The Empire Project The Rise and Fall of the British World-System,1830 to1970, Cambridge UP

The Empire Project
The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830 -1970
Author: John Darwin 

Winner of The Institute of Commonwealth Studies 2010 Trevor Reese Prize

'… a tour de force. Never before have the dynamics of the British Empire been analysed with such deep knowledge and penetrating insight.' Piers Brendon, author of The Decline and Fall of the British Empire

The British Empire, wrote Adam Smith, 'has hitherto been not an empire, but the project of an empire' and John Darwin offers a magisterial global history of the rise and fall of that great imperial project. The British Empire, he argues, was much more than a group of colonies ruled over by a scattering of British expatriates until eventual independence. It was, above all, a global phenomenon. Its power derived rather less from the assertion of imperial authority than from the fusing together of three different kinds of empire: the settler empire of the 'white dominions'; the commercial empire of the City of London; and 'Greater India' which contributed markets, manpower and military muscle.

This unprecedented history charts how this intricate imperial web was first strengthened, then weakened and finally severed on the rollercoaster of global economic, political and geostrategic upheaval on which it rode from beginning to end.

John Darwin teaches Imperial and Global History at Oxford where he is a Fellow of Nuffield College. His previous publications include After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1400 (winner of the Wolfson History Prize for 2007), The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate (1991) and Britain and Decolonization: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (1988).

• Published: September 2009 Cambridge University Press
• format: Hardback
• isbn: 9780521302081
• 800 pages
• dimensions: 229 x 152 x 43 mm
• contains: 11 maps
• Used, good condition