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Ahh where do I start...

I think a good way to start this with a caveat - since I grew up and continue to live in the Middle East I have a strong, inherent dislike for the British Empire and everything it stands for - so when I saw such a book I though 'great, let me see the other point and the argument for and against it'.

Now in hindsight, perhaps I should have paid a closer attention solely based on the title 'Making The Modern World' - no arguments there, I am writing in English and lots of countries I have association with were shaped almost entirely due to British Empire actions, so shaping they did. However, it also hints to the real 'outcome' the author wishes to reach to - and that is it WAS a good thing.

Unfortunately, I am not neither qualified nor have sufficient energy to write a whole essay on why I disliked this book - but to put it simply it felt like 80-90% of the time the author was romanticizing (even fetishistic) about how AMAZING the British Empire was (and I won't be surprised, how awful it was that it collapsed). Oh, who cares that we subjugated the entire Caribbean Islands and literally popularized the slavery trade - we did end it later. Oh, wasn't it so lovely when we were exploring Africa and taking each country after another, and the amazing expeditions across the Zambezi river - that is not possible now! Oh, yes yes we massacred a lot of Indians and Sudanese when they dared revolt to our rule - but LOOK, look what Japanese and the Nazis did during WW2 - isn't it better to be killed by us instead?

If you have to dig so deep down the barrel to make justification to glorify the Empire by comparing it favorably to Nazis and Imperial Japanese war-crimes, then I really can't trust your research and arguments when reading your book!

This becomes evident when the author also starts quoting Tony Fucking Blair on how Western Civilization should spread its model around the World - this is before the war on Iraq and subsequent - and subsequent news about the author shows his ideology (I did not read much about him but the most recent being him targeting students in a university he teaches in because he doesn't like their politics) - this is a guy who would pushing for expansion of Empire rule if he was in pre-WW1 Britain and likely the first buyer of shares in the in the East India Company.

I would definitely not recommend this book, nor do I take it as a subjective book to read on the topic (keep in mind my caveat though - I am biased too myself and I hope this is not an example of a confirmation bias).

A lovely quotes from the book:
"The end of empire is portrayed as a victory for freedom fighters who took up arms from Dublin to New Delhi to rid their peoples of the yoke of Colonial rule - this is misleading, throughout the 20th century the principal threats and the most plausible alternatives to British rule were not national independence movements but other empires. These alternative empires were significantly harsher in their treatment of subject peoples than Britain"