It's an incredibly impressive achievement to write a history about something as complex as imperialism so concisely, accessibly and punchily. Starting with the personal (the impact of the empire on Ferguson's family), it challenges contemporary myths, provides a coherent and believable account of the motive forces and behaviours of the British as imperialists and ends with a thought provoking and challenging section on the new American 'imperialism'. British people (or at least British liberals) have, over the last twenty or thirty years, simply felt a mix of guilt, embarrassment and incomprehension of our imperial past - this book provides a bracingly different perspective - not an apologist's one, but one that is more nuanced.

A very readable history of the British Empire's formation, life, and end. It makes a good case that, despite the incompetence and atrocities, the Empire did achieve many good outcomes not only the obvious such as fighting slavery and defeating Fascism, but also in economic terms for both UK and Colonial peoples. He presents (surprising to me) statistics showing the vast movements of labour, capital, and goods within the Empire and also how per-capita income has fallen in many former Colonies since independence.

The book is necessarily high-level and broad-brushed in its coverage. Despite this it contains quite interesting points of detail. One which was new to me was the role of Australia (and then PM Billie Hughes in particular) in forcing crushing reparations on Germany post World War I. The line I had always been taught was that this was entirely due to the French! A surprising claim that I will have to look into in more detail.

Overall a good read, with some different takes on an old subject. ( )

Deconstructing Anglobalization

There are plenty of reviews so I will keep this one brief. I picked up this book in preparation for a course I will be taking this upcoming semester. As others have pointed out, "Empire" is by no means an exhaustive examination of the British Empire but Niall Ferguson articulates his points very well in this textbook styled survey book.

I think that most people who object to the book with respect to Ferguson's perceived apologia towards colonialism misunderstand his central argument. Ferguson is not making any moral judgments. He is not saying that the ends justify the means, or sometimes we have to engage in evil to do good. Ferguson's central thesis is about modernity and colonization's role in shaping the modernizing forces of liberalism, capitalism, and democracy throughout the world. Ferguson does not mince words when describes the brutality in how these objectives were achieved, the racial oppression, and fundamentally flawed ideologies.

Ferguson defines 'anglobalization' as the first wave globalization pushed forward by the British who he rightly identifies as imitators, as it was the Spanish, Dutch, and French who all had empires much earlier than the British. Ultimately, Ferguson concludes that it was the monopoly on the use of violence which allowed the British to conquer so many people, and their use of 'indirect rule' to administer its vast empire on the cheap.

What I like most about the book is Ferguson's writing and the widespread use of illustrations. Ferguson isn't too academic, and writes very succinctly, though he does throw in the over-simplified sentence every now and again.

Overall, I highly recommend this book as a mostly economic history of the British Empire. Certainly a good companion for any undergrad course in British history. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/160170.htm...

Ferguson's critics are not entirely fair. He is brutally honest about the downside of the British Empire - the nineteenth-century famines of Bengal and Ireland; the Amritsar massacre; the cynical parceling up of ancient African states; the South African concentration camps; the massive death rate among African slaves in the Caribbean. But he also argues that the Empire brought to the British a sense of engagement with the world which (he believes, and I think he's right) contemporary American lacks. More controversially, he argues that the countries ruled by the British on the whole ended up better off than they would have been if ruled by other empires or if left to their own devices. He doesn't really produce enough quantitative data on this point to satisfy me, though it's fairly clear that he has a case.

Some very interesting snippets: that in fact the Boston Tea Party was a reaction by smugglers to the reduction of the tea tax, which made their business much less profitable, and that the American colonists of the time were probably better off on average than the residents of Britain. His statistics on the large numbers of Scots and Irish, in comparison with the numbers of English, who participated in the activities of Empire. His somewhat cynical line on nineteenth-century moral panics over slavery, suttee, and the powers of native judges. All in all a very stimulating read. ( )

Pungent, revisionist and largely convincing. ( )