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A review by thegrimtidings
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson
3.0
This book is fine if you are reading it with an appreciation for the purpose that I suspect the historian, Ferguson, was aiming for -- which is to say, framing Britain's role in the empire as positively as you possibly could in a modern environment. I won't ruminate on this point too much. Quite simply, you will either find this irritating, or not. If you are the former don't read this. If you are the latter, and are reading to enlighten yourself on the benefits of the empire, well, this book is adequate, but not brilliant.
Firstly this account is more of an overview than anything else. A book just shy of 400 pages could never possibly begin to dive into the complexity of the British Empire (nor most other topics, for that matter). What you have here is a quick, somewhat bumpy ride through the annals of history by a driver with a fairly stable, and yet not entirely trustworthy, grip. He admits his own biases at the start of the book, but as I have said this is not a historical novel that seeks to reinvent the wheel.
The actual benefits of empire isn't discussed as deeply as I hoped - for example there was little technical discussion about changes to legal systems/law enforcement across the Empire - and was largely only talked about in the conclusion. So instead this book is more of a tamed-down chronology of the past, avoiding the worst elements of the Empire while tiptoeing around the best.
What pushes me toward giving this book 3 stars (rather than less) is how Ferguson constructs the narrative. He begins with the early empire and ends with its destruction, but having read a fair amount on this topic I would say he manages to select some of the most crucial elements and retells them concisely, and in a digestible way. As a Dummy's Guide to the British Empire Through the Eyes of a Fairly Sympathetic Brit, which is what the book is really intended to be, it succeeds relatively well. I would cautiously recommend this to anybody who knows nothing about the Empire, and would like to dip a toe into the subject. As a historical account, it is interesting but lacks flavour.
For a detailed dive into the Empire, Jan Morris' Pax Britannica trilogy is the far superior option. Similar to Ferguson, she has a personal involvement with empire and is therefore nostalgic toward elements of it, but while appreciating its motivations and desires, better expresses where it fell short and how some of its lasting impacts have failed in the long-term.
Firstly this account is more of an overview than anything else. A book just shy of 400 pages could never possibly begin to dive into the complexity of the British Empire (nor most other topics, for that matter). What you have here is a quick, somewhat bumpy ride through the annals of history by a driver with a fairly stable, and yet not entirely trustworthy, grip. He admits his own biases at the start of the book, but as I have said this is not a historical novel that seeks to reinvent the wheel.
The actual benefits of empire isn't discussed as deeply as I hoped - for example there was little technical discussion about changes to legal systems/law enforcement across the Empire - and was largely only talked about in the conclusion. So instead this book is more of a tamed-down chronology of the past, avoiding the worst elements of the Empire while tiptoeing around the best.
What pushes me toward giving this book 3 stars (rather than less) is how Ferguson constructs the narrative. He begins with the early empire and ends with its destruction, but having read a fair amount on this topic I would say he manages to select some of the most crucial elements and retells them concisely, and in a digestible way. As a Dummy's Guide to the British Empire Through the Eyes of a Fairly Sympathetic Brit, which is what the book is really intended to be, it succeeds relatively well. I would cautiously recommend this to anybody who knows nothing about the Empire, and would like to dip a toe into the subject. As a historical account, it is interesting but lacks flavour.
For a detailed dive into the Empire, Jan Morris' Pax Britannica trilogy is the far superior option. Similar to Ferguson, she has a personal involvement with empire and is therefore nostalgic toward elements of it, but while appreciating its motivations and desires, better expresses where it fell short and how some of its lasting impacts have failed in the long-term.