The Global Expansion of Britain

Unfinished Empire

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.

A breadth of perspective few other imperial historians can boast. The British Empire really does look different in the light of it ... Breadth of vision, fizzing ideas and a brilliant style as well as superb scholarship ... It deserves to supplant every other book on this topic, including - though my publisher and bank manager won't thank me for saying this - my own. It is British imperial history at last without hang-ups; the one we've been waiting for

A brilliantly perceptive analysis of the forces and ideas that drove the creation of an extraordinary enterprise ... Bringing together his huge erudition, scrupulous fairness and elegant prose, Mr Darwin has produced a wonderfully stimulating account of something that today seems almost incredibly yet was, in historical terms, only yesterday. It is also a much-needed antidote both to the leftish consensus of the past 50 years that Britain's empire was unrelievedly awful ... and the recent triumphalist revisionism of more conservative historians

Engrossing ... What Darwin adds to this insight is a rare, wonderful capacity for comparison. Empire here is a jigsaw of dreams and anxieties, conquests and loss of faith ... Seeing the imperial experience in the round like this does gives us a clearer, more subtle appreciation of the range of power and violence at play. It raises the historical writing on empire to another level

How incredibly refreshing it is when as distinguished an historian as John Darwin ... writes something as thoughtful, well-researched and persuasive as Unfinished Empire, which explains the half-millennium-long expansion of Britain across the globe in terms that genuinely make sense ... The author's deep familiarity with all the key sources of this vast subject allows him to pluck examples for his arguments from across the centuries and continents ... Best of all ... is the thought that Darwin's book might at long last herald the victory of the post-Marxist phase of imperial historiography, and not a moment too soon

Balanced, original and impressive ... Subtle ... intelligent

Comprehensive ... Darwin's erudition allows him to skirt around the narrow orthodoxies of apologist v critic and provide an insightful account of Britain's unlikely period of global hegemony

John Darwin's interest lies in the history of empires, both their rise and fall.He 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. Most recently he is the author of After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, which won the Wolfson History Prize, and The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970.

The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000

After Tamerlane

John Darwin is a University Lecturer and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is the author of Britain and Decolonization, The End of the British Empire and Britain, Egypt and the Middle East.

Tamerlane, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Nazis. 
 
All built empires they hoped would last forever: all were destined to fail. But, as John Darwin shows in his magnificent book, their empire building created the world we know today. 
 
From the death of Tamerlane in 1405, last of the &lsquo;world conquerors&rsquo;, to the rise and fall of European empires, and from America&rsquo;s growing colonial presence to the resurgence of India and China as global economic powers, After Tamerlane provides a wonderfully intriguing perspective on the past, present and future of empires.

John Darwin

Striking ... The work underlines how the past 50 years' surge of globalisation has built on the previous wave that started nearly 200 years ago ... A compelling picture of the societies that drove steam globalisation.

In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges ... an enjoyable synthesis of a large body of scholarship.

A fine, important and original book ... wonderful.

Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830-1930

Steam power transformed our world. 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.

John Darwin

Praise for Unlocking the World

Striking ... The work underlines how the past 50 years' surge of globalisation has built on the previous wave that started nearly 200 years ago ... A compelling picture of the societies that drove steam globalisa ...

In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges ... an enjoyable synthesis of a large body of scholarship.

A fine, important and original book ... wonderful.

Striking ... The work underlines how the past 50 years' surge of globalisation has built on the previous wave that started nearly 200 years ago ... A compelling picture of the societies that drove steam globalisa ...

In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges ... an enjoyable synthesis of a large body of scholarship.

A fine, important and original book ... wonderful.

Striking ... The work underlines how the past 50 years' surge of globalisation has built on the previous wave that started nearly 200 years ago ... A compelling picture of the societies that drove steam globalisa ...

In the great opening up of the world that is his subject, the port cities were the hinges ... an enjoyable synthesis of a large body of scholarship.

A fine, important and original book ... wonderful.

Books by John Darwin

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