Product Description

"Mad Dogs and Englishmen" is a visually arresting and richly informative tour of the British Empire at its height, when its boundaries stretched from Cairo to Cape Town and from Winnipeg to Wagga-Wagga. The empire 'on which the sun never sets' embraced peoples as diverse as head-hunting Dyaks, Eskimos, Fulani horsemen, Gulf sheikhs, Canadian hunters, Zoroastrian pilgrims, and caparisoned maharajahs. In a sequence of thematic chapters examining every aspect of the Empire, from the imperial monarchy to the armed forces, and from district commissioners to dependent territories, High Noon describes the shape and functioning of the largest imperium in world history. Each chapter consists of a lively and accessible essay, accompanied by a vivid and array of captioned pictures, evoking the fascinating spectacle that the British Empire presented to its citizens: the sights, scenes, and organizations that shaped the world view of people in Britain and its colonies and Dominions beyond the seas.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71890 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From the Inside Flap
At its peak the British Empire covered approximately one quarter of the Earth's total land area and ruled over the same proportion of the world's population: its boundaries stretched from Birmingham to Bombay, from Cairo to Cape Town, and from Winnipeg to Wagga-Wagga. In this unique and beautifully illustrated book, Ashley Jackson takes the reader on a visually arresting and richly informative tour of the empire `on which the sun never set', examining the representations of empire that informed the world view of hundreds of millions of people.
In a sequence of elegantly written chapters Mad Dogs and Englishmen examines every aspect of the largest imperium the world has seen, from its district commissioners to dependent territories, from its armed forces to its architecture, and from its music to its monarchy. Ashley Jackson's text is as accessible as it is scholarly, and is amplified and embellished by imperial imagery from an exceptionally wide range of media: maps, stamps, cigarette cards, coronation souvenirs, extracts from missionaries' and explorers' journals, popular sheet music, board games, cruise advertisements, children's annuals and comics, novels and their colourful dust-jackets and the popular art stimulated by epic military actions.
Authoritative, sumptuous, and written by a scholar who is steeped in knowledge of the period, Mad Dogs and Englishmen evokes the fascinating sights and sounds that the British Empire presented to its citizens, and thereby brings a unique period of British and world history unforgettably to life.

About the Author
Dr Ashley Jackson is a senior lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King's College, London. He completed his doctorate at New College, Oxford in 1996. His research concentrates on the history of empire, particularly the British Empire.

Customer Reviews

Great, nostalgic read
Outstanding book, well illustrated, covering a huge subject. My only complaint is that there is a little too much on missionaries and religion, whereas, I'd prefer more about our colonial wars.
Still, highly recommended.

British Empire

I love history and the story of the British Empire is amazing. This book is more of a great pictorial, fact-based book, rather than a long, drawn-out technical book. This is a book of photos, pictures, information. You can skim read and flick through it. It's great.