Publishers Weekly
05/20/2024
Journalist Sanghera follows up Empireland, his study of how Britain was shaped by its imperial past, with a comprehensive if occasionally off-key look at imperialism’s legacy abroad. Sanghera aims to bridge the “gap” between Britain’s limited sense of its global impact and the former colonies’ far more extreme perceptions of that impact. His position isn’t simply anti-empire; though he comes down in favor of Britain paying reparations and points to ongoing harms (like how international charities continue to finance businesses in former British colonies with indentured servitude–like conditions reminiscent of imperial plantations), he meditates repeatedly on the impossibility of weighing imperialism’s negatives against its positives. Instead, he focuses on establishing a baseline of facts that will help further “dialogue” between Britain and its former colonies. His analysis is fascinating insofar as it delves into the empire’s systemic ramifications, especially in chapters on its agricultural and legal systems. But the argument at times verges on absurdity in its search for balance (“It’s entirely natural that the residents of, say, Jamaica, would be exercised about Britain leaving its population impoverished after slavery, even while they benefit from another imperial legacy such as, say, the introduction of cricket”); this is likely due to the ongoing British “culture war” over scholarly work on this topic, which Sanghera touches on briefly. By turns informative and confounding, this reveals even more about Britain’s present than its past. (May)
From the Publisher
"This brave, painful, urgent and timely book, is not… about 'goodies' or 'baddies'. It is about telling the truth about a nation’s imperial past in all its ambiguity — and creating dialogue between everyone who lays claim to Britishness.”—Jerry Brotton, Financial Times
"A nuanced, complicated account of the British empire’s impact on the world as we know it . . . spells out the complexity of historical assessment with painstaking clarity, showing, repeatedly, the deep entwinement of the positive and negative contributions of empire."—Nandini Das, The Guardian
"This is history with a personal touch . . . today’s history students will have much to ponder . . . there are plenty of new ideas, argued with passion. If Britain wants to move forward as a key player on the world stage, Sanghera demonstrates, we must take time to understand our past ― all warts, and all wonders, considered."—Alice Loxton, Sunday Times (UK)
"A conversation-changing look at the British Empire’s worldwide legacy . . . he’s done his reading. Sanghera is part of a wave of writers and historians changing the terms of debate. This book, with its varied voices and perspectives, widens them further."—Robbie Smith, Evening Standard
"This is history a historian can recognise: a field that demands close study and resists easy generalisation or pat judgments . . . Sanghera’s book admirably marches us into the weeds of peer-reviewed scholarly work."—Quinn Slobodian, New Statesman
"Refined, subtle, accurate, analytical, witty, engaging, and