An Empire on Trial

An Empire on Trial
Author: Martin J. Wiener
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2008-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139473441

An Empire on Trial is the first book to explore the issue of interracial homicide in the British Empire during its height – examining these incidents and the prosecution of such cases in each of seven colonies scattered throughout the world. It uncovers and analyzes the tensions of empire that underlay British rule and delves into how the problem of maintaining a liberal empire manifested itself in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work demonstrates the importance of the processes of criminal justice to the history of the empire and the advantage of a trans-territorial approach to understanding the complexities and nuances of its workings. An Empire on Trial is of interest to those concerned with race, empire, or criminal justice, and to historians of modern Britain or of colonial Australia, India, Kenya, or the Caribbean. Political and post-colonial theorists writing on liberalism and empire, or race and empire, will also find this book invaluable.

Difference and Disease

Difference and Disease
Author: Suman Seth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2018-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108418309

Suman Seth reveals how histories of medicine, empire, race and slavery intertwined in the eighteenth-century British Empire.

Inglorious Empire

Inglorious Empire
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780141987149

Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

Britain's Gulag

Britain's Gulag
Author: Caroline Elkins
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2023-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1448162734

Only a few years after Britain defeated fascism came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million and to portray them as sub-human savages. Detainees in their thousands - possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. For decades these events remained untold. Caroline Elkins conducted years of research to piece together this story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors. Britain's Gulag reveals, for the first time, the full savagery of the Mau Mau war and the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to control its empire.

Imperial Reckoning

Imperial Reckoning
Author: Caroline Elkins
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1429900296

A major work of history that for the first time reveals the violence and terror at the heart of Britain's civilizing mission in Kenya As part of the Allied forces, thousands of Kenyans fought alongside the British in World War II. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler, the British colonial government detained nearly the entire population of Kenya's largest ethnic minority, the Kikuyu-some one and a half million people. The compelling story of the system of prisons and work camps where thousands met their deaths has remained largely untold-the victim of a determined effort by the British to destroy all official records of their attempts to stop the Mau Mau uprising, the Kikuyu people's ultimately successful bid for Kenyan independence. Caroline Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard University, spent a decade in London, Nairobi, and the Kenyan countryside interviewing hundreds of Kikuyu men and women who survived the British camps, as well as the British and African loyalists who detained them. The result is an unforgettable account of the unraveling of the British colonial empire in Kenya-a pivotal moment in twentieth- century history with chilling parallels to America's own imperial project. Imperial Reckoning is the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

Empire of Guns

Empire of Guns
Author: Priya Satia
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0735221871

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as inextricable from the gun trade "A fascinating and important glimpse into how violence fueled the industrial revolution, Priya Satia's book stuns with deep scholarship and sparkling prose."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies We have long understood the Industrial Revolution as a triumphant story of innovation and technology. Empire of Guns, a rich and ambitious new book by award-winning historian Priya Satia, upends this conventional wisdom by placing war and Britain's prosperous gun trade at the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the state's imperial expansion. Satia brings to life this bustling industrial society with the story of a scandal: Samuel Galton of Birmingham, one of Britain's most prominent gunmakers, has been condemned by his fellow Quakers, who argue that his profession violates the society's pacifist principles. In his fervent self-defense, Galton argues that the state's heavy reliance on industry for all of its war needs means that every member of the British industrial economy is implicated in Britain's near-constant state of war. Empire of Guns uses the story of Galton and the gun trade, from Birmingham to the outermost edges of the British empire, to illuminate the nation's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the state's role in economic development, and the origins of our era's debates about gun control and the "military-industrial complex" -- that thorny partnership of government, the economy, and the military. Through Satia's eyes, we acquire a radically new understanding of this critical historical moment and all that followed from it. Sweeping in its scope and entirely original in its approach, Empire of Guns is a masterful new work of history -- a rigorous historical argument with a human story at its heart.

An Era of Darkness

An Era of Darkness
Author: Shashi Tharoor
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789383064656

A few years later, the young and weakened Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, was browbeaten into issuing an edict that replaced his own revenue officials with the Company s representatives. Over the next several decades, the East India Company, backed by the British government, extended its control over most of India

Amritsar 1919

Amritsar 1919
Author: Kim A. Wagner
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300245467

“Chronicles the run up to Jallianwala Bagh with spellbinding . . . focus. . . . Mr. Wagner’s achievement is one of balance . . . and, above, all, of perspective.” (The Wall Street Journal) The Amritsar Massacre of 1919 was a seminal moment in the history of the British Empire, yet it remains poorly understood. In this dramatic account, Kim A. Wagner details the perspectives of ordinary people and argues that General Dyer’s order to open fire at Jallianwalla Bagh was an act of fear. Situating the massacre within the “deep” context of British colonial mentality and the local dynamics of Indian nationalism, Wagner provides a genuinely nuanced approach to the bloody history of the British Empire. “Mr Wagner argues his case fluently and rigorously in this excellent book.” —The Economist “Written with a humane commitment to the truth that will impress.” —The Times “Skillfully maps a tale of growing tensions, precipitate action, and troubled aftermath.” —The Telegraph “A compelling account” —Financial Times “Wagner's postmortem of an imperial disaster should be widely read.” —R.A. Callahan, emeritus, Choice “The fullest, and by far the most authoritative, account of the causes and course of the Jallianwala massacre in any language.” —Nigel Collett, author of The Butcher of Amritsar “Mining a variety of sources – diaries, memoirs and court testimonies—[Wagner] uncovers fresh perspectives and examines the relation between colonial panic and state brutality with sophistication, sincerity and style.” —Santanu Das, author of India, Empire, and First World War Culture “Analytically sharp but gripping to read, the book is a page-turner”—Barbara D. Metcalf, co-author of A Concise History of India “An important book.” –Yasmin Khan, author of The Partition

Animalia

Animalia
Author: Antoinette Burton
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2020-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1478012811

From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to Animalia analyze twenty-six animals—domestic, feral, predatory, and mythical—whose relationship to imperial authorities and settler colonists reveals how the presumed racial supremacy of Europeans underwrote the history of Western imperialism. Victorian imperial authorities, adventurers, and colonists used animals as companions, military transportation, agricultural laborers, food sources, and status symbols. They also overhunted and destroyed ecosystems, laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as climate change. At the same time, animals such as lions, tigers, and mosquitoes interfered in the empire's racial, gendered, and political aspirations by challenging the imperial project’s sense of inevitability. Unconventional and innovative in form and approach, Animalia invites new ways to consider the consequences of imperial power by demonstrating how the politics of empire—in its racial, gendered, and sexualized forms—played out in multispecies relations across jurisdictions under British imperial control. Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Peter Hansen, Isabel Hofmeyr, Anna Jacobs, Daniel Heath Justice, Dane Kennedy, Jagjeet Lally, Krista Maglen, Amy E. Martin, Renisa Mawani, Heidi J. Nast, Michael A. Osborne, Harriet Ritvo, George Robb, Jonathan Saha, Sandra Swart, Angela Thompsell

God's Executioner

God's Executioner
Author: Micheál Ó Siochrú
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780571241217

In a century of unrelenting, bloody warfare and religious persecution in Europe, Cromwell was, in many ways, a product of his times. As commander-in-chief of the army in Ireland, however, the responsibilities for the excesses of the military must be laid firmly at his door, while the harsh nature of the post-war settlement also bears his imprint.