Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World
Kwasi Kwarteng
Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World
The British Empire was the creation of a tremendous outpouring of energy and opportunism, when the British were at their most self-confident, and the wealth they gathered was prodigious. At its heart lay a sense of the rectitude of the British way of life, meted out to vast swathes of the rest of the world without let or hindrance. Yet, as this book argues, the empire was not formed by coherent policy, and its decline reflected this: its later years were characterised by a series of accidental oversights, decisions taken without due consideration for the consequences, and uncertain pragmatism. Kwasi Kwarteng believes the problems the empire encountered have still not been resolved and shows how in Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong new difficulties have arisen which continue to baffle politicians and diplomats.
3.0 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Society, Politics & Philosophy |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
480 |
| RRP |
£25.00 |
| Date of Publication |
August 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0747599418 |
| Publisher |
Bloomsbury |
| |
The British Empire was the creation of a tremendous outpouring of energy and opportunism, when the British were at their most self-confident, and the wealth they gathered was prodigious. At its heart lay a sense of the rectitude of the British way of life, meted out to vast swathes of the rest of the world without let or hindrance. Yet, as this book argues, the empire was not formed by coherent policy, and its decline reflected this: its later years were characterised by a series of accidental oversights, decisions taken without due consideration for the consequences, and uncertain pragmatism. Kwasi Kwarteng believes the problems the empire encountered have still not been resolved and shows how in Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong new difficulties have arisen which continue to baffle politicians and diplomats.
Reviews
The Independent
Sholto Byrnes
“[An] amusing and mostly well-written tour d'horizon through six former colonies … Kwarteng displays an encyclopaedic knowledge of the public schools that he argues did so much to build the empire. They are both the heroes and the villains of this story, as Kwarteng clearly admires the character of their products but thinks that their self-confident individualism led them to take too many decisions without reference to the centre; the results of which are the messy legacies of empire that he details in his book.”
14/08/2011
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The Observer
Tristram Hunt
“Compelling and important … But there is little in Kwarteng's imperial past to inform the present. It is Tory history as it should be — glistening prose, urgent narrative, class-ridden and relentlessly, refreshingly pessimistic.”
14/08/2011
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The Sunday Telegraph
George Walden
“... the style is neither tiresomely polemical nor drily academic. While lamenting the consequences of our preference for “character” over policy, Kwarteng has produced a highly readable book, not least because of its cast of wilful, perverse or semi-crazed figures who exercised power without responsibility in the build-up and downfall of empire ... The reaction of his political colleagues will be interesting.”
31/07/2011
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The Sunday Times
Dominic Sandbrook
“Well researched and crisply written, Kwarteng’s book is a lot better than most MPs’ efforts. Its obvious weakness is that his six examples (Iraq, Kashmir, Burma, Sudan, Nigeria and Hong Kong) seem to have been picked precisely to illustrate his case ... Still, Kwarteng’s emphasis on the spasmodic, inconsistent and individualistic nature of imperial rule makes a refreshing change from the flow of popular books maintaining that British imperialists were either blood-crazed villains or saintly liberals.”
14/08/2011
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The Independent
Stephen Howe
“Kwarteng's book received largely positive attention when it appeared. It is indeed being absurdly overpraised by reviewers who have failed to note either how unoriginal are its arguments — its central thesis about empire's hierarchical, aristocratic character is taken from David Cannadine's 2001 book Ornamentalism — or how liberally its pages are spattered with small but annoying errors. Kwarteng holds a Cambridge PhD in history. He definitely should, indeed does, know better than this. His Cambridge thesis was on the rather more arcane topic of England's 1690s Recoinage Crisis: perhaps he should have stuck to that.”
14/10/2011
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