Here are 100 books that Empireland fans have personally recommended if you like
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Iāve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little Iād been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of ScotlandāJohn OāGroatsāto the southernmost part of England, called Landās End. This took me 2 months. Iāve since explored the UK countrysideās colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This book is a great guide to life in hard times. What struck me about it is that there is all sorts of wisdom in here that is less familiar to us than the most famous of Dr. Kingās speeches. Here, you can see the old seeds of modern-day culture wars and some excellent and brave recommendations on how to deal with them.
The book could have been written yesterday, always a great test of enduring insight.
The classic collection of sixteen sermons preached and compiled by Dr. King
As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962. Having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for fifteen days that was, according to King, āādirty, filthy, and ill-equippedāā and āthe worse I have ever seen.ā While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparingā¦
Iāve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little Iād been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of ScotlandāJohn OāGroatsāto the southernmost part of England, called Landās End. This took me 2 months. Iāve since explored the UK countrysideās colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This is a well-written book with a strong sense of historyās human stories. It is painstakingly researchedābut beautifully narratedāand based on archival evidence to explore the lives of Africans in Britain during the Tudor period.
It tells so many diverse stories about Black divers, servants, circumnavigators, and so much more. Teachers have since used this book to update their school lessons about the Tudor period.
A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer
A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England...
They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like anyā¦
As a child, I was an avid reader. However, I noticed none of the characters I read about looked like me. As a Black girl growing up in London, I yearned for stories that reflected my experiences. Thankfully, by the time I was a teenager, I was able to immerse myself in books written by some amazing African American authors. There was still something missing on my reading list, though. The stories of Black people who lived where I did, especially those from the past. Fast forward to now, and as an author of historical fiction, my passion is telling, writing, and highlighting āforgottenā stories.
This book covers the comprehensive history of the Black presence in Britain. It had everything I needed and more when researching my own historical fiction novels. Growing up in the UK, the only part pertaining to Black history was a brief mention of the transatlantic slave trade and nothing that pointed to the Black presence in the UK.
I found this book very well-researched by the author and was fascinated by the wealth of information, some of which I did not know. It also reminded me of why I love writing historical fiction!
'[A] comprehensive and important history of black Britain . . . Written with a wonderful clarity of style and with great force and passion.' - Kwasi Kwarteng, Sunday Times
In this vital re-examination of a shared history, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga tells the rich and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean.
This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new chapter encompassing the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, events which put black British history at the centre of urgent national debate. Blackā¦
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorāand only womanāon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.
In the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a flurry of books were produced on the ānew imperialism.ā One of the best was by the Canadian Marxist scholar, the late Ellen Meiksins Wood. What distinguishes capitalist imperialism from its predecessors, Wood argues, āis the predominance of the economic, as distinct from direct āextra-economicāāpolitical, military, judicialā coercion.ā
By relying on the imperatives of the market, capitalist imperialism has been able to shed most of the visible trappings of older forms of empire, including its network of territorially based colonies overseen by regionally based armies and administrators: āCapitalism has extended the reach of imperial domination far beyond the capacities of direct political rule or colonial occupation, simply by imposing and manipulating the operations of the capitalist market.ā
Even though capitalist imperialism relies primarily on market-based coercion rather than the direct use of force to police its interests, Wood isā¦
In this era of globalization, we hear a great deal about a new imperialism and its chief enforcer, the United States. Today, with the US promising an endless war against terrorism and promoting a policy of preemptive defense, this notion seems more plausible than ever. But what does imperialism mean in the absence of colonial conquest and direct imperial rule? In this lucid and lively book Ellen Meiksins Wood explores the new imperialism against the contrasting background of older forms, from ancient Rome, through medieval Europe, the Arab Muslim world, the Spanish conquests, and the Dutch commercial empire. Tracing theā¦
I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.
This updated edition of Grandinās Pulitzer Prize-winning book charts the long history of the United Statesā imperial domination of Latin America through gunboat diplomacy, invasion, hard and soft coups, mercenary wars, and covert actions.
Often considered its ābackyard,ā Latin America is where the United States ālearned how to project its power, worked out effective and flexible tactics of extraterritorial administration, established legal precedents, and acquired its conception of itself as an empire like no other before it.ā Grandin illustrates this history with numerous historical and contemporary examples, including the 1973 US-supported coup in Chile, which brought to power Augusto Pinochetās bloody dictatorship.
With the help of University of Chicago economists Frederic Von Hayek and Milton Friedman, the dictatorship pioneered the first neoliberal imperial āworkshop.ā Chile would become the template for other attempts at regime change in the region, from the 1980s wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua toā¦
Examining over a century of US intervention in Latin America, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin reveals how the region has long served as a laboratory for US foreign policy, providing generations of Washington policy makers with an opportunity to rehearse a broad range of diplomatic and military tactics - tactics that then were applied elsewhere in the world as the US became a global superpower. During the Great Depression, for instance, FDR's Good Neighbor policy taught the United States to use "soft power" effectively and provided a blueprint for its postwar "empire by invitation." In the 1980s, Reagan likewise turned toā¦
I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.
