Review

General Books

The present volume, written by over a dozen experts, is a new assessment of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. It covers the social, political, diplomatic, economic, technological, and cultural aspects of a vast imperium at its apogee. No other single volume provides such a panoramic, comprehensive, and current survey of the topic. Every student of imperialism in its golden age will have to consult this volume. It will remain the authoritative summary for a generation. Undergraduates and graduate students will find Porter's book invaluable as a sweeping overview, and for specific coverage of particular areas and topics. Individual chapters with useful short bibliographies that include up to date sources provide the perfect jumping off places for further research. Courses in all aspects of imperialism can make use of this compendium. Virtually every chapter is written with clarity and authority, although I found the sections on China (chapter 16) and India (chapters 18 and 19) of particularly high quality. The list of authors, though mainly British, contains a sprinkling of scholars from the antipodes, North America, and even Egypt. The collection of maps is excellent and illuminating, as are many of the statistical tables, although even more of the latter would have been helpful.	1
This book brings home the remarkable nature of the great empire. Acquired at times in fits of absence of mind as well as for strategic and economic reasons, the weird array of appanages, protectorates, Crown colonies, white dominions, and unique polities such as Ireland, Egypt, and Sarawak composed an astounding array of diverse cultures and races. A thousand languages were spoken in Papua, New Guinea. The French in Quebec and Boers in South Africa were never very successfully assimilated, while a thin crust of officials in tandem with local princes managed the gigantic subcontinent of India with amazing ease. All this is to say nothing of the informal empire that ranged from Thailand to Argentina. The story of Britain's conquests was full of individual heroism, ripping yarns, Brits "gone native," unabashed greed, unexpected humaneness, and utter ruthlessness.	2
The history of imperialism, once painted in triumphalist, racist terms, later became focused on the victimhood of the imperialized. Currently revisionists are taking a more balanced view. Even researchers from former colonies are now pointing to the positive as well as negative aspects of empire. This volume attempts to achieve that balance and is often successful in disposing of myths and totaling up the accounts. Avner Offer's short but effective analysis of the costs and benefits is particularly strong in this regard. He is right to remind us that the course of empire upon which Britain embarked began so early that to imagine counterfactual scenarios is virtually impossible. We must confront reality as it was, untangle the complexities of a system in which many positive achievements abound. Direction from London was often much less effective than imagined, and millions of local inhabitants (not just elites) cooperated with their European overlords in building economies and states that were stronger and more just than anything that already existed or was likely to emerge without external stimulus. This book acknowledges the peculiar ambiguity of an insular people, devoted to political and economic liberty, accepting their role as an authoritarian and dictatorial power, and indeed, playing it with amazing conviction and panache. Though deeply learned, Porter and his colleagues, no more than any others, have been fully able to penetrate this mystery.	3
Tower Hill School, Wilmington, DE   Ellis Archer Wasson

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