Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

A book that doesn’t spare the British Empire as regards cruelty, atrocity and humbug. ” The native Americans were tolerated when they were able to fit in to the emerging British economic order … but where [they] claimed ownership of agriculturally valuable land, coexistence was simply ruled out. If the Indians resisted expropriation, then they could and should (in Locke’s words) ‘be destroyed as a Lyon or a Tyger, one of those wild Savage Beasts, with whom men can have no Society or Security’ ” (p. 65). Locke? Not the great philosopher? Yes, the very same and at the time (c.1630) acting as ‘Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of North Carolina’ (ie., as ‘Secretary to the Imperial Gang of Murderers and Land show more Grabbers’).

Even when one is well acquainted with the rape and pillage associated with empire-building, the histories retailed by this book (‘Empire’, by Niall Ferguson) will be disturbing. Details of what was done to the ‘other’ Indians when they revolted in 1857 are sickening to read. A Lieutenant Kendal Coghill is quoted as saying ‘We burnt every village and hanged all the villagers who had treated our fugitives badly until every tree was covered with scoundrels hanging from every branch’ (p.152). Fergusan adds: ‘At the height of the reprisals, one huge banyan tree — which still stands in Cawnpore — was festooned with 150 corpses’.

Of course all this murdering was hard work. Thankfully the invention of the Maxim gun made things easier later on in the century, not to mention the much later blessing of ’government from the air’, whereby you warned people if they didn’t do as they were told they could expect to be bombed out of existence next day.

And is there nothing at all to be said FOR the British Empire? As an Englishman, Niall Ferguson tries his best. Look at what the Japanese did to the poor people of Nanking in 1937, he says. Appalling cruelty (and he is so right). Now, if one had to live under and empire, he asks, wasn’t it better to live under a British Empire, rather than under that horrible Japanese Empire? Or, he says, look at the imperial legacy: British Law. The English Language. Membership of the Commonwealth…

Oh dear. But a great book. Thoroughly recommended. show less

Big, provocative take on the British Empire. Written to argue, not to hedge. Entertaining even when annoying.
Ferguson argues that the British Empire, while violent and exploitative, produced more global good than harm. He claims it spread capitalism, free trade, liberal institutions, and a degree of global order. He insists Britain’s empire was better than rival imperial systems and that its collapse came from world wars, not moral failure.
What I found interesting
-Strong emphasis on informal empire and economic influence rather than constant territorial control.
- The comparison move. Britain vs everyone else. Lowers the bar, but it’s rhetorically effective.
- The argument that empire enabled globalization rather than simply show more extracting from colonies.
- The implied analogy between Britain then and the United States now.
What annoyed me
Moral costs are acknowledged but treated as side effects, not structural.
“Maintained peace” feels very empire-centered. Order for whom.
Liberal democracy appears as an endpoint rather than a contested outcome.

A sharp, readable defense of empire that is most revealing not in what it proves, but in how easily violence becomes a footnote once comparison enters the room. show less

Objective historical appraisal of the British Empire is largely hamstrung by the contemporary penchant for politically-correct handwringing induced by 'white guilt'. In writing Empire, Niall Ferguson exposed himself to the attacks of those who indulge in such behaviour, and was labelled 'right-wing' and an 'apologist of colonialism'. In truth, Ferguson wrote a commendable, objective narrative of the rise (and fall) of the British Empire and the influence its period of predominance in world affairs has had on the modern world. There are, of course, right-wing apologists who, for reasons of misguided belief in national or racial superiority, go misty-eyed for the virtues of the Empire, but Ferguson is not one of them. I have read many show more history books, and though I cannot comment on Ferguson's other works, which I have not read, I found nothing in Empire that suggested the author was predisposed to any one entrenched viewpoint. Any respectable historian prides his or herself on their objectivity.

Rather, Ferguson has provided a comprehensive work that is of remarkable detail given that it covers about 400 years of history in less than 400 pages. He seeks to counter the prevailing contemporary view that Britain constructed an 'evil' empire that oppressed millions of indigenous peoples, which has left him exposed to attacks and slurs by those who find such a view as irreconciliable with their prejudices. This is worrying, as historians should be free to make any valid argument, no matter how disagreeable it is to others. The argument that Ferguson makes, that Empire-building was an evolutionary process, not the malicious design of white men seeking to enslave the world, is a valid one. He acknowledges that abuses occurred, but rightly counterbalances this with the benefits that imperialism brought.

Indeed, it is perhaps wrong to judge Ferguson's book as a debate on whether the Empire was good or bad, which is what any book on the topic inevitably becomes painted as. His stated aim is to trace its influence on the modern world, not to debate the morality of imperialism or colonialism, and he achieves this ably.

If I could make one criticism, it is that when Ferguson reaches the end of World War Two, the next sixty years do not, to my mind, have the same quality of analysis as the preceding 300 or so. This is a disappointment, as the break-up of the British Empire in the years after 1945 had a massive impact on the shaping of the modern world, creating newly-independent countries, strategic problems and residual animosities that one can still identify in world politics today. Rather than addressing these issues in all their complexity, Ferguson instead presents the United States as the heir to Britain's throne as arbiter of world affairs. This is a worthwhile pursuit, but not the whole story. However, there are numerous other books that one could consult if one wished to study the break-up of Empire in more detail. Ferguson's Empire is a valuable work that I would recommend to anyone as the first port of call for studies into the topic. show less

I was initially quite impressed by this book but I suggest you read a standard narrative of empire and return to this afterwards as a useful and often wise interpretation of that history. I can strongly recommend the old but still serviceable trilogy by James/Jan Morris.

