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Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World
hardback
Published:
9 January, 2003
hardback
Published:
9 January, 2003
Description
The British Empire was the biggest empire in all history. At its peak it governed a quarter of the world's land and people and dominated all its seas. Though little now remains of the Empire as a political power, its legacy is all around us. It laid the foundation for the global triumph of capitalism. It gave the world its common language, English. It exported both Protestantism and parliaments. And it defeated a succession of rival empires from the Habsburgs' to Hitler's. In the 21st century another English-speaking superpower seems to bestride the globe. But today's American empire was yesterday's British colony. For better and for worse, the world we now know is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. How did a rainy island in the North Atlantic manage to achieve all this? What were the special factors that enabled Britain to make the modern world - and made the modern world so British? These are the crucial questions addressed by Niall Ferguson in "Empire". This was the first age of globalization. But it was, says Ferguson, globalization with gunboats.
This text shows how the British wrested power from their rivals by a combination of imitation and intimidation. It shows how mass migration from Britain turned the American and Australian continents white - and how the missionary movement sought to enlighten the "dark" continents of Africa and Asia. Above all, "Empire" explains how the British Empire rose - and why it finally fell. Ferguson's answers are controversial but compelling.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780713996159 |
| ISBN10 | 0713996153 |
| Number Of Pages | 416 |
| Item Weight | 1477 g |
| Product Dimensions | 196 x 36 x 248 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Allen Lane |
| Format | hardback |
| Edition | 1st Edition |
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Author's Bio
Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His books include The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. His many prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).