A milestone in the understanding of British history and imperialism, this ground-breaking book radically reinterprets the course of modern economic development and the causes of overseas expansion during the past three centuries. Employing their concept of 'gentlemanly capitalism', the authors draw imperial and domestic British history together to show how the shape of the nation and its economy depended on international and imperial ties, and how these ties were undone to produce the post-colonial world of today. Containing a significantly expanded and updated Foreword and Afterword, this third edition assesses the development of the debate since the book’s original publication, discusses the imperial era in the context of the controversy over globalization, and shows how the study of the age of empires remains relevant to understanding the post-colonial world. Covering the full extent of the British empire from China to South America and taking a broad chronological view from the seventeenth century to post-imperial Britain today, British Imperialism: 1688–2015 is the perfect read for all students of imperial and global history.

What was British imperialism and was it an important element of modern globalization? Were economic, political or military factors paramount in imperial expansion? Do post-colonial theories assist or mislead historians? How have histories of imperialism changed, and are current analyses satisfactory? Robert Johnson's invaluable guide offers a succint, easy-to-follow introduction to the key issues and historiography of British imperialism from its origins to the conversion to the Commonwealth. British Imperialism - Provides concise introductions to key questions and debates - Takes a question-based approach to analysis of the material - Offers an assessment of the significance of economic, military and political factors in imperial expansion and decolonization - Presents critical appraisals of the most recent controversies including neo-colonialism, cultural imperialism, post-colonial theory, and gender and imperialism - Includes a useful guide to further reading Using vivid examples, Johnson clearly explains the nature of British imperialism and enables the reader to understand the causes, course and immediate consequences of the British-colonial encounter on a world-wide scale. His book is an essential starting point for all those new to the subject and a helpful introduction to more recent debates.

A both controversial and comprehensive historical analysis of how the British Empire worked, from Wolfson Prize-winning author and historian John Darwin The British Empire shaped the world in countless ways: repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its own language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its expansion and final collapse were the single largest determinant of historical events, and it remains surrounded by myth, misconception and controversy today. John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable book shows how diverse, contradictory and in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength.

Pax Britannica to Pax Americana is the story of the British Empire from its late-nineteenth century flowering to its present extinction. Louis traces the British Empire from the scramble for Africa, the turbulent imperial history of the Second World War in Asia, and the mid-20th century rush to independence to the Suez crisis, the icon of empire's end. It forms the ideal platform from which to examine the aims and outcome of empire. This authoritative and highly engaging history appears at a time when interest in the history of the British Empire has, ironically, never been stronger, making Ends of British Imperialism a must-read item for both scholar and general reader.

'Where are you from?' was the question hounding Hazel Carby as a girl in post-World War II London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Carby's place in her home, her neighbourhood, and her country of birth was always in doubt. Emerging from this setting, Carby untangles the threads connecting members of her family to each other in a web woven by the British Empire across the Atlantic. We meet Carby's working-class grandmother Beatrice, a seamstress challenged by poverty and disease. In England, she was thrilled by the cosmopolitan fantasies of empire, by cities built with slave-trade profits, and by street peddlers selling fashionable Jamaican delicacies. In Jamaica, we follow the lives of both the 'white Carbys' and the 'black Carbys', as Mary Ivey, a free woman of colour, whose children are fathered by Lilly Carby, a British soldier who arrived in Jamaica in 1789 to be absorbed into the plantation aristocracy. And we discover the hidden stories of Bridget and Nancy, two women owned by Lilly who survived the Middle Passage from Africa to the Caribbean. Moving between the Jamaican plantations, the hills of Devon, the port cities of Bristol, Cardiff, and Kingston, and the working-class estates of South London, Carby's family story is at once an intimate personal history and a sweeping summation of the violent entanglement of two islands. In charting British empire's interweaving of capital and bodies, public language and private feeling, Carby will find herself reckoning with what she can tell, what she can remember, and what she can bear to know.

A milestone in the understanding of British history and imperialism, and truly global in its reach, this magisterial account received numerous accolades from reviewers in its first edition. The first to coin the phrase "gentlemanly capitalism", Cain and Hopkins make the strong and provocative argument that it is impossible to understand the nature and evolution of British imperialism without taking account of the peculiarities of her economic development. In particular, the growth of the financial sector - and above all, the City of London - played a crucial role in shaping the course of British history and Britain's relations overseas. Now with a substantive new introduction and a conclusion, the scope of the original account has been widened to include an innovative discussion of globalization.

While imperial blockbusters fly off the shelves, there is no comprehensive history dedicated to resistance in the 19th and 20th century British Empire. The Trouble with Empire is the first volume to fill this gap, offering a brief but thorough introduction to the nature and consequences of resistance to British imperialism. Historian Antoinette Burton's study spans the 19th and 20th centuries, when discontented subjects of empire made their unhappiness felt from Ireland to Canada to India to Africa to Australasia, in direct response to incursions of military might and imperial capitalism. The Trouble with Empire offers the first thoroughgoing account of what British imperialism looked like from below and of how tenuous its hold on alien populations was throughout its long, unstable life. By taking the long view, moving across a variety of geopolitical sites and spanning the whole of the period 1840-1955, Burton examines the commonalities between different forms of resistance and unveils the structural weaknesses of the British Empire.0.