The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997

"It’s an extremely good one-volume history by Piers Brendan called The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. The title indicates that there’s an echo of Gibbons, and one of his central arguments is that the Roman Empire was always consciously in the minds of the British imperialists. It was the great historical model for the project of Empire, and that is double-edged: there is both the massive triumphalism and assertion of historic dignity and power in it, but it also means that the entire conversation about the British Empire from the beginning is shot through with a sense of its ultimate likely decline. The book is also good on the fact that the Empire for British society as a whole was a minority pursuit. It was a very big part of British culture, but not that many British people were involved in it directly. All the time, right from the beginning, there were large sections of the British population who didn’t think it was a good idea and had no interest in it. It’s useful to remember that, as opposed to the rather monolithic sense of the Empire that you get from the triumphalist version of late high-Victorian narratives about it. Again, there’s a bit of an exception with India, but you’re right, it was for second sons and spivs, and it was not that glorious. Kipling is fascinating to read in that respect because he reflects how middle and working class the Empire was in lots of ways, as well as being obviously a place of open social mobility. I thought this book was very good on the sense of fantasy – the first three chapters are about the slave trade, and some of it is phenomenally unbelievable: the Empire was a sort of acting out of really deep personality drives. It also addresses the idea of genocide in the British Empire, and says basically there was one, which is Tasmania, where the native population was entirely wiped out. There are descriptions of white settlers in Tasmania wearing necklaces of ears, and one farmer made to stand with his wife’s head tied round his neck. I think it’s just quite a fair-minded history, so it enables you to make a judgment about the morality of what went on, although that’s obviously a dangerous thing to do because you’re moralising from a different moral system. But nevertheless for a single volume, quite punchy and exciting work of narrative history that covers the whole of the British Empire, as well as a general moral audit of the system, I think it’s very good."