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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.
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.
_______________ 'Enormously entertaining' - Sunday Times
'Exhaustive and convincingly argued' - Observer 'A complicated
story well told, from which financial lessons emerge naturally' -
Financial Times _______________ A unique look at the financial
world and its troubled history, from the disaster that befell Spain
in the sixteenth century to the 2008 global financial crisis In the
sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors discovered the New World.
The vast quantities of gold and silver would make their country
rich, yet the new wealth, which was plunged into multiple wars,
would eventually lead to the economic ruin of their empire. Here,
historian and politician Kwasi Kwarteng shows that this moment in
world history has been echoed many times, from the French
Revolution to both World Wars, right up to the present day, when
our own financial crisis saw many of our great nations slip into
financial trouble. Kwarteng reveals a pattern of war-waging,
financial debt and fluctuations between paper money and the gold
standard, and creates a compelling study of the powerful
relationship that has shaped the world as we know it, that between
war and gold. _______________ 'Searing ... Few stones are left
unlifted in this study, the subtitle of which gives every clue as
to its ambition' - Independent
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.
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Paperback
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R398
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Discovery Miles 3 300
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