British Colonialism

Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

The Sunday Times Bestseller A new assessment of the West’s colonial record In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’ – that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now however, with...

In this book, we explore British Colonialism in India, a history of oppression and exploitation, whilst celebrating the contributions that the diaspora and its descendants have made to British society. We explore the origins of the British East India Company, navigating through the dark history of a struggle for independence. On the way we meet Mahatma Gandhi, and recognize his significance in the fight for independence, before we discuss the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. We conclude with Indian emigration to the UK, and the history of the modern-day British Indian.

“For the last hundred years, Western colonialism has had a bad name.” So began Professor Bruce Gilley’s watershed academic article, “The Case for Colonialism,” of 2017. The article sparked a global furor. Critics and defenders of Gilley’s argument battled it out in the court of public opinion. The Times of London described Gilley as “probably the academic most likely to be no-platformed in Britain.” The New York Times called him one of the “panicky white bros” who “proclaim ever more rowdily that the (white) West was, and is, best” and are “busy recyclers of Western supremacism.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), the founder of the Vietminh and President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was the archetypical Communist and anti-colonial revolutionary of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the formation of the French, Chinese, and Vietnamese Communist movements and fought successfully against Japanese, French and American imperialism, becoming a hate-figure of the American state during the Vietnam War

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE By a prize-winning young historian, an authoritative work that reframes the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of British empire, and emergence of industrial capitalism by presenting them as...

The epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and the human costs and contradictions of modern empire. The Congo-Océan railroad stretches across the Republic of Congo from Brazzaville to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noir. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony, and it...

Brought to you by Penguin. The British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Much of it still sits in museums, galleries and private collections today, accompanied by calm labels and polite plaques. The reality, however, is far messier. The British Museum alone holds eight million objects, many taken in...

China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer—and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field—with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Inglorious Empire written and read by Shashi Tharoor. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. The Empire blew rebels from cannon...