Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power

by Niall Ferguson

Book Overview

A bestselling historian shows how the British Empire created the modern world, in a book lauded as "a rattling good tale" (Wall Street Journal) and "popular history at its best" (Washington Post)

The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to global domination ever achieved. The world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. The global spread of capitalism, telecommunications,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465023290
• ISBN13: 9780465023295
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

RIP British Empire

This is a history 2.0 on the grandeur and decline of the “Sun never set” British Empire. England, the few islands off Europe is able to colonized 25% of the world population and land. British robbed Spanish silver with pirates such as Francisco Drake for the Royal coffer. With such unjust enrichment of capital for the Industrial Revolution for raw materials and markets by human trafficking and genocides to native people. The West demonized the Asian challenger with their notorious dark shadows. America was a British civil war to rise against the Imperialists and Colonists. British Empire unable to defend the home country for the huge military budget sought Roosevelt help in the WW II. The Chinese troop came to their aid in Burma under General Sun. The self determination independence movement shook off the colonial Master with many new countries in Africa and Asia and later in the Commonwealth Club. British Empire peacefully declined into second and third rate country and yielded to America which was the liberator and savior of freedom and peace with Marshall Plan to help build the world. Churchill insisted to hold onto Hong Kong in debating General Chiang Kai-shek. The Union Jack raised the last time on June 30 1997 with world witness. The Hong Kong Crown colony issued BNO ( British NO) visa to Hong Kong citizens. British professor Ferguson printed a rosy history the British Empire was a positive presence in the world for the spread of democracy ( window only!) , capitalism and English. Will their American cousin inherit the same fate?

Living in a British world

It is not Niall Ferguson's intent to rewrite or beautify the history of the British Empire--although he started as a young enthusiast for the British Empire, after he studied history more meticulously, he came to realize that the costs of the empire had "substantially outweighed" the benefits. Instead, Mr. Ferguson takes on a more modest thesis: that Britain made the modern world. As ambitious as this sounds, Mr. Ferguson is careful in his formulation: for much, though not all, of its history, the British Empire "acted as an agency for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection and relatively incorrupt governments on roughly a quarter of the globe." It did so by exporting certain features of its society (English language, common law, respect for liberty, banking, representative assemblies, and others) that underwrote and fuelled the most significant period of globalization (or Anglobalization) that the world had experienced to date. From this bold thesis comes a tightly argued and narrated history of the British Empire. In the process of the argument, Mr. Ferguson tackles certain conventional hypothesis (for example, he disagrees that the British Empire was set up in an absence of mind) and covers the basic components of the Empire by examining the roles of pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts. The end product is an elegant history that escapes the narrow debate between costs and benefits in evaluating the impact of the British Empire; in fact, Mr. Ferguson's contribution would lie much to the fact that he has changed the axes for judgment rather than supporting one or another position. And his underlying position, than in the absence of British rule, our world would be much different (and probably worse) will strike many as rather provocative if not presumptuous. But if there were ever a case to be made for that proposition, then it is nowhere better formulated than in the "Empire."

At last ... "must read" history

Let's start with the reviews. When you read them, try to keep in mind the simple fact that this book is both describing an historical era (the British Empire) and assessing it. Not all historians do the latter; and too many are content to do a boring job of the former. I think Ferguson does a superb job on both fronts, but it is nonetheless possible to disagree with his assessment of the empire while admiring his well-paced narrative and lavishly illustrated survey of it. How the Empire came into being; why it was British (as opposed to Spanish, Dutch or other); how it operated; how it was funded; who its beneficiaries were; what it did badly; the horrors of which it was guilty;piracy on high seas, the slave trade, its role in Africa, India, Australia, Ireland and elsewhere: Niall Ferguson captures it all. But not just that..He is interested in applying the lesson of Empire to the world today. It is the modern world, after all, that the Empire shaped for better or worse. And here we arrive at Ferguson's assessment. Readers might take issue with a balance sheet approach to the Empire, and they make take issue with the evaluation itself, but in providing us with such an assessment Ferguson brings the Empire to life in these pages. On net, the Empire was a positive good, if only because "in the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?" Ferguson thinks so. I agree. Others may not. You don't need to agree with his conclusions, but you cannot walk away from the question, for now the United States is poised to be an Empire -- an Empire in denial in Ferguson's view -- and whether and to what extent the U.S. should assume, or can assume the role of an imperial power is upon us all. What do you think? This is what Ferguson is asking us to do in this outstanding work, in effecting saying: Here's the historical framework, here's what I make of it. Well, what do you think? Read Empire. Re-read it. Like it or not, the question of Empire is upon us.

