Britain’s Imperial Histories

Military historian Jeremy Black continues his review of the global context of martial conflict and spatial conquest into the modern era (16th-20th centuries), focusing on the British empire and its lasting effect on this landscape. Black offers a representation of the ＂imperial experience＂ that is eye-opening for a generation of readers who associate this with a strictly negative connotation. But the notion of an empire is not understood at all if this is true. Indeed, not only is there ＂no one type of empire, no prototype,＂ the basis of empire is much more ’order’ than it is ’invasion.’ Furthermore, reflecting on the unavoidable cultural and sociological symbiosis and transfer, Black makes the case that in all instances of influence and encounter, sameness between peoples never results. But how does one distinguish influence from control? What are the long-term benefits among peoples? ＂To many today, empire might seem obvious: governors with ostrich-feathers in their colonial garb ruling non-White peoples; but this scarcely describes the situation across time and place.＂

Why did the European empires ultimately fall? When approaching this question, Britain’s Imperial Histories proposes that the perspective of ＂making and remaking of the international system＂ be made distinct from the ＂rational pursuit of power and wealth and the use of technology.＂ As seen in earlier work, Black’s brilliance is centered in his capacity to incorporate the complexity of war and its battles in his assessments, while never neglecting the fact that wars themselves have specific and broad contexts that must be read thoroughly.

Another highlight of the present work includes more insight into the British-American relationship and American political identity. ＂If the British empire is blamed for many of the aspects of modernization and globalization, is also serves as a way of offering historical depth to a critique of American power.＂ Yet he is also adept at drawing in Asia into the study and does so with uncommon acumen. This book provides an approach to history that has been neglected, especially in the New World, and connects the present to the past with a kind of hermeneutical responsibility that has been of late abandoned.

Jeremy Black is emeritus professor of history (University of Exeter) and prolific writer in the areas of eighteenth-century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history. He is also a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (Philadelphia). His Weight of Words Series with St. Augustine’s Press includes The Importance of Being Poirot (2021), Defoe’s Britain (2024), and The Age of Nightmare (20240. His writing on war includes Infantry: A Global History (Pen and Sword, 2023), A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps (University of Chicago Press, 2020), A Short History of War (Yale University Press, 2021), and The Civil War (St. Augustine’s Press, 2025).