Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present - Hardcover

Judd, Denis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465019528 ISBN 13: 9780465019526

Publisher: Basic Books, 1997

Synopsis

Analyzes the British imperial experience from the American Revolution to the present day

About this title

Review:

""Empire" stands alone as a survey of the British Empire...it provides an excellent introduction to the British imperial experience in all its complexity, including issues of gender, race, sexuality, and national identity." - Peter Weiler, Professor of History, Boston College
"Denis Judd deserves to be better known in the United States, and this book will make him so. It is a vividly readable history of the rise, spread and fall of British imperium since 1765. Judd tells it all, accurately and without chauvinism." - Walter Nugent, Tackes Professor Emeritus of History, Notre Dame University
"Among the most readable and astute examinations of British imperial history ever written. Its judgement is critical but fair. It is the culmination of a career of research and thinking about the British Empire, and it clearly reflects that both have been thorough. Truly a Magnum Opus." - Robert Cole, Professor of History, Utah State University
"An excellent book...The treatment by Professor Judd cannot be faulted...[he] comes to balanced and sensible conclusions...He also gives an admirable chronology." - "The Times
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"The best general history on the subject now available...always stimulating and absorbing and sometimes an unrivalled tour d'horizon." - "Irish Times
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"An excellent new study...compelling reading. A refreshing willingness to indulge in 'what if' speculations also shows Judd at his revisionist best." - Andrew Roberts, "Sunday Times
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"A superb, immense and very splendid book." - Tony Palmer, BBC Radio 3, Nightwaves
"Wonderfully ambitious...a pungent and attractive survey of the British Empire." - Linda Colley, "London Review of Books
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"Denis Judd has provided a valuable and sometimes innovative synthesis...Each chapter begins with a vivid narrative of a key event... [there is] the skill with which Judd intercuts his narrative with lively and well-balanced summaries of even the most rebarbative current historical debates." - "Times Higher Education Supplement
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"This excellent book...It is one of the merits of Judd's book that he helps to restore the balance between the good and the bad, and the ugly, and in so doing helps us the better to understand the Empire in all its complexity. He brings impressive credentials to his task, the scale of which is enormous...he has wisely opted for a thematic approach. His style is clear and readable. The story of the Empire is not yet over, nor its epitaph written, but this book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of that story thus far." - "Glasgow Herald
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"This book is in many ways the culminating work of Professor Judd's career, bringing together immense erudition, genuine narrative gifts and a capacity to pick out important details from a vast range of materials...Judd's narrative method is highly original." - National Review

Synopsis:

In this impressively researched and always entertaining book, the esteemed British historian Denis Judd analyzes the imperial experience from the American revolution to the present day. He examines the ways in which the British Empire affected both rulers and ruled, and the roles of significant personalitiesfrom Queen Victoria to Nelson Mandela, Cecil Rhodes to Jomo Kenyatta, Joseph Chamberlain to Mahatma GhandiWhat was so special about the special relationship between Britain and the United States? Did the maintenance of the Empire artificially prolong Britains Great Power status? Did it encourage chauvinistic, even racist, attitudes? Were subjects better off under their own elites and leaders than under British rule? In the end, what does the balance sheet of the Empire look like? The British Empire radically altered the modern world. At its height, it governed over a quarter of the human race and encompassed more than a fifth of the globe. As well as providing the British people with profits and a sense of international purpose, the Empire afforded them the opportunity to create new lives for themselves through emigration and settlement.

It supplied jobs at home and overseas, encouraged national aggrandizement, and allowed experiments in social engineering. For those it ruled over, the Empire often represented arbitrary power, gunboat diplomacy, and the disruption of local customs, social structures, and government by a distant and sometimes coldly unsympathetic administration. Yet while the Empire rested ultimately upon military force and direct rule, it also pulsated with idealsideals of freedom, democracy, and even equality. In this impressively researched and always entertaining book, the esteemed British historian Denis Judd analyzes the imperial experience from the American revolution to the present day. He examines the ways in which the British Empire affected both rulers and ruled, and the roles of significant personalitiesfrom Queen Victoria to Nelson Mandela, Cecil Rhodes to Jomo Kenyatta, Joseph Chamberlain to Mahatma GhandiWhat was so special about the special relationship between Britain and the United States? Did the maintenance of the Empire artificially prolong Britains Great Power status? Did it encourage chauvinistic, even racist, attitudes?

Were subjects better off under their own elites and leaders than under British rule? In the end, what does the balance sheet of the Empire look like?The story of Empire is central to Britains national mythology and its sense of place in the world, and essential to an understanding of its changing role as we approach the end of the millennium. Denis Judds fine, magisterial history does full justice to a complex and epic theme.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0465019528
• ISBN 13: 9780465019526
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544