A History Worth Knowing and Weighing

The main reason to read Ferguson's Empire is to learn more about this strange beast, mostly ignored or derided over the last half-century. An empire has its own circulatory system, its own way of extending its arms, and has not really been treated as a serious subject for decades. It provides another way of studying the history of globalization, and offers a coherent approach not available through other means. But does the subject have the vividness and drama to sustain a coffee table tome? And can an Oxford historian whose claim to fame has been two 400-page volumes on an 18th century Jewish banker make it worth reading? Is this thing worth the exertion to heft, let alone finance? And why should Americans even care about somebody else's past glories?The book provides its own answer: it is worthwhile on every count. Indeed the subject grips you, the story is told dramatically, the plot twists and turns, there are lively characters. The text breaths, like something delivered energetically in a lecture hall, with passion. The pictures are a beautiful complement to what you read. From chapter one through the last, Empire reads well, informing as it entertains. On that basis alone the work is worth reading, and given the cost, worth owning (and flaunting) for a long time. But does it actually make the case that the Empire helped the U.K. and the world as a whole? This matter seeps through the body of the text, but steps forward in both the introduction and conclusion. And further, an additional matter thrusts itself forward: should the U.S. take heed of this history and assume the imperial mantle, though it does not seem to want it or show much promise of carrying it well, given its short attention span and allegiance to "democratic traditions?"It is this issue of Empire's worth and the U.S.'s potential imperial role that has driven this book and its author into the limelight. The argument is not made in the body of the text, but instead surfaces there only in a few places with a more forceful articulation in the introduction and conclusion. Ferguson admits a fondness for empire in the introduction, and the conclusion adds an American angle.One can appreciate an excellent work of history, and then address this application of history within a philosophical argument about the British past and the American future. You can feel reasonably well armed for the debate on reading the body of the text, and can have some fun with the political argument. So despite its bulk and museum-like quality, Empire can serve as a springboard for serious thought and discussion. Not a bad way to spend at bit of time!

A Very Pukka Look At The British Empire

Niall Ferguson has made a name for himself as the historian of counterfactuals, or imaginative looks at "history as it could have been." He was the editor of Virtual History, which provides alternate scenarios of past events, and the author of The Pity of War, a look at World War I which concluded that the world would be immensely better off today if the British had stayed out in August 1914 and let the Germans win. Now in Empire Ferguson has given us a history of the British Empire which any nineteenth century imperialist would pronounce to be pukka, or first rate.Basically Ferguson argues that the British Empire was a positive contribution to the world in that it gave its colonial possessions traditions like self-government and personal liberties. Ferguson does not maintain that there were no abuses of power or that none of the indigeneous peoples ruled by British officials were ever mistreated, but he does believe that on balance, more good was done than bad. He makes this argument most strongly in covering the twentieth century, when he points out that the British were much better colonial rulers than the Germans or Japanese were. Most of Empire's readers will undoubtedly agree with this point, but many will also wonder why it was necessary for the British to colonize these peoples in the first place. Ferguson is straightforward, saying that the original reason for imperialism was greed for products like tea. More highflown objectives like ending the slave trade and converting "primitive" areas to civilization and Christianity came much later,and never diverted attention for very long from the basic quest for wealth. Ferguson is also direct in saying that the major reason for the end of the Empire after World War II was that it was simply too expensive to keep going. The last pages are especially timely in that Ferguson speculates on the role of a revived imperialism of the twenty-first century in the hands of Britain's most famous former colony, the United States.One of Empire's major flaws is its tendency to give short shrift to the cultures which came under British power. The Mughals of India are barely discussed, and Qing Dynasty China rates even less attention. Ferguson's basic attitude is that those cultures were no better, and in some ways much worse, than the British who came to dominate them. For another view of Britain's supposed superiority in governing Asian territories, you could read Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts, which chronicles British ineptitude in dealing with famine in India and China.The book is well written and beautifully illustrated. I hope that the British TV series it companions will eventually be shown on PBS. Like the book, it should be controversial and thought-provoking.