Seven books about a fraught subject that influences many of today’s political debates
. Surveying the empire at work in countries such as Burma , Sudan and Iraq, Mr Kwarteng shows just what a haphazard enterprise it really was, “a series of improvisations, conducted by men who shared a common culture, but who often had very different ideas about government and administration”. British imperialism came in lots of varieties, so its legacies were also diverse.Scribe; 336 pages; $17.95. Penguin; £10.
There is nothing dispassionate about this book, by Shashi Tharoor, an MP for the Congress party, which governed India for decades after independence. Provoked by claims that British rule brought benefits to India—democracy, the rule of law and political unity—the author demolishes them one by one in a polemic argued at full pelt. He acknowledges some positive consequences of British rule but argues, rightly, that these were merely “by-products” of that rule.
Austria-Hungary is the only European empire that has come to be studied as much for its achievements as for its iniquities. Assembled largely through dynastic marriages and treaties,dominated central Europe for centuries. Yet it collapsed quickly at the end of the first world war, giving way to successor states such as Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
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