Download or read book A History of Britain written by Simon Schama and published by Random House. This book was released on 2003 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume in this history of Britain tells the story of Britain from the time of the earliest settlements discovered in the Orkneys to the death of Queen Elizabeth the First.

Download or read book A History of Britain written by Simon Schama and published by McClelland & Stewart Limited. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon Schama's dramatic, broad-ranging, and immensely readable epic history of Britain reaches its triumphant conclusion in this third and final volume, which stretches from the American Revolution to the present. "The Fate of Empire tells the eventful and exhilarating story of Britain's rise and fall as an imperial power, from the political turmoil of the 1770s to the struggle of present day leaders to find a way to make a different national future. The volume also examines the Romantic generation, the role of women in Victorian England, industrialization, and the liberal empire from Ireland to India, which promised material improvement, but delivered coercion and famine. As in the previous volumes, Schama vividly portrays the lives of extraordinary personalities - Queen Victoria, Churchill, Dickens, and "ordinary" individuals including the author of the first British travel guide, and Elizabeth Anderson, the first woman doctor. Finally, Schama asks an essential question: what kind of Britain can hold together when its island isolation and its imperial dominion have both vanished? An examination of the legacy of the British ideal of freedom is at the heart of this entertaining and well-researched book. With "The Fate of Empire, Simon Schama has proven himself, again, as a masterful writer of narrative history.

Download or read book The Oxford History of the British Empire The nineteenth century written by Andrew N. Porter and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 797 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To China and Latin America, often regarded as central components of a British 'informal empire'.

Download or read book Canada and the British Empire written by Phillip Alfred Buckner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada and the British Empire traces the evolution of Canada, placing it within the wider context of British imperial history. Beginning with a broad chronological narrative, the volume surveys the country's history from the foundation of the first British bases in Canada in the early seventeenth century, until the patriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982. Historians approach the subject thematically, analysing subjects such as British migration to Canada, the role played by gender in the construction of imperial identities, and the economic relationship between Canada and Britain. Other important chapters examine the history of Newfoundland, the history and legacy of imperial law, and the attitudes of French Canadians and Canada's aboriginal peoples to the imperial relationship. The overall focus of the book is on emphasising the part that Canada played in the British Empire, and on understanding the Canadian response towards imperialism. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, it is essential reading for anyone interested either in the history of Canada or in the history of the British Empire.

Download or read book The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume I The Origins of Empire written by William Roger Louis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-26 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume I of The Oxford History of the British Empire explores the origins of empire. It shows how and whyEngland, and later Britain, became involved with transoceanic navigation, trade, and settlement duringthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As late as 1630 involvement with regions beyond the traditional confines of Europe was still tentative; by 1690 it had become a firm commitment. The Origins of Empire explains how commercial and, eventually, territorial expansion brought about fundamental change, not only in the parts of America, Africa, and Asia that came under British influence, but also in domestic society and in Britain's relations with other European powers.The chapters, by leading historians, both illustrate the interconnections between developments in Europe and overseas and offer specialist studies on every part of the world that was substantially affected by British colonial activity. Their analysis also focuses on the ethical issues that were presented by the encounter with peoples previously unknown to Europeans, and on the ways in which the colonists struggled to justify their conduct and activities.Series blurbThe Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recentscholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. From the founding of colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. The Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study allows us to understand the end of Empire in relation to its beginnings, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as therulers, and the significence of the British Empire as a theme in world history.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of the British Empire written by Ernest Alfred Benians and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1940 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ireland and the British Empire written by Kevin Kenny and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Irish history was determined by the rise, expansion, and decline of the British Empire. And British imperial history, from the age of Atlantic expansion to the age of decolonization, was moulded in part by Irish experience. But the nature of Ireland's position in the Empire has always been a matter of contentious dispute. Was Ireland a sister kingdom and equal partner in a larger British state? Or was it, because of its proximity and strategic importance, the Empire's mostsubjugated colony? Contemporaries disagreed strongly on these questions, and historians continue to do so. Questions of this sort can only be answered historically: Ireland's relationship with Britain and the Empire developed and changed over time, as did the Empire itself. This book offers the firstcomprehensive history of the subject from the early modern era through the contemporary period. The contributors seek to specify the nature of Ireland's entanglement with empire over time: from the conquest and colonization of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through the consolidation of Ascendancy rule in the eighteenth, the Act of Union in the period 1801-1921, the emergence of an Irish Free State and Republic, and eventual withdrawal from the British Commonwealth in 1948. They alsoconsider the participation of Irish people in the Empire overseas, as soldiers, administrators, merchants, migrants, and missionaries; the influence of Irish social, administrative, and constitutional precedents in other colonies; and the impact of Irish nationalism and independence on the Empire atlarge. The result is a new interpretation of Irish history in its wider imperial context which is also filled with insights on the origins, expansion, and decline of the British Empire.This book offers the first comprehensive history of Ireland and the British Empire from the early modern era through the contemporary period. The contributors examine each phase of Ireland's entanglement with the Empire, from conquest and colonisation to independence, along with the extensive participation of Irish people in the Empire overseas, and the impact of Irish politics and nationalism on other British colonies. The result is a new interpretation of Irish history in its wider imperialcontext which is also filled with insights on the origins, expansion, and decline of the British Empire.SERIES DESCRIPTIONThe purpose of the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire was to provide a comprehensive study of the Empire from its beginning to end, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. The volumes in the Companion Series carry forward this purpose by exploring themes that were not possible to cover adequately in the main series, and to provide fresh interpretations of significanttopics.

