Those of us who went to school before our past was rewritten as a catalog of the White Man’s crimes were taught that empire—with all its vices and virtues—was built by monarchs and statesmen. In ...

A book about the history of the British Empire elicits certain expectations. That it might begin with, say, the arrival of Europeans in Asia or America; that the bulk of it would be devoted to ...

On a cloud-spackled Sunday last June, protesters in Bristol, England, gathered at a statue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century slave trader on whose watch more than eighty thousand Africans were ...

Histories of imperialism, especially the European imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries, were long dominated by purportedly neutral accounts that sanitized the often bloody practice. More ...

If you enjoy audio books and you're interested in history, here is the first in a series of recommended books, based on what I have listened to in the past several years. All of these books are, in my ...

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. By Geoffrey Wheatcroft LEGACY OF VIOLENCE A History of the British Empire By Caroline Elkins This ...

For anti-colonial thinkers of the last century, decolonization was not a mere transfer of power. It was about reparation, including repair of the self. “Decolonization is the veritable creation of new ...

In a bold new history, Sven Beckert traces the origins of our modern economy, from global port cities to the halls of power.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Matthew J. Smith, director of the Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London, about the commonwealth's complicated history. The ...

British colonials with a pet cheetah in Secunderabad, India, 1906. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images) In 2005, Britain’s then–Labour chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, chose the backdrop of ...

This porcelain pot with enamel decorations is one of 100 teapots on display in the Met's updated British Galleries. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, 1940 ...