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Palmyrah's Reviews > Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
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Earlier this year, I read (and reviewed on this site) a nasty piece of work called The Decline and Fall of the British Empire by Piers Brendon. Like the present volume, it was a history of the British empire. Unlike the present volume, it was a determined hatchet job, in which all the crimes, follies and failures of British imperialism were noted at great length, while its achievements were ignored or decried. Jonathan Rashid, whose review of Empire appears just below mine on this page, would probably love it.
Niall Ferguson’s Empire (subtitled ‘How Britain Made the Modern World�) is a more nuanced piece of work. He begins it by declaring his own relatively sympathetic position but goes on to give an extraordinarily well-balanced account of the course of empire. His starting-point is earlier than Brendon’s; he identifies Sir Henry Morgan’s adventures in the Caribbean as the beginning of Britain’s imperial project. Commencing there, he takes the reader on a thematic tour of imperial history, overflying great swathes of territory at high altitude but landing at key points along the way. This isn’t a traditional history, detailed and larded with quotes from sources; the subtitle really is the point.
Ferguson neglects none of the eyesores of British history, nor does he try to daub whitewash on the dark side of the empire. He does, however, make a strong case that the modern world would have been a much nastier place without the Empire � both in imperial times and in post-imperial ones. His last chapter sums up the case for the defence, and it is a strong one. The world is not, and has never been, a nice place; but without the British empire (no nice thing in itself) it would be a much nastier one.
Niall Ferguson’s Empire (subtitled ‘How Britain Made the Modern World�) is a more nuanced piece of work. He begins it by declaring his own relatively sympathetic position but goes on to give an extraordinarily well-balanced account of the course of empire. His starting-point is earlier than Brendon’s; he identifies Sir Henry Morgan’s adventures in the Caribbean as the beginning of Britain’s imperial project. Commencing there, he takes the reader on a thematic tour of imperial history, overflying great swathes of territory at high altitude but landing at key points along the way. This isn’t a traditional history, detailed and larded with quotes from sources; the subtitle really is the point.
Ferguson neglects none of the eyesores of British history, nor does he try to daub whitewash on the dark side of the empire. He does, however, make a strong case that the modern world would have been a much nastier place without the Empire � both in imperial times and in post-imperial ones. His last chapter sums up the case for the defence, and it is a strong one. The world is not, and has never been, a nice place; but without the British empire (no nice thing in itself) it would be a much nastier one.
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Started Reading
December 1, 2011
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Finished Reading
December 20, 2011
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'As a British Citizen seeing how we drew the lines on the maps creating state boundaries, creating systems of ethnic differentiation, structures for the exploitation of resources and a military/police systems to repress dissent and considering the differences in the development of the states dominated by settlers and those which were not the existence and legacy of the Empire looks problematic.'Well, that's one way of looking at it, Jan-Maat. I'm not British; I'm from a former British colony, Sri Lanka. Knowing the pre-colonial history of my own country � and that of India, too � I find it very hard to feel that the Empire was a Bad Thing. Yes, it did a lot of harm, too, but people were better off under it than they had been, previously, under their own rulers. Places like Singapore and Hong Kong vividly demonstrate this; they saw massive influxes of migrants from China � people who preferred living under British rule than that of their compatriots.
I wouldn't say a bad thing, but definitely complex and problematic. I mean it is rather unsurprising that Hong Kong was a magnet for migrants given that East India company/British policies where undermining chinese sovereignty as well as contributing to rising disorder and social breakdown, the colony must have appeared a rare island of safety and security.
A work that concludes that the world would have been a worse place without the British Empire seems a fairly frightening one to me. As a British Citizen seeing how we drew the lines on the maps creating state boundaries, creating systems of ethnic differentiation, structures for the exploitation of resources and a military/police systems to repress dissent and considering the differences in the development of the states dominated by settlers and those which were not the existence and legacy of the Empire looks problematic.
But at least it helped enrich a class of stockbrokers and money-men living in the bacon-belt around London :).
And we left the fine legacy of English law, slow and too expensive for most citizens to achieve redress without state subsidy.
At least we weren't as consistently bad as the Belgians in the Congo though...
Mind you if the story of the British Empire explains the making of the modern world then that could be seen as an adequate explanation for many of the structural problems and developmental inequities that we see today ;)