eBook

The Trouble with Empire

Burton, Antoinette

2015,2017

Overview

While imperial blockbusters fly off the shelves, there is no comprehensive history dedicated to resistance in the 19th and 20th century British Empire. The Trouble with Empire is the first volume to fill this gap, offering a brief but thorough introduction to the nature and consequences of resistance to British imperialism. Historian Antoinette Burton's study spans the 19th and 20th centuries, when discontented subjects of empire made their unhappiness felt from Ireland to Canada to India to Africa to Australasia, in direct response to incursions of military might and imperial capitalism. The Trouble with Empire offers the first thoroughgoing account of what British imperialism looked like from below and of how tenuous its hold on alien populations was throughout its long, unstable life. By taking the long view, moving across a variety of geopolitical sites and spanning the whole of the period 1840-1955, Burton examines the commonalities between different forms of resistance and unveils the structural weaknesses of the British Empire. From the Indian Mutiny of 1857 to the Anglo-Zulu War to the Opium War, The Trouble with Empire reveals the often-overlooked indigenous agency throughout the British empire and illuminates the limits of imperial power, both official and unofficial.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subject: Anti-imperialist movements - Great Britain - History - 20th century / Anti-imperialist movements -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century / General history of Europe England & Wales / Great Britain -- Colonies -- History / Imperialism -- History -- 19th century / Imperialism -- History -- 20th century
• ISBN: 0199936617, 9780199936618, 9780199936601, 0199936609, 9780190858551, 0190858559