Where Ferguson scores is in his thematic approach which is revealed in the Acknowledgements as having been driven by a link to a Channel Four TV series. This explains some of the book's oddities where the narrative seems to be driven by scripting concerns rather than by the history itself.

This background is shown most clearly when Ferguson dwells periodically on one case study to illustrate a thesis in a way that suggests a marginal distortion simply to make the show more thematics interesting for a popular audience - the human interest angle that television desperately craves.

Similarly, 'news' rather than historical values intrude when it becomes clear that Ferguson is playing to polemics about empire, again distorting the story somewhat to create a binary good-bad comparison that he carries well until it all comes to a shuddering halt in a weak final chapter.

There is something worrying about popular history that is driven by the attention spans of a half-educated and easily bored audience. It is neither fish not fowl because Ferguson is compromising on something he undoubtedly is - a very fine historian indeed.

From from the negatives to the positives. The thematic approach (so long as one understands that it leaves out as much as it covers) is very insightful. I learned a great deal of new things derived from current research and Ferguson's own interesting conservative but humane overview.

I may not have changed my overall opinion of the imperial project but my understanding was changed of how it operated and developed and from there my opinion on some matters changed. This is very much to the credit of Ferguson.

The first three chapters/programmes (as you will) give a plausible and informative outline of the piratical origins of empire, explore the dependence of the empire on mass white migration and explore the ideological impact of the verminous spread of missionary activity.

This is not to dispute the ambiguity of almost every aspect of the story. The miserabilist Christianity of the British did help to almost eliminate the slave trade after all and the positive side of piracy was the total push it gave to global modernisation which ultimately benefited humanity.

The book then goes on to explore the rise of a form of Tory orientalism that replaced the liberal missionary approach which had helped to trigger the disaster of the Indian Mutiny when the Empire showed its true and vicious colours.

Again, there is ambiguity. The British (in Jamaica, Tasmania and India - add Kenya and others not mentioned by Ferguson) behaved repulsively and violently but Ferguson is right that the alternative to the British Empire towards the end would have been Empires yet more vicious still.

Perhaps that does not justify Empire but it does cast a different light on the Anglo-sphere as progressively more civilised than its angry and hungry German, French, Belgian and Japanese rivals. But it is not as if any Empire is kinder when it is existentially threatened and this matters.

Empire is essentially a project about power. The British learned to rule through holding an iron fist ready at any time to strike (much like the American Empire today) but showing restraint in order to avoid having to use it. The Empire collapses when there is no more money for the iron fist.

Ferguson implies that the loss of empire was a matter of will power but I do not think it was so simple. It was also about cash and other ways of making money. By the end, the Empire was getting the attention of second rate minds.

Tory imperialism certainly triggered its own reaction after the Boer War (there is a sort of call-and-response between generations in this history) in elite contempt for its own creation amidst awareness that the thing was built ultimately on brute force and was not cheap to maintain.

The brute fact is that the Liberal blunder of 1914 and the moral crusade of 1939/1940 (which meant no deal with German aspirations) gutted the finances of the 'holding company'. It was then 'for sale'. Otherwise, the Empire might still be with us today as a set of conservative dominions.

At all times, Ferguson is fair and sophisticated in his approach. If one might dispute his conclusions at times, nevertheless he does lay out the facts that are relevant to the disputation and his opinions are always reasoned and plausible - at least for the first five chapters.

The final chapter is more problematic. Partly this is a matter of it being closer to our time. A lot of ground is covered in too short a space. Partly it is because he quietly and steadily slips into a sotto voce polemic in favour his conservative vision of neo-imperial Atlanticism.

It is at this point that the reader feels he is leaving the land of 'objective' history and moving into the land of tele-subjectivism - not entirely but enough to feel a little uncomfortable and exploited. Why - one asks - is there such an extended section on Gallipolli? For Australian sales?

It does not help that chunks of imperial history are left out - East Asia scarcely exists in the narrative. The Opium Wars are mentioned only in passing. The Americans exist only to revolt and save us without any significant mention Anglo-American relations in the meantime.

Nevertheless, the book is recommended for its insights which are considerable, especially in those five first chapters. It is best probably to see this as a selection of evidenced opinions and insightful anecdotes and tales that add understanding to the wider narrative history.

On balance well worth reading but do not take it as all there is to say on the subject by any means and use your critical faculties (not only in this case but all spin-offs from TV series) to weed out the tropes and conventions of television which 'educate' us through insightful simplifications. show less

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 interesting book, particularly in regard to India and Africa but a bit sparse with regards to Ireland and in fact I found it occasionally annoying with it's attitude to Ireland. It was interesting to see how different ideologies build different colonies and the colonial legacy of several different nations. Also interesting were the comments re: American Imperialism in the modern age and how it struggles with acceptance of it's actual role while trying to appear not to be an empire and to decry empires and imperialism.

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

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 show more 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. show less