Reviewed by Ned C. Landsman | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.1

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Reviewed by Ned C. Landsman | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Ned C. Landsman, State University of New York at Stony Brook

The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America, c. 1750–1783. By P. J. Marshall. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 2005. 408 pages. $55.00 (cloth). British America, 1500–1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire. By Steven Sarson. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005. 352 pages. $95.00 (cloth) $29.95 (paper).
For all the benefits that have accrued to the field of early American history in recent years from what might be called the Atlantic turn, the results have often seemed a bit one-sided. In a stark reversal of the Atlantic migration itself, though it has become almost incumbent on early Americanists to try to incorporate into their inquiries something about comparable situations in sites around and across the Atlantic, fewer historians of other Atlantic regions have been as committed to extending their discussions to British America. Early Americanists should welcome the appearance of the works of two British scholars that are intended as much for British as for American audiences and that assimilate British America into well-informed treatments of the history of Britain and its empire. P. J. Marshall attempts to locate what he prefers not to call the first British Empire as an integral part of, and not merely a precursor to, the larger story of global British imperialism. Steven Sarson sets out to explore and explain the development of the whole of that first empire, extending well beyond the thirteen colonies to the West Indies, British North America, and even further afield. Together they offer a broader vision of imperial development than that to which the field is accustomed, and they help to decenter the thirteen colonies within that larger story.	1
The Making and Unmaking of Empires adopts a comparative approach to imperial development, developing a complex portrayal of extremely varied societies. Against longstanding, though recently challenged, assumptions that the second British Empire in South Asia and elsewhere developed in reaction to Britain's loss of North America, Marshall contends that imperial development and dissolution were products of the same circumstances and a single imperial vision. The wars of midcentury coupled with continuing foreign threats to British dominion, the need for revenue to pay the army, and the problem of governing an ever-increasing diversity of peoples persuaded virtually everyone in imperial circles of the need for reform, putting all sectors of the empire under the governance of a central parliamentary umbrella. The results of that effort were convulsions in mainland North America yet only modest resistance in India. The East India Company was in no position to rebel and by necessity started down the path toward greater imperial control. For most of British America beyond the traditional thirteen colonies, similar limitations led to outcomes more like those that emerged in South Asia.	2
Much of the discussion of American resistance to reform will be familiar to specialists. One of the difficulties with comparative history is the need for lengthy discussions of background that may not be necessary for those working in the field. In the process the thread of comparison occasionally gets lost in an abundance of detail. The advantage of contextualizing and comparing comes from illuminating, for example, the considerable variety in imperial development even within South Asia. The East India Company enjoyed vastly greater success in Bengal, where Britain could essentially take over organizational structures established by successful nabobs, the Mogul governors, than it did in Madras or Bombay. Even Bengal governance still rested to a considerable degree on opinion rather than coercion. In any case, despite a common imperial vision, varying circumstances led to different outcomes, a principal theme of Marshall's book that can be applied across South Asia as well as across the globe.	. . .

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