Download or read book The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire written by P. J. Marshall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-08-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up to World War II and beyond, the British ruled over a vast empire. Modern western attitudes towards the imperial past tend either towards nostalgia for British power or revulsion at what seem to be the abuses of that power. The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire adopts neither of these approaches. It aims to create historical understanding about the British empire on the assumption that such understanding is important for any informed appreciation of the modern world. Through striking illustration and a text written by leading experts, this book examines the experience of colonialism in North America, India, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean, as well as the impact of the empire on Britain itself. Emphasis is placed on social and cultural history, including slavery, trade, religion, art, and the movement of ideas. How did the British rule their empire? Who benefited economically from the empire? And who lost?

Download or read book Civil War written by Peter Ackroyd and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into the tumultuous age of Stuart England with Peter Ackroyd's enlightening Civil War. Beginning with James I, the first Scottish king of England, it tracks an era of massive upheaval, ending with the dramatic flight of his grandson, James II, into exile. Civil War transports you to the heart of the 17th-century Britain, where you meet figures like James I with his shrewd perspectives on diverse matters, and Charles I, whose inept rule ignited the flames of the English Civil War. Ackroyd offers a brilliant – warts and all – portrayal of Charles's nemesis Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's great military leader and England's only dictator, who began his career as a political liberator but ended it as much of a despot as the king he executed. Beyond this political turmoil, Ackroyd also explores the rich cultural and literary contributions of the Jacobean era. This was a world where Shakespeare's masterpieces were penned, John Donne weaved his poetry and Thomas Hobbes crafted his philosophical marvel, Leviathan. Most importantly, get a glimpse of the extraordinary lives of common English men and women, their existence seeped in constant disruption and uncertainty. Civil War is a stirring account of a pivotal epoch, making it a must-read for history enthusiasts.

Download or read book Unfinished Empire written by John Darwin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Oxford History of the British Empire The eighteenth century written by Peter James Marshall and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the history of British worldwide expansion from the Glorious Revolution of 1689 to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a crucial phase in the creation of the modern British Empire.

Download or read book A History of Britain written by Simon Schama and published by Jonathan Cape. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'While Britain was losing an empire, it was finding itself...' The compelling opening words to The Fate of the Empire, set the tone and agenda for the final stage of Simon Schama's epic voyage around Britain, her people and her past. Spanning two centuries, crossing the breadth of the empire and covering a vast expanse of topics - from the birth of feminism to the fate of freedom - he explores the forces that shaped British culture and character from 1776 to 2000. The story opens on the eve of a bloody revolution, but not a British one. The French Revolution never quite crossed the Channel, though its spirit of fiery defiance and Romantic idealism did, sparking off a round of radical revolts and reforms that gathered momentum over the coming century - from the Irish Rebellion to the Chartist Petition. The great question of the Victorian century was how the world's first industrial society could come through its growing pains without falling apart in social and political conflict. Would the machine age destroy or strengthen the institutions that held Britain together, from the family to the farm? And if the British Empire helped to make Britain stable and rich, did it live up to its promise to help the ruled as well as the rulers? On the way to answering these questions, The Fate of the Empire makes stops at both celebrations, like the Great Exhibition, and catastrophes, like the Irish potato famine and the Indian Mutiny. Amidst the military and economic shocks and traumas of the 20th century, and through the voices of Churchill, Orwell and H. G. Wells, it asks the question that is still with us - is the immense weight of our history a blessing or a curse, a gift or a millstone around the neck of our future? It is a vast compelling epic, made more so by the lively storytelling and big bold characters at the heart of the action. But alongside flamboyant heroes, like Nelson and Churchill, Schama recalls unsung heroines and virtually unknown enemies. Alongside the grand ideas, he exposes the grand illusions that cost untold lives. Schama looks head on at the facts and asks, 'What went wrong with the liberal dream?' The answers emerge in The Fate of the Empire, which reveals the living ideals of Britain's long history, 'a history that tied together social justice with bloody-minded liberty'.

