The Truth About Empire
Real Histories of British Colonialism
Published on 27. June 2024
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-911723-09-7 (ISBN)
Description
The Truth About Empire comes from expert historians who believe that the truth, as far as we can ascertain it, matters; that our decades of painstaking research make us worth listening to; and that our authority as leading professionals should count for something in today's polarised debates over Britain's imperial past.
Colonial history is now a battlefield in the culture war. The public's understanding of past events is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. Communities that long struggled to get their voices heard have, in their fight to highlight the hidden horrors of colonialism, alienated many who prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has generated a new, concerted denial of imperial racism and violence in Britain's past-a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.
From Australia and China to South Africa and Egypt, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a weapon of defence against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire's culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain's colonial history.
Colonial history is now a battlefield in the culture war. The public's understanding of past events is continually distorted by wilful caricatures. Communities that long struggled to get their voices heard have, in their fight to highlight the hidden horrors of colonialism, alienated many who prefer a celebratory national history. The backlash, orchestrated by elements of the media, has generated a new, concerted denial of imperial racism and violence in Britain's past-a disinformation campaign sharing both tactics and motivations with those around Covid, Brexit and climate change.
From Australia and China to South Africa and Egypt, this essay collection is an accessible guide to the British Empire, and a weapon of defence against the assault on historical truth. The disturbing stories told in these pages, of Empire's culture, politics and economics, show why professional research matters, when deciding what can and cannot be known about Britain's colonial history.
Reviews / Votes
'Timely insights into both the British empire and into historiography past and present.' * <b>Corinne Fowler, Bella Caledonia</b> * 'An essential contribution to scholarship on the British Empire. This is an important book for our times.' -- <b>Kavita Puri, author of <I>Partition Voices: Untold British Stories</I></b> 'In a time of harmful, government-backed myth-making about the past, "The Truth About Empire" offers important assurance of the value of and need for scholarly expertise and dialogue. Expert historians patiently, and devastatingly, prove the scholarly malpractice behind recent ideologically motivated attempts to whitewash the past. A lesson in the follies of peddling and trusting bogus history.' -- <b>Priya Satia, author of <I>Time's Monster: How History Makes History</I></b> 'Systematically reveals the questionable foundations of apologies for British colonialism. ...A masterclass in historical scholarship.' -- <b><i>Australian Book Review</b></i> 'Provides a kind of index of approaches experts can take when their subject is made the ground of culture war discourse-mongering. ...Stuart Ward's chapter is a brilliant historicisation of the genre of post-imperial apologetics.' -- <b><i>Red Pepper Magazine</b></i> 'We can welcome The Truth about Empire as a major contribution to current debates over British imperial history.' -- <b><I>Inside Story</I></b> 'A useful volume with broad coverage ... a welcome respite from polemical observations that appear in abundance across traditional and social media alike.' -- <b><i>International Affairs</i></b> 'The Truth about Empire is for those wanting more, and something approaching the definitive response to those arguing for a sympathetic view of the empire.' * <b><I>The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History </I></b> * 'A combative volume ... incisive ... wide-ranging.' -- <b><I>African Business</I></b> 'A fine collection of detailed and remarkably restrained assessments of the troubling and dubious manner in which the right-wing polemicists of the culture wars have distorted the historical record in service of the political rehabilitation of colonialism.' -- <b>Michael Taylor, author of <I>The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery</I></b> 'Lester has assembled an A Team of--can we say this now?--experts. The result is an incredibly readable collection that is nuanced, complex, calm and seriously informed--just what we need now on this vital and important subject.' -- <b>Matthew Parker, author of <I>One Fine Day: Britain's Empire on the Brink</I></b>More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 221 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 39 mm
Weight
630 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-911723-09-7 (9781911723097)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
06/2024
1st Edition
Hurst Publishers
from
€48.99
Available for download
Person
Alan Lester is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor of History at La Trobe University. He has written eleven books on British colonialism, most recently Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century British Empire; and Deny and Disavow: The British Empire in the Culture War (co-authored; 2nd edition).