In this tour de force history of Great Britainās 19th century āliberal empire,ā Elkins demonstrates the glaring contradiction between the official claim that British society and its colonies were governed by liberal principles of āthe rule of lawā and the systematic violence that lay at its core. āViolence,ā Elkins argues, āwas not just the British Empireās midwife; it was endemic to the structures and systems of British rule.ā
In an age when liberal rights were ostensibly universal, race became how the empire was able to exclude black and brown people (which included āracializedā groups such as the Irish and Afrikaners) from the ranks of ācivilizedā peoples. The so-called ācivilizing mission,ā in which āuncivilizedā peoples would be welcomed into the ranks of the ācivilizedā at some unspecified point, was draped in the trappings of noble enterprise and moral duty. However, while this thinly veiled ideology may have served the interests ofā¦
From a Pulitzer Prizeāwinning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that probes the country's pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe
Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain's twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation's cultural superiority. But what legacy did the island nation deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals an evolutionary and racializedā¦
With Franklin Rooseveltās death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican leader on foreign policy, inherited a world in turmoil. With Europe flattened and the Soviets emerging as Americaās new adversary, Truman and Vandenberg built a tight, bipartisan partnership at a bitterly partisan timeā¦
I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.
In an age when statues commemorating former colonialists and slave owners have been toppled worldwide, the figure of Winston Churchill has been left largely untouched. Myth-making around Churchillās role in defeating Hitler is surely part of the explanation: no less than sixteen feature films have been made about his supposed historical achievements, three of them in the past decade.
As Tariq Ali points out in this informative book, āChurchill has become a highly burnished icon whose cult has long been out of control.ā Yet, during the 1930s, as fascism ascended throughout continental Europe, Churchill was a fanboy of the far-right. Like many of his social class, Churchill admired fascism for its capacity to keep communism in check. Until 1937, his āsupport for Mussolini was effusive, his hopes for Franco outlasted the war, and, for some years, he was impressed by Hitler and the sturdy, patriotic Hitler youth.ā āImperialism,ā Ali argues,ā¦
The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine.
In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill'sā¦
Iāve been fascinated by British colonial history for decades. Learning little about it as a child, I was shocked to learn, as a university student, how little Iād been taught about the British Empire at school. So, I set out to study it. Inevitably, this academic interest later combined with my fondness for country walking. I once trekked 1000 miles from the tip of ScotlandāJohn OāGroatsāto the southernmost part of England, called Landās End. This took me 2 months. Iāve since explored the UK countrysideās colonial past in a humane history book called The Countryside, recounting my rambles through these lovely landscapes with ten walking companions.
This was a pioneering book, gathering essays about British country houses and their connections to transatlantic slavery. The introductionāexplaining the bookās concept and evidence baseāneatly epitomizes what country houses symbolize in peopleās imaginations and focuses on why and in what ways these places are connected to the empire.
The essays that follow are accessible but really detailed, and the essay collection really ends up defining the historical field.
There are few things more emblematic of England's heritage than the great country houses which grace our landscape. But such properties are not to be viewed simply as objects of architectural and curatorial or artistic interest. They are also expressions of wealth, power and privilege and, as new questions are being asked of England's historic role in the Atlantic world, and in particular about slavery, new connections are being unearthed between the nation's great houses and its colonial past.
In 2007 English Heritage commissioned initial research into links with transatlantic slavery or its abolition amongst families who owned properties nowā¦
I was in my 40s before I began exploring the topic of the British Empire. It came after I realised it explained so much about me (my Sikh identity, the emigration of my parents, my education) and so much about my country (its politics, psychology, wealthā¦) and yet I knew very little. It turned out that millions of people feel the same wayā¦ and I hope I provide an accessible introduction and summary of the massive topic.
By her own admission, Morris was nostalgic about British Empire, and while I disagree with some of her conclusions, and she herself remarked that she was āashamedā of the work before she died, there is no doubt that she penned the single best narrative of Britainās imperial adventures.
No other writer has written so accessibly and elegantly about a complicated history that extended across five centuries.
For me, proof that you donāt always need to agree with a writer to admire them.
It didnāt begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
My writing life is a mixture. I have written novels of crime fiction, many featuring Sherlock Holmes, as well as a variety of sleuths of my own creation. I was editor of the monthly journal of the Crime Writersā Association for twenty years and have written several plays, non-fiction books as well introductions to numerous literary collections. While I admit that my writings veer towards the serious and dramatic, in my social life I think of myself as a light-hearted fellow and as an antidote to my own dark fiction I enjoy having my spirits lifted by witty and amusing tales that help to raise the spirits.
If you know of Gyles Brandreth, the writer, broadcaster, and polymath you will know what to expect from any work of his. Subtitled The Diary of a Lifetime it contains extracts from his diaries from 1959 to the year 2000. It is a wonderful book to dip into, one that is full of enthusiasm and positivity. It is quite amazing the number of famous people that Brandreth has encountered over the yearsānot just names from showbusiness but artists, writers, politicians, sportspeople, and royalty. The book is stuffed with anecdotes most of which are highly amusing and are often presented in a self-deprecating manner.
This is a diary packed with famous names and extraordinary stories. It is also rich in incidental detail and wonderful observation, providing both a compelling record of five remarkable decades and a revealing, often hilarious and sometimes moving account of Gyles Brandreth's unusual life -- as a child living in London in the 'swinging' sixties, as a jumper-wearing TV presenter, as an MP and government whip, and as a royal biographer who has enjoyed unique access to the Queen and her family. Something Sensational to Read on the Train takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride from the era ofā¦