Product Description

Volume II of the Oxford History of the British Empire examines the history of British worldwide expansion from the Glorious Revolution of 1689 to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a crucial phase in the creation of the modern British Empire. This is the age of General Wolfe, Clive of India, and Captain Cook. The international team of experts deploy the latest scholarly research to trace and analyse development and expansion over more than a century. They show how trade, warfare, and migration created an Empire, at first overwhelmingly in the Americas but later increasingly in Asia. Although the Empire was ruptured by the American Revolution, it survived and grew into the British Empire that was to dominate the world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. series blurb The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. It deals with the interaction of British and non-western societies from the Elizabethan era to the late twentieth century, aiming to provide a balanced treatment of the ruled as well as the rulers, and to take into account the significance of the Empire for the peoples of the British Isles. It explores economic and social trends as well as political.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158420 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 664 pages

Review
An impressive achievement ... For information on the evolution of British naval strategy, power relations in Indian country, or changing patterns in the Atlantic slave trade, The Eighteenth Century is an invaluable resource. (English Historical Review )

Meticulously planned and flawlessly executed, providing texts that are both scholarly and accessible. The combination of thematic chapters on the empire as a whole, and regional ones on particular parts of it, is especially effective ... Another notable feature is the objectivity and sensitivity with which the contributors handle emotive and controversial subjects. (Simon C. Smith, Times Higher Education Supplement )

Splendid and endlessly fascinating history of the most splendid and fascinating of all empires ... this looks like becoming a useful and generally very fair survey which should help even academics distinguish between the ethics of the British in search of empire and those of, let us say, the French ... this does what a serious history should do, and allows the reader to come to his own conclusions. (Philip Hensher, Spectator )

Professor Louis himself is not merely supremely well qualified on grounds of scholarship, but is also a man of integrity, generosity of mind and, above all, wisdom. These first two of what is to be a five-volume History will surely put at rest any lingering fears that the work might be prejudiced or in any other way inadequate ... the Oxford History will be something that most general readers will like to have on their shelves and consult from time to time ... If the rest of the work is carried out with similar authority, with the same magisterial design and craftmanship in the detail, this will be an achievement of which the editors and the University Press can be properly proud. (Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph )

About the Author
P. J. Marshall is Emeritus Professor of Imperial History at the University of London.

Customer Reviews

When it all got more complicated
If you have already worked through the first volume (and if you haven’t, you should) then you will already be aware of the value of such an approach to history, linking matters that are usually taught separately to give a much better perspective on what was going on.
This theme returns in the eighteenth century. So much is inter-related: industrialisation and the massive growth of the British economy; the demand for sugar, tea, cotton and silk; the competing political theories of autocracy, democracy and the squirearchal/aristocratic hybrid which the English squires and aristocrats not unnaturally felt was the best of all worlds; repeated victories over France, the capture of Quebec, questions on how to govern a largely Roman Catholic province and the implications of the answers for Ireland; the growth of the slave trade and growing opposition to it in Britain; the honouring (or otherwise) of treaties with Indians, both Red and Mogul.
The interplay of all these factors brought about by the end of the century what would have seemed inconceivable two thirds of the way through it: the loss of a largely English empire in North America (thanks to arguments about the consent of the governed) and the acquisition of a Muslim/Hindu one in Bengal and elsewhere in India (where the consent of the governed wasn’t up for discussion).
As well as making the connections between topics I already knew a bit about, the book also flagged up to me a couple of areas that I hadn’t thought about: how capital was flowing around the world, and what happened to America after the revolution. English money was flowing to Bengal and China, because the English were buying cotton, tea and silk, but the Indians and Chinese weren’t buying English manufactures. Also, the Royal Navy was recruited to protect the trade and the help the expansion of the areas under the control of the East India Company. At the same time the agents of the East India Company were essentially looting Bengal, so that the net effects were to enrich Bengali traders at the expense of Bengali taxpayers, and to enrich the nabobs at the expense of the English taxpayer.
And “victory” by the colonists in the American Revolution messed up the American economy for a couple of generations. Suddenly America couldn’t export to the British Caribbean any more, nor (during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars) to the French or Spanish Caribbean or to Europe itself. Yet it continued to import British garments and other products as much as it did before.
There’s a lot of fascinating stuff still to come, so I’m looking forward to reading the volume on the nineteenth century (relatives please note – it’s on my wishlist!).