[3.5] If you are actively interested in the British Empire and current historical approaches to it, this is as good a place as any to start, and it contains a lot of useful information. But if you aren't especially keen on the topic in the first place, the broad, generalised overview of events in the central chapters, with too few specific examples and anecdotes, seems unlikely to spark overwhelming enthusiasm. For something more lively also involving British historians, you could listen to the several In Our Time episodes about empire and its legacy.
I read this book in two halves, more than six months apart. During the first half, it was serving as my introduction to some aspects of the topic; when I read the rest of it today (including restarting chapter 4), there was very little which I hadn't heard before. It is not one of those VSI books that takes an interestingly unconventional approach, and that still has plenty to offer the non-beginner, but it is a useful refresher due to its fairly comprehensive coverage. Nor does it neglect the cultural aspects of imperialism, whether in Britain or its effects on people in colonised areas, for example quoting Nelson Mandela: "The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, and British institutions were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture."
The coverage of concepts of empire, both the British Empire and empires in general, in the early chapters, is useful, and introduces ideas that readers new to the subject probably won't have picked up elsewhere, such as classifications of different types of dominions, and the range and percentage of global natural resources in the pre-WWII empire, things more systematically understandable in writing than in a documentary voiceover,
During the 'Rise and Fall' chapter (4), the potted history of events, I craved interesting details, and in their absence found myself understanding why, when I was younger, I considered most history between 1603-1945 (with the possible exception of the English Civil War) to be dull, and ignored it when I could. The chapter's most interesting points were IMO: starting British Imperial history with English medieval incursions to Wales and Ireland; the reminder that Pax Britannica meant peace between the great powers (it's always said these days anyway that it was obviously not peace for those living in colonised areas); the Crimean War as an imperial war, trying to stop Russia gaining a foothold in the Mediterranean, and part of the fighting over the lands of the declining Ottoman Empire (because of Florence Nightingale, the Crimean War has remained famous in Britain among those who were not taught imperial history at school in the 1980s and 90s, with its wider context often unclear - and 19th century Russia is too little thought of as an imperial power because its conquests were contiguous); and the post-WWII idea of Portugal as a particularly backward colonial power, meaning that not being like the Portuguese government was among Britain's many motivations for withdrawing from its colonies in such a hurry in the late 1940s, 50s and 1960s.
I enjoyed the historiography chapter a lot more, because, well, historiography. And also more detail. (Beginners without an academic history background may be less keen of course.) It barely touches on the work of some major historians, but in a general introduction for the public and other beginners, it probably is fair to mention the likes of Niall Ferguson and Linda Colley several times, as they feature in the British media more often than many academic big names - although so does Catherine Hall, who only gets one mention. It could say more about history written outside the UK, although as this book was published in 2013, it pre-dates the splash made by Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire.
The final chapter addresses a thorny question which, as Jackson says, many academics would rather ignore, but one which does interest the public: was the legacy of empire good or bad overall? It's an accomplished piece of writing, addressing many aspects on either side, essentially finding them indivisible, but leaning mildly towards an assertion that the bad aspects should not be forgotten. It's a position which is less radical than plenty of contemporary historians, but which might also be considered too radical and overly PC by staunch fans of Niall Ferguson and other conservatives. It is predicated on norms such as global trade and technological developments being broadly good for humanity - so anti-capitalists may find some aspects do not meet their expectations - and it does not explore the environmental impact of empire on non-human nature (by no means a settled question; for instance Amitav Ghosh suggested in The Great Derangement that it may have even slowed environmental damage and pollution by restricting the development of industry on the Indian subcontinent in the 19th century). It shows how the international world system still uses many concepts originating in 18th-19th century European empires, and very briefly touches on the pervasiveness of the imperial legacy via the popularity of sugar, cotton and chocolate, the question of whether empires may be better for religious freedom and some minorities than nation states (c.f. Romans, Ottomans) and the new colonialism of China via soft power and the purchase of land in Africa and other locations - interesting subjects covered in more depth in other publications. However, its pitch, and its determination to show both sides of the argument seems ideal for a varied general audience, which of course will not only be white British readers and conservative anglophiles, but people with ancestry from colonised areas, and a global readership including countries such as India.
(finished Nov 2018, reviewed Nov 2018. The review on Goodreads.)
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