Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain
Ebook
Overview
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.
Brilliant new history of Britain’s empire and how it really came to rise and fall, from the author of the “astonishingly comprehensive, arrestingly fresh and vivid” After Tamerlane
GOURMET HISTORY: John Darwin is a preeminent scholar of the British Empire, but he is also a gifted narrative history. Unfinished Empire carries the same trademark blend of deeply informed analysis with concise, revealing narrative.
SUN NEVER SETS: The long, storied history of Britain and her overseas colonies is an evergreen favorite among history readers, and Darwin does full justice to the epic, cinematic story of British empire.
FAIRHANDED: Darwin gracefully accounts for sensitivities on both sides of the story, colonizers and colonized, in his saga of empire.
The depth of Darwin’s learning is impressive…[his] tone throughout is admirably detached and scholarly, though his dry wit keeps it well away from being boring…[a] sharp, thoughtful, enjoyable and levelheaded book.
Mr. Darwin’s informative and intelligent book is ably written, and it is brimming with interesting statistics and acute observations.
[A] remarkable history of the empire…. immensely important and useful. As an Englishman, Darwin declines to be either boastful or self-lacerating about the empire his country presided over, but simply examines it with a clear eye. This he has achieved to a laudable and indeed remarkable degree.
Undoubtedly a great work, a book that goes truly global in chronicling the history of one of our abiding concerns: the pull and limitations of absolute power. It forces the reader to rethink commonly held assumptions about our collective past. For that alone, it should be read.
In this marvellously illuminating book, John Darwin accepts much but not all of the revisionist analysis. With an awesome grasp of global history, he demonstrates that the continental peninsula of Europe was peripheral for most of the time since the 14th-century conquests of Tamerlane...Darwin sustains an intricate thesis with enormous panache.
A work of massive erudition, After Tamerlane overturns smug Eurocentric teleologies to present a compelling new perspective on international history. Though the subject of empire stirs partisan passions these days, Darwin exudes fairmindedness...Big topics demand big treatments, yet few are brave or knowledgeable enough to hazard them. Darwin has provided an ambitious, monumental and convincing reminder that empires are the rule, not the exception, in world history.
Clever analysis, poignant argument, accessibility of the text, and inviting prose make this work a must read for those interested in the British Empire. Summing Up: Essential.
- Title: Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain
- Author: John Darwin
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 416
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781620400395, 9781620400388, 1620400383, 1620400391
- Resource ID: LLS:9781620400395
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T15:20:41Z
John Darwin has written extensively on the decline of Britain's empire and teaches imperial and global history at Oxford, where he is a Fellow of Nuffield College. His books include After Tamerlane, Britain and Decolonization, and The Empire Project.