Ten Cities that Made an Empire - Softcover

Tristram Hunt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014104778X ISBN 13: 9780141047782

Publisher: Penguin, 2015

Synopsis

From Tristram Hunt, award-winning author of The Frock-Coated Communist and leading UK politician, Ten Cities that Made an Empire presents a new approach to Britain's imperial past through the cities that epitomised it

Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and the end days of Empire, Britain's colonial past has been the subject of passionate debate. Tristram Hunt goes beyond the now familiar arguments about Empire being good or bad and adopts a fresh approach to Britain's empire and its legacy. Through an exceptional array of first-hand accounts and personal reflections, he portrays the great colonial and imperial cities of Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi, and twentieth-century Liverpool: their architecture, culture, and society balls; the famines, uprisings and repressions which coursed through them; the primitive accumulation and ghostly bureaucracy which ran them; the British supremacists and multicultural trailblazers who inhabited them.

From the pioneers of early America to the builders of modern India, from west to east and back again, Hunt follows the processes of exchange and adaptation that collectively moulded the colonial experience and which in their turn transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles. This vivid and richly detailed imperial story, located in ten of the most important cities which the Empire constructed, demolished, reconstructed and transformed, allows us a new understanding of the British Empire's influence upon the world and the world's influence upon it.

Praise for The Frock-Coated Communist:

'Beautifully written and consistently engaging' - Independent

'An excellent book ... Hunt has a mastery of 19th-century British culture and European political thought' - Robert Service, Sunday Times

'Thoughtful and engaging' - Telegraph Review

About this title

Review:

A grand history of the British empire ... this is a book about ideas, for all that it is rich in architectural description, economic fact and colourful anecdote ... well-written, cleverly constructed and beautifully balanced (James McConnachie Spectator)

A fascinating and readable book (Justin Huggler Independent)

Ingenious and timely ... Hunt skilfully constructs his itinerary to provide a lively and cliché-busting survey of imperial history ... he uses the urban lens to terrific effect (Maya Jasanoff Guardian)

An original and inventive approach to tackling empire ... This is a book which is experienced through the life on the streets, in the buildings and across the physical layout of large urban centres, where jostled men and women of different races and creeds ... readable and engaging ... It is a work of great ambition ... impressive (Kwasi Kwarteng Standpoint)

From the Back Cover:

'In this ingenious, gripping and unorthodox book Tristram Hunt tells the story of the British Empire in a way we have never had it before. Hunt has a talent for the vivid and the specific which is almost novelistic. We learn about the growth, effects and motivations of Empire not through statistics or the story of British legislators, but by being guided on the ground, taken by the hand through the streets of Liverpool and Melbourne, waterfronts from Hong King to Cape Town, and learning the stories of some of the most extraordinary - and often outrageous - people in our history' Andrew Marr

'This eminently readable book tells the story of the expanding British empire through a history of its key cities across the world, providing fresh insights and fascinating details. It ranges from the Americas to India and back to Britain: an exhilarating ride - and important contribution to its subject' C A Bayly

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 014104778X
• ISBN 13: 9780141047782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544