Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

by NiallFerguson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.54

  This astoundingly successful, superbly reviewed book vividly recreates the excitement, brutality and adventure of the British Empire. Ferguson's most revolutionary and popular work, EMPIRE is a major reinterpretation of the British Empire as one of the world's greatest modernising forces. It shows on a vast canvas how the British Empire in the 19th Century spearheaded real globalisation with steampower, telegraphs, guns, engineers, missionaries and millions of settlers.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.54

  Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. The most brilliant British historian of his generation...Ferguson examines the roles of pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts in the creation of history's largest empire...he writes with splendid panache...and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit. (Andrew Roberts). Dazzling...wonderfully readable. (New York Review of Books). A remarkably readable precise of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all. (Jan Morris). Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence. (Sunday Times).

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.54

  The British Empire was the biggest empire in all history. At its peak it governed a quarter of the world's land and people and dominated all its seas. Though little now remains of the Empire as a political power, its legacy is all around us. It laid the foundation for the global triumph of capitalism. It gave the world its common language, English. It exported both Protestantism and parliaments. And it defeated a succession of rival empires from the Habsburgs' to Hitler's. In the 21st century another English-speaking superpower seems to bestride the globe. But today's American empire was yesterday's British colony. For better and for worse, the world we now know is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. How did a rainy island in the North Atlantic manage to achieve all this? What were the special factors that enabled Britain to make the modern world - and made the modern world so British? These are the crucial questions addressed by Niall Ferguson in Empire . This was the first age of globalization. But it was, says Ferguson, globalization with gunboats. This text shows how the British wrested power from their rivals by a combination of imitation and intimidation. It shows how mass migration from Britain turned the American and Australian continents white - and how the missionary movement sought to enlighten the dark continents of Africa and Asia. Above all, Empire explains how the British Empire rose - and why it finally fell. Ferguson's answers are controversial but compelling.