Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620400391
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.

Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620400391
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book

Book Description
John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.

Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846146712
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
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.

Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846140889
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
The enormous influence of the British Empire cannot be escaped. It has shaped the world in countless ways, repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its existence, expansion, and final collapse could be seen as the single largest determinant of historical events. Now that it has gone, it seems to us baffling that such a strange global system could have once been so powerful. What was the dynamic that led English-speakers to stand on the shores of the Pacific, to control the world's seaways, and create the financial institutions that transformed the global economy? John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable new book is an attempt to make us see anew how diverse, unpredictable and even chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by the weakness of others as by its own strength. Unfinished Empireexplains what allowed the makers of Empire to be so sure of their right to claim North America, New Zealand or the African savannah, to be the greatest slave-traders but the first to abolish the trade, to use astonishing violence against their opponents but also claim to uphold the rule of law. By exploring the varying patterns of conquest, the ferocious rebellions, the urge to convert as well as to rule, the quarrels and conflicts between missionaries, farmers and merchants, and the sudden descent towards the Empire's final collapse, Unfinished Empire presents a surprising, original and often critical account of an extraordinary phenomenon.

Unfinished Revolution

Unfinished Revolution PDF Author: Sam Walter Haynes
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813930685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"This is a clear, incisively written narrative history of American anxiety about British domination---political, military, economic, cultural---from the War of 1812 to the mid-nineteenth century. Unfinished Revolution's predominant thoughtfulness and readable verve across a very extensive canvass should commend it to a wide range of readers as a valuable reconnaissance of what was arguably the most consequential national anxiety faced by the `young republic' during its middle period."---Lawrence Buell, Harvard University --

The Empire Project

The Empire Project PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139482149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
The British Empire, wrote Adam Smith, 'has hitherto been not an empire, but the project of an empire' and John Darwin offers a magisterial global history of the rise and fall of that great imperial project. The British Empire, he argues, was much more than a group of colonies ruled over by a scattering of British expatriates until eventual independence. It was, above all, a global phenomenon. Its power derived rather less from the assertion of imperial authority than from the fusing together of three different kinds of empire: the settler empire of the 'white dominions'; the commercial empire of the City of London; and 'Greater India' which contributed markets, manpower and military muscle. This unprecedented history charts how this intricate imperial web was first strengthened, then weakened and finally severed on the rollercoaster of global economic, political and geostrategic upheaval on which it rode from beginning to end.

Unfinished Empire

Unfinished Empire PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620400383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Tracing the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, this meticulously researched one-volume history of Britain's imperia reveals how the modern world came into being. 25,000 first printing

Unlocking the World

Unlocking the World PDF Author: John Darwin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141992808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
From the acclaimed historian of global empire, the dramatic story of how steam power reshaped our cities and our seas, and forged a new world order Steam power transformed our world, initiating the complex, resource-devouring industrial system the consequences of which we live with today. It revolutionized work and production, but also the ease and cost of movement over land and water. The result was to throw open vast areas of the world to the rampaging expansion of Europeans and Americans on a scale previously unimaginable. Unlocking the World is the captivating history of the great port cities which emerged as the bridgeheads of this new steam-driven economy, reshaping not just the trade and industry of the regions around them but their culture and politics as well. They were the agents of what we now call 'globalization', but their impact and influence, and the reactions they provoked, were far from predictable. Nor were they immune to the great upheavals in world politics across the 'steam century'. This book is global history at its very best. Packed with fascinating case histories (from New Orleans to Montreal, Bombay to Singapore, Calcutta to Shanghai), individual stories and original ideas, Darwin's book allows us, for better or worse, to see the modern age taking shape.

The Empire's New Clothes

The Empire's New Clothes PDF Author: Philip Murphy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190935006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In the wake of Brexit, the Commonwealth has been identified as an important body for future British trade and diplomacy, but few know what it actually does. How is it organized and what has held it together for so long? How important is the Queen's role as Head of the Commonwealth? Most importantly, why has it had such a troubled recent past, and is it realistic to imagine that its fortunes might be reversed?In The Empire's New Clothes,? Murphy strips away the gilded self-image of the Commonwealth to reveal an irrelevant institution afflicted by imperial amnesia. He offers a personal perspective on this complex and poorly understood institution, and asks if it can ever escape from the shadow of the British Empire to become an organization based on shared values, rather than a shared history.

The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945

The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945 PDF Author: Nicholas Doumanis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199695660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673

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Book Description
The period spanning the two World Wars was unquestionably the most catastrophic in Europe's history. Despite such undeniably progressive developments as the radical expansion of women's suffrage and rising health standards, the era was dominated by political violence and chronic instability.Its symbols were Verdun, Guernica, and Auschwitz. By the end of this dark period, tens of millions of Europeans had been killed and more still had been displaced and permanently traumatized. If the nineteenth century gave Europeans cause to regard the future with a sense of optimism, the earlytwentieth century had them anticipating the destruction of civilization.The fact that so many revolutions, regime changes, dictatorships, mass killings, and civil wars took place within such a compressed time frame suggests that Europe experienced a general crisis. Indeed in the early 1940s both Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill referred to a 'thirty years war'.Why did so many crises rage across the continent from 1914 until the end of the Second World War? Why did the winds of destruction affect some regions more than others?The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945 reconsiders the most significant features of this calamitous age from a transnational perspective. It demonstrates the degree to which national experiences were intertwined with those of other nations, and how each crisis was implicated in widerregional, continental, and global developments. Readers will find innovative and stimulating chapters on various political, social, and economic subjects by some of the leading scholars working on modern European history today.

The Unfinished Revolution

The Unfinished Revolution PDF Author: Karen Salt
Publisher: Liverpool Studies in Internati
ISBN: 1786941619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Unfinished Revolution is the first study to gather nineteenth-century representations and performances of Haitian sovereignty in the Atlantic world. In assembling this undiscovered archive of black power, this book offers compelling evidence of the ways that sovereignty and blackness intersect with unstable processes of modernity to produce an articulation of black authority always, already under threat for eradication or ridicule. Undeterred, nineteenth-century Haitian leaders mounted a century's-long battle to situate Haiti at the centre of the Atlantic world.