The British Empire (book review of 2 books)

Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present, (NY: Basic Books, 1996)

As the dates of these two books demonstrate, the topic of the British Empire - and empires in general - has recently gained interest among the academic community and the history-reading public. More and more scholars are doing comparative and cross-cultural works as opposed to simply European History or Asian or African or Latin American history by itself. As they should. If the study of history is to have real meaning for today, it must in some way be relevant to today's current events. As one of them remains the effects of post-imperialism, the study of imperialism and its history will remain an important way for many to make some sense out of current day events.

For such a purpose, the above books read in tandem do a wonderful job. While Denis Judd's work is more scholarly and thus more restrained in opinion and balanced, Lawrence James offers a wonderful narrative that has been absent from most scholarly history for the past generation or so. Rather than compete with each other, the two books complement each other well.

Denis Judd's book, The British Imperial Experience, 1765 to the present, starts with the twin events of 1765 that he argues would have ominous results for the ensuing empire experience: the passage of the Stamp Acts which would play a pivotal role in the American War of Independence (a.k.a. Revolutionary War) and the appointment of Sir Robert Clives, a 19 year old British officer, as tax collector of the Indian province of Bengal. The first precipitated the most serious challenge ever to the concept of empire: the Declaration of Independence's assertion that "All men are created equal..." [1]; the second began the near two centuries of direct rule of the Indian subcontinent, "the crown jewel" of the British Empire.

In a series of 26 chapters, each focusing on a particular event or person, Denis Judd narrates through two centuries of the British Empire. While I found this narrative approach very innovative, it was also at times a bit heavy reading. By contrast, Lawrence James writes with a more sweeping and accessible style, but even that was sometimes grating. While I would like to believe, as James does, that the British Empire was, by and large, a positive experience for both the British and the colonized, indigeneous peoples, I found myself tempered by the harsh realities posed by Denis Judd's account. While James does have a point, to a degree, that "Britain's empire was a moral force and one for the good...", and that "few empires have equipped their subjects with the intellectual wherewithal to overthrow their rulers..." [2], I find this hard to reconcile with the unfortunate massacre at Amitsar, India in 1919 of over 400 innocent civilians by British soldiers. How is the deliberate shooting of innocent men, women and children being "a moral force and one for the good..."? Whereas James ends with such a romantic statement, Denis Judd prefers to end with a simple, but ambiguous "...the British did their best..." [3]

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