Unfinished Empire The Global Expansion Of Britain John Darwin by John Darwin 9781846140891, 1846140897 instant download after payment.

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.

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"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."--"Economist

""Engrossing ... What Darwin adds to this [subject] is a rare, wonderful capacity for comparison .... It raises the historical writing on empire to another level."--"BBC History Magazine

""Balanced, original and impressive ... Subtle ... intelligent."--"Literary Review" (UK)

"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."--"Sunday Times "(UK)

"A breadth of perspective few other imperial historians can boast ... Breadth of vision, fizzing ideas and a brilliant style as well as superb scholarship ... It deserves to supplant every other book on this topic."--"History Today" (UK) "A sweeping, nondogmatic study of the gradual and not always secure development of the British Empire.... The author does an excellent job delineating the remarkable British rule in India.... An evenhanded, erudite book that finds the work of empire building more nuanced than catastrophic.""--Kirkus Reviews"

"John Darwin has crafted a brilliant historical account of what the British empire was, stripped of the ideological fog that usually clouds the subject, and how we still live in its shadow."--Timothy Brook, author of "Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World