Imperialism, Great Britain - Polititcs, Government & Law - General, Great Britain - General & Miscellaneous - Politics & Government, Treaties & Alliances - General & Miscellaneous, World History - General & Miscellaneous, British Imperialism & British Emp

The British Empire and Commonwealth: A Short History

Name: The British Empire and Commonwealth: A Short History
Author: Martin Kitchen
ISBN: 9780312163945

by Martin Kitchen

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Overview

From its modest beginnings as marginal scraps of territory in America and the Caribbean to its recent disappearance, the British Empire was an extraordinary and paradoxical entity. North America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australasia and innumerable small islands and territories have been fundamentally shaped - economically, socially and politically - by a nation whose imperial drive came from a bewildering mixture of rapacity and moral zeal, of high-mindedness and viciousness, of strategic cunning and feckless neglect. The relative indifference and ease with which Britain finally divested itself of Empire in the 1950s, when compared to the ferocity and enterprise shown in its acquisition over the previous four centuries, suggests a quite baffling sea-change in the British psyche. Martin Kitchen has written a fascinating, crisp, informative account of the rise and fall of the British Empire, concentrating on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but giving the background of the 'First British Empire', which was lost with the creation of the United States of America. His book is of particular value in relating the importance of the Empire to Britain's success both as the only genuine world power in the Victorian era and as a victor in the two great wars of the twentieth century.