The British Empire and Commonwealth

The British Empire was an extraordinary and paradoxical entity. North America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australasia and innumerable small islands and territories have been fundamentally shaped - economically, socially and politically - by a nation whose imperial drive came from a bewildering mixture of rapacity and moral zeal, of high-mindedness and viciousness, of strategic cunning and feckless neglect. This account of the rise and fall of the British Empire concentrates on the 19th and 20th centuries, giving the background of the "First British Empire", which was lost with the creation of the United States of America. It relates the importance of the Empire to Britain's success as the only genuine world power in the Victorian era, and its ability to win the two great wars of the 20th century.

ISBN 0333675908   DEWEY edition DC20 ISBN13 9780333675908 (What's this?)   Pages 208 Publisher Palgrave Macmillan   Weight (grammes) 326 Imprint Palgrave Macmillan   Published in Basingstoke Format Paperback   Height (mm) 234 Publication date 18 Oct 1996   Width (mm) 155 Non-book description 203   Spine width (mm) 12 DEWEY 909.0971241   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

Acknowledgements - Maps - From the First to the Second Empire: 1400s to 1830s - The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century - The Heyday of Empire, 1876-1914 - The Empire in War and Peace, 1914-1939 - The Empire and Commonwealth at War, 1939-1945 - Labour and the Empire, 1945-1951 - The End of the Empire - The Commonwealth Today - The Commonwealth: Problems and Perspectives - Selected Bibliography - Index

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