This volume adopts a distinctive thematic approach to the history of British imperialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, bringing together leading scholars representing an unusually wide range of historical approaches to the British Empire.
The contributors tackle the core themes in the history of the British Empire, including economics, religion, ideology, migration, the state, foundations of empire, decolonization, colonial knowledge, and imperial culture and identities. The essays trace the trajectory of their subject and explore how current understandings of issues have developed, examining key debates among historians.
The British Empire is essential reading for all students and scholars of imperial and colonial history.
Contributors: Tony Ballantyne, John Darwin, Andrew Dilley, Elizabeth Elbourne, Kent Fedorowich, Eliga Gould, Catherine Hall, Stephen Howe, Sarah Stockwell, Andrew Thompson, Stuart Ward, and Jon Wilson.

Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech, delivered to the South African parliament in Cape Town at the end of a landmark six-week African tour, presaged the end of the British Empire in Africa. This book, the first to focus on Macmillan's 'Wind of Change', comprises a series of essays by leading historians in the field. Contributors reconsider the significance of the speech within the politics of different overseas and British constituencies, including in the wider British World. Some contributors engage directly with the speech itself - its metropolitan political context, production, delivery and reception. Others consider related themes in the historiography of the end of empire. Together they challenge established orthodoxies and offer fresh perspectives that require us to revisit our understanding of the place of the speech, and the policies to which it referred, in the wider history of British decolonization.

Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech, delivered to the South African parliament in Cape Town at the end of a landmark six-week African tour, presaged the end of the British Empire in Africa. This book, the first to focus on Macmillan's 'Wind of Change', comprises a series of essays by leading historians in the field.

This volume adopts a distinctive thematic approach to the history of British imperialism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, bringing together leading scholars representing an unusually wide range of historical approaches to the British Empire.
The contributors tackle the core themes in the history of the British Empire, including economics, religion, ideology, migration, the state, foundations of empire, decolonization, colonial knowledge, and imperial culture and identities. The essays trace the trajectory of their subject and explore how current understandings of issues have developed, examining key debates among historians.
The British Empire is essential reading for all students and scholars of imperial and colonial history.
Contributors: Tony Ballantyne, John Darwin, Andrew Dilley, Elizabeth Elbourne, Kent Fedorowich, Eliga Gould, Catherine Hall, Stephen Howe, Sarah Stockwell, Andrew Thompson, Stuart Ward, and Jon Wilson.