The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997

Piers Brendon's "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 11781 - 1997" certainly will strike well-versed readers as a clever homage to Edward Gibbon's justly celebrated literary landmark on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. While it isn't nearly as vast in scope as Gibbon's work, it does come across as a brilliant bit of historical writing in its own right, tracing the rise and fall of a British Empire that claimed mastery of the world's oceans in the aftermath of the American Revolution and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Over his own broad canvas, Brendon shows how and why the British Empire, regarded by many of its most diehard admirers as a "liberal empire", was truly a substantial contradiction in terms, often promoting both harsh, brutal imperial rule and benevolent "guardianship" to the teeming tens of millions that it ruled in Africa, Asia, North America, and even in the British Isles (referring of course to Ireland). But Brendon doesn't dwell overwhelmingly over the worst aspects of British imperial rule; he often refers to its eventual successes, describing how in the "non-white, non-European" portions of its vast global empire, British subjects, whether Africans, Indians, or Malaysians, eventually learned substantial aspects of democratic rule and a commitment to just rule under well-established law; a political legacy which Great Britain has bequeathed successfully to many of its former colonies throughout the globe. With its ample cast of colorful characters - both European and native non-European - Brendon's book is one of the most intriguing, most engaging, narrative histories I have stumbled upon, and one that is well deserving of a wide readership.

For the even the most casual student of history, no story is more important and relevant than that of the British Empire. Many 'empires' have come and gone, and all have left their mark (good and bad). The romans may have left ancient ruins to mark their passing, but with the British, it seems more of human wreckage was left behind. Some may be unintentional, some not. This book does a balanced and masterful job at making a rather large and potentially difficult to interpret history easy to follow along with and enjoyable to read. I find it interesting that the author decided to start with the revolutionary war, with the battle of Yorktown, a fight that sealed the fate of British forces. Indeed, scholars can argue the point as to the actual time and place the descent of the empire started, but for the lay person: the involvement of personages, the machinations of politics and war, you cannot find a better story teller than Mr Brendon.

Piers Brendon has written a masterpiece on a very important subject, namely:why nations abhor occupation throughout history.To quote Edward Gibbon who said that "there is nothing more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in oppposition to their inclination and interest"-words which also sum up Brendon's argumentations about the British Empire's failure regarding its attempt to subjugate a quarter of the world. The thesis of the author is simple:from its inception, the Brits were doomed to finish- sooner or later- their brutal occupation on hundreds of millions.True, they were not alone;other countries such as France, Spain, Portugal, Holland have also experimented with oppressing others in the name of white man's (supposed)civilization.The will to force and enforce their mentality upon others is not something new :it had its origins in ancient history via the Roman Empire, which crumbled after a thousand years. The British thought that by imposing their manners, language, education and culture on other peoples they would succeed where others had failed.They were excruciatingly wrong.Not only were they mocked, spit upon,underestimated,despised,but they were also ridiculed and brought to farcical situations. Read this wonderful book and will will enjoy each sentence and page of it. Brendon is extremely skilled with words, and his opus has plenty of vignettes ,metaphors, anecdotes and lots of humour.Add all these to his vivid language and well- structured chapters containing depictions of folly and decadence, irony and devastation and will immediately want to re-read this superb piece of history. Brendon is describing the atrocities perpetrated by the British in many instances, such as the Amritsar butchery- all this in the name of progress and Western ideals.His twenty-two chapters are treated both chronologically and are divided thematically by the respective countries where the British had ruled. It is a pity that the editor did not include some maps showing the inexperienced reader where many exotic places are to be found. The only conclusion the reader comes after reading this book is that occupation of others is a crime against humanity-no matter where, when and how.The human race has always aspired for freedom and there was not, is not,and will never be a force in history to alter this. In short: this book will be the ultimate reference source, the alpha and omega of the decline and fall of the British Empire for years to come. This is a masterpiece with thousands of eccentricities and odd fellows swimming throughout its pages.Enjoy!

Piers Brendon was not being whimsical when he titled this book after Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike Americans, who never considered themselves imperialists, the British took their imperial duties seriously. The sons and daughters of empire saw themselves as present-day Romans. They were steeped in the classics, they learned the languages of their subject peoples, and they prepared to spend many years abroad in the service of the Crown. Brendon makes the case (as did Niall Ferguson in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire) that they saw themselves on a civilizing mission, that their empire - unlike Rome's - was a liberal empire. The British Empire would be a caretaker government until the locals were deemed capable of self-government. The conflicting goals of developing self-government and maintaining loyalty to the Crown manifest themselves often during this period in the form of uprisings and rebellions. The story begins with the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington at Yorktown in 1781 and ends with the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Ironically, the British thought that their empire had started to decline with the loss of the colonies in America, instead their most glorious - or most infamous - days were still ahead of them. After the Napoleonic Wars, the other European powers were greatly weakened. For the British the years from 1815 to 1914 were indeed the British Century. The Empire reached its apex during the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. It was an Empire on which the sun never set, consisting of a quarter of the world's population and habitable land. Being an inherently contradictory enterprise, liberal empire naturally had its seamy side. Brendon does not shy away from recounting the exploitation, racism, brutality, and the massacres that occurred. There was the Indian Rebellion, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the uprising in Ceylon in 1818, to name a few of the most brutal. In other words, Brendon presents enough evidence of violence and tragedy in this book to disabuse anyone of the merits of trying to impose a liberal empire. The question of which side was civilized and which side was savage comes to mind often. That being said, Brendon paints some memorable portraits of the larger-than-life characters that animated the Empire. He seems especially fond of the Victorians in all their excesses. There were the arch-imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes, Lord Cromer, Kitchener, HM Stanley (and Dr Livingstone, I presume) with their outsized views of themselves. There were also colorful literati such as Rudyard Kipling, Richard Burton, and Joseph Conrad who were great travelers, as well as great writers. This book is well worth reading as the endgame of the British empire is still unraveling today. Many of ongoing conflicts being played out today in Pakistan, India, Iraq, Isreal, Palestine, etc. were to some degree set in motion when the British f

The message of Piers Brendon's magnificent history of the British Empire is that its fall was inevitable and that that is the fate of all other empires, past and future. Because empires are founded on brutality and illegitimacy, says Brendon, their fault lines in the end prove too great. Brendon starts his account of the British Empire's fall with defeat at Yorktown in the American War of Independence - more than a century before the Empire reached its geographical apogee - because it was in America that the trust between Britain and its colonial peoples was first undermined. He carries on through the watershed of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and the 19th-century colonisation of Africa. The First World War badly shook the edifice, the Second World War sent it crashing down: in the two decades following 1945 Britain went from an empire of 700m people to one with very few subjects indeed. Something of Brendon's ambition can be seen in his Gibbon-echoing title and it's not hubris: this is a wonderful piece of narrative history. [...]