Download or read book Three Victories and a Defeat written by Brendan Simms and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-12-09 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the eighteenth century, Britain became a world superpower through a series of sensational military strikes. Traditionally, the Royal Navy has been seen as Britain's key weapon, but in Three Victories and a Defeat Brendan Simms argues that Britain's true strength lay with the German aristocrats who ruled it at the time. The House of Hanover superbly managed a complex series of European alliances that enabled Britain to keep the continental balance of power in check while dramatically expanding her own empire. These alliances sustained the nation through the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War. But in 1776, Britain lost the American continent by alienating her European allies. An extraordinary reinterpretation of British and American history, Three Victories and a Defeat is a masterwork by a rising star of the historical profession.

Download or read book The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 written by David Hume and published by . This book was released on 1822 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Empire and history writing in Britain c 1750 2012 written by Joanna de Groot and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging and accessible book examines the effects of British imperial involvements on history writing in Britain since 1750. It provides a chronological account of the development of history writing in its social, political, and cultural contexts, and an analysis of the structural links between those involvements and the dominant concerns of that writing. The author looks at the impact of imperial and global expansion on the treatment of government, of social structures and changes and of national and ethnic identity in scholarly and popular works, in school histories, and in ‘famous’ history books. In a clear and student-friendly way, the book argues that involvement in empire played a transformative and central role within history writing as whole, reframing its basic assumptions and language, and sustaining a significant ‘imperial’ influence across generations of writers and diverse types of historical text.

Download or read book The Ideological Origins of the British Empire written by David Armitage and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ideological Origins of the British Empire presents a comprehensive history of British conceptions of empire for more than half a century. David Armitage traces the emergence of British imperial identity from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, using a full range of manuscript and printed sources. By linking the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland with the history of the British Empire, he demonstrates the importance of ideology as an essential linking between the processes of state-formation and empire-building. This book sheds light on major British political thinkers, from Sir Thomas Smith to David Hume, by providing fascinating accounts of the 'British problem' in the early modern period, of the relationship between Protestantism and empire, of theories of property, liberty and political economy in imperial perspective, and of the imperial contribution to the emergence of British 'identities' in the Atlantic world.

Download or read book Imperial Intimacies written by Hazel V. Carby and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Where are you from?' was the question hounding Hazel Carby as a girl in post-World War II London. One of the so-called brown babies of the Windrush generation, born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, Carby's place in her home, her neighbourhood, and her country of birth was always in doubt. Emerging from this setting, Carby untangles the threads connecting members of her family to each other in a web woven by the British Empire across the Atlantic. We meet Carby's working-class grandmother Beatrice, a seamstress challenged by poverty and disease. In England, she was thrilled by the cosmopolitan fantasies of empire, by cities built with slave-trade profits, and by street peddlers selling fashionable Jamaican delicacies. In Jamaica, we follow the lives of both the 'white Carbys' and the 'black Carbys', as Mary Ivey, a free woman of colour, whose children are fathered by Lilly Carby, a British soldier who arrived in Jamaica in 1789 to be absorbed into the plantation aristocracy. And we discover the hidden stories of Bridget and Nancy, two women owned by Lilly who survived the Middle Passage from Africa to the Caribbean. Moving between the Jamaican plantations, the hills of Devon, the port cities of Bristol, Cardiff, and Kingston, and the working-class estates of South London, Carby's family story is at once an intimate personal history and a sweeping summation of the violent entanglement of two islands. In charting British empire's interweaving of capital and bodies, public language and private feeling, Carby will find herself reckoning with what she can tell, what she can remember, and what she can bear to know.