This work charts the involvement of the Scots in the British Empire from its earliest days to the end of the 20th century. It is a tale of dramatic extremes and craggy characters, of a variety of concerns, from education, evangelism and philanthropy to spying, swindles and drug running. It sets stories of Scottish regiments on the rampage, of cannibalism and of atrocities beside the deeds of heroic pioneers such as David Livingstone and Mary Slessor. It tells of little known incidents of famous men - such as William Gladstone's punch-up with a Greek bishop and of the Earl of Elgin's burning of the Summer Palace in Peking. But above all, this work tells of how the British Empire came to be dominated by and run by Scots and of how it truly became "The Scottish Empire".

Michael Fry was educated at Oxford and Hamburg Universities. He has held academic positions in Scotland at Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities, in the US at Brown University, in Germany at Leipzig University and at the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt. He is the author of ten books on modern Scottish history, including The Dundas Despotism (1993), The Scottish Empire (2001), Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years of Highland History (2005) and Edinburgh: a history of the city (2009). He has contributed to most major Scottish and British newspapers, and has been a regular columnist for The Scotsman, The Herald and the Sunday Times.