Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power

The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of World War II, around a quarter of the world's land surface was under some form of British rule. Yet for today's generation, the British Empire seems a Victorian irrelevance. The time is ripe for a reappraisal, and in Empire, Niall Ferguson boldly recasts the British Empire as one of the world's greatest modernizing forces.An important new work of synthesis and revision, Empire argues that the world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain's Age of Empire. The spread of capitalism, the communications revolution, the notion of humanitarianism, and the institutions of parliamentary democracy-all these can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain's economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth. On a vast and vividly colored canvas, Empire shows how the British Empire acted as midwife to modernity.Displaying the originality and rigor that have made him the brightest light among British historians, Ferguson shows that the story of the Empire is pregnant with lessons for today-in particular for the United States as it stands on the brink of a new era of imperial power, based once again on economic and military supremacy. A dazzling tour de force, Empire is a remarkable reappraisal of the prizes and pitfalls of global empire.

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• Civilization: The West and the Rest
• The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction
• A Brief History of the Human Race
• Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire
• The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
• The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die
• The House of Rothschild
• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
• The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall