Britain's Empire Resistance, Repression and Revolt

by Gott, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781844670673
• ISBN10: 1844670678
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-13
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

This revelatory new history punctures the still widely held belief that the British Empire was an enlightened and civilizing enterprise of great benefit to its subject peoples. Instead, Britain's Empire reveals a history of systemic repression and almost continual violence, showing how British rule was imposed as a military operation and maintained as a military dictatorship. For colonized peoples, the experience was a horrific one-of slavery, famine, battle and extermination. Yet, as Richard Gott illustrates, the empire's oppressed peoples did not go gently into that good night. Wherever Britain tried to plant its flag, there was resistance. From Ireland to India, from the American colonies to Australia, Gott chronicles the backlash. He shows, too, how Britain provided a blueprint for the genocides of twentieth-century Europe, and argues that its past leaders must rank alongside the dictators of the twentieth century as the perpetrators of crimes against humanity on an infamous scale. In tracing this history of resistance, all but lost to modern memory, Richard Gott recovers these forgotten peoples and puts them where they deserve to be: at the heart of the story of Britain's empire.

Author Biography

Richard Gott is a former Latin America correspondent and features editor for the Guardian. A specialist in Latin American affairs, his books include Cuba: A New History, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America, The Appeasers (with Martin Gilbert), Land Without Evil, Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, and Britain’s Empire. He is currently an honorary research fellow at the institute for the study of the Americas at the University of London.