On the eve of the British conquest of India, northern India was rich in marketplaces that served as centers for an extensive and vigorous organization of inland and oceanic trade. Indigenous commercial practice, which the British never fully understood, was based on an intricate network of social, political, and religious relationships. In Empire of Free Trade, Sudipta Sen demonstrates that these marketplaces became the first sites of conflict between the East India Company and the traditional rulers of Bengal (regional representatives of the Mughal empire), as the Company fought to supplant the rulers' authority and "settle" northern Indian centers of trade by establishing powerful customs and police networks. Sen challenges recent histories that portray the Company as a trading corporation drawn unprepared into the exigencies of warfare in order to protect its ability to engage in trade. He demonstrates instead that, from the beginning, the Company attempted to build a strong and intrusive state in India, and that the first decades of colonial rule entailed much more than the preservation of trade. From the beginning the Company attempted, largely by force and subversion, to dismantle and appropriate successful commercial relationships and, with them, the cultural networks on which they were based. Sen argues that the disorganization that resulted from this dismantling helped to prepare the way for the eventual conquest of India.

A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world, in a book lauded as "a rattling good tale" (Wall Street Journal) and "popular history at its best" (Washington Post) The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to global domination ever achieved. The world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. The global spread of capitalism, telecommunications, the English language, and institutions of representative government -- all these can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth. On a vast and vividly colored canvas, Empire shows how the British Empire acted as midwife to modernity. Displaying the originality and rigor that have made Niall Ferguson one of the world's foremost historians, Empire is a dazzling tour de force -- a remarkable reappraisal of the prizes and pitfalls of global empire.

This is the story of free trade in 19th century Britain, its contribution to the development of Britain's democratic culture, and the unravelling of the free trade movement in the wake of the First World War.

For almost two hundred years Britain dominated the world, its naval supremacy enabling it to acquire a vast empire, including India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of Africa. Although it could not prevent its American colonies from becoming independent, its industrial and commercial power helped it to keep its scattered possessions under control, while a small army was sufficient to put down native rebellions in the absence of the involvement of oher Euroean states. A dwindling economy, and the cost of two world wars, saw this once-mighty empire crumble, giving in the process independence to nearly all of its dominions in the years after 1945. Empire is a succinct and highly readable account of this extraordinary rise and fall.