonial enterprise continues to impact the world, from Kashmir to Sudan, Baghdad to Hong Kong.