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  • Published: 9 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241691809
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Empireworld

How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe




A ground-breaking exploration of how British empire has shaped the world we live in today from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Empireland

2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, and even shaping the origins of international law. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. ­­

In Empireworld, award-winning author and journalist, Sathnam Sanghera extends his examination of British imperial legacies beyond Britain. Travelling the globe to trace its international legacies - from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond - Sanghera demonstrates just how deeply British imperialism is baked into our world. And why it's time Britain was finally honest with itself about empire.

  • Published: 9 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9780241691809
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

About the author

Sathnam Sanghera

Sathnam Sanghera was born in 1976. He is an award-winning writer for The Times. His first book, The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Biography Award and the 2009 PEN/Ackerley Prize and named 2009 Mind Book of the Year. Marriage Material is his first novel, and has been shortlisted for the 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature and the 2013 Costa First Novel Award.

Also by Sathnam Sanghera

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Praise for Empireworld

Engages in deep research and historical re-analysis . . . also a profoundly moving work of personal insight, nuance, intelligence and compassion. Empireworld is a crucial addition to our understanding of the contradictions and legacies of colonial rule

Elizabeth Day

This is a ground-breaking and eye-opening book, that everyone should read. Written with wit, nuance and academic rigour; it is a long overdue look at Empire and its effect on the world

Kavita Puri

Essential and absorbing reading for those not afraid to encounter diligently researched, complex, and often contradictory truths about colonial rule and its legacies

Professor Alan Lester

Once again, Sathnam Sanghera has advanced the civil conversation we all need to have about empire and its legacies

Jonathan Coe

A remarkable and important work - one that is finely judged, beautifully written and not just a welcome corrective but a book for our times. This is essential reading

Peter Frankopan

This is history with a personal touch . . . today’s history students will have much to ponder . . . there are plenty of new ideas, argued with passion. If Britain wants to move forward as a key player on the world stage, Sanghera demonstrates, we must take time to understand our past — all warts, and all wonders, considered

Alice Loxton, The Sunday Times

A powerful sequel

The Irish Independent

This is history a historian can recognise: a field that demands close study and resists easy generalisation or pat judgments . . . Sanghera’s book admirably marches us into the weeds of peer-reviewed scholarly work

Quinn Slobodian, The New Statesman

One of my favourite writers and Empireworld is a must read if you want to understand the world

Greg James, BBC Radio

If you thought Empireland was beautifully written – this follow up takes you even further – on an extraordinary, entertaining and eye-opening journey around the globe

Sadiq Khan

This brave, painful, urgent and timely book, is not, in other words, about 'goodies' or 'baddies'. It is about telling the truth about a nation’s imperial past in all its ambiguity — and creating dialogue between everyone who lays claim to Britishness

Jerry Brotton, The Financial Times

Refined, subtle, accurate, analytical, witty, engaging, and questioning . . . this book puts Sanghera in the firmament of great imperial historians. Furthermore, his lucid and accessible writing reaches out to those with closed minds. For that he deserves all the accolades he is sure to get

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The i

An absolute masterpiece

James O'Brien

Empireworld is an ambitious and valuable conversation starter for a long overdue reckoning with Britain’s colonial past

The Tablet

Another smart, compassionate and essential book about the legacy of Empire and our braided histories

Meera Syal

His writing on empire and colonialism will change how you understand modern Britain

Bella Mackie

A nuanced, complicated account of the British empire’s impact on the world as we know it . . . spells out the complexity of historical assessment with painstaking clarity, showing, repeatedly, the deep entwinement of the positive and negative contributions of empire

Nandini Das, Guardian

A conversation-changing look at the British Empire’s worldwide legacy . . . he’s done his reading. Sanghera is part of a wave of writers and historians changing the terms of debate. This book, with its varied voices and perspectives, widens them further

Robbie Smith, Evening Standard

A thoughtful and balanced book that rejects totting up the pluses and minuses of empire. He points out there’s something very odd about saying on the one hand we massacred people in Amritsar and empowered the slave-trade, and on the other hand we built railway lines and opened universities. What he tries to do is give a much richer, fuller picture of its different dimensions. A wonderful book

Rory Stewart