Age of Emergency

Book cover of Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire

Book description

An eye-opening account of how violence was experienced not just on the frontlines of colonial terror but at home in imperial Britain.

When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945, Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force. Although this period has conventionally been dubbed "postwar," it…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Age of Emergency as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Asheesh Siddique

Author

How do citizens learn to accept violence perpetuated by their own governments? Answering this profoundly relevant and timely question lies at the heart of Linstrum’s book–and data lies at the crux of the answer. He shows how, despite massive amounts of data about colonial violence circulating in postwar Britain, British people found ways to accommodate and justify that violence.

This book is a sobering challenge to the belief that better information produces better and more empathetic societies, showing that the connection between knowledge and enlightened behavior is not nearly as straightforward as we may want to believe.

From Asheesh's list on understand the history of data.