Britain’s Empires: A History, 1600-2020

A history of the many different British Empires - the Old Colonial System (1600-1776), the Empire of Free Trade (1776-1870), the New Imperialism (1870-1945), Decolonisation (1945-1990) and the era of humanitarian intervention (1990-2020). Britain’s Empires aims to tell the story of the colonial past as one marked by change and reinvention.

James Heartfield wrote The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Who’s Afraid of the Easter Rising? The Equal Opportunities Revolution and many other books; he is a long-standing campaigner for social justice.