The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997. Piers Brendon (H/B) 2007

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon.

After the loss of the American colonies the British Empire appeared to be doomed. Yet over the next 150 years it grew to become the greatest and most diverse empire the world has ever seen, seven times greater than the Roman Empire at its apogee. Britannia ruled the waves and a quarter of the earth was painted red on the map.

Still, as Piers Bredon shows in this luminously original book, the British created a weak empire. From a tiny island base, it was run on a shoestring with the help of local elites. its industrial and technological advantages soon eroded. Among those who fought it were Afghans, Zulus, Chinese, Boers, Irish, Turks, Germans and Japanese. Furthermore, the British Empire enshrined a belief in freedom that fatally undermined it.

Within a generation, between the scuttle from India and the 'scram out of Africa', the mighty structure collapsed, sometimes amid bloodshed. It left unfinished business in Rhodesia, the Falklands and Hong Kong. It left a scatter of sea-girt dependencies and a ghost of empire - the Commonwealth - overshadowed by imperial America. And it left a contested legacy: at best a sporting spirit, a legal code and a near-universal language; at worst failed states and intercine strife

A hardback published in 2007 by jonathan Cape.

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