The reality of being top dog is that everybody hates you. In this provocative book, noted historian and commentator Jeremy Black shows how criticisms of the legacy of the British Empire are, in part, criticisms of the reality of American power today. He emphasises the prominence of imperial rule in history and in the world today, and the selective way in which certain countries are castigated. Imperial Legacies is a wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future.

Imperial Legacies. The British Empire Around the World is published by Encounter Books (2018). Read more.

Charting the Past. The Historical Worlds of Eighteenth-Century England

Eighteenth-century England was a place of enlightenment and revolution: new ideas abounded in science, politics, transportation, commerce, religion, and the arts. But even as England propelled itself into the future, it was preoccupied with notions of its past. Jeremy Black considers the interaction of history with knowledge and culture in eighteenth-century England and shows how this engagement with the past influenced English historical writing. The past was used as a tool to illustrate the contemporary religious, social, and political debates that shaped the revolutionary advances of the era. Black reveals this “present-centered” historical writing to be so valued and influential in the eighteenth-century that its importance is greatly underappreciated in current considerations of the period. In his customarily vivid and sweeping approach, Black takes readers from print shop to church pew, courtroom to painter’s studio to show how historical writing influenced the era, which in turn gave birth to the modern world.

“There are few better guides to the impact of Empire on these islands and the world than Jeremy Black. These are deeply contested questions but Professor Black is a sure-footed and clear-sighted guide. No debate about our imperial past and its legacy is complete without Professor Black’s brilliant analysis.”

— Michael Gove, Environment Secretary and Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom

“Almost no historical topic more needs the cool eye of academic balance than the legacy of empire. Here sorting out the arguments, half-truths and distortions is Britain’s most prolific historian at the peak of his game.”

“This book succeeds in communicating the dynamics of strategy across a huge canvas in an intelligent, engaging but also an extremely erudite fashion. The author has thought long and hard about many of the key issues, but at the same time does not ignore the crucial importance of definitions, a problem which can be seen in other general works on the same topic. The book has been thoroughly researched, yet at the same time each of the chapters is kept to a manageable (and readable) length.

The book is extensively referenced, including the use of primary sources. The references are virtually a bibliographical essay on much of the recent literature on strategy, which will be extremely valuable to students of the subject.

The great achievement of this book is that it does not only inform the reader of many aspects of the global history of strategy, it encourages readers to think about the subject matter and the historical challenges as they read. This work will be attractive to both university students and the intelligent general reader.

Possibly one of Jeremy Black’s best books to date. In short, I like this book a lot!”

Alaric Searle, Professor of Modern European History, University of Salford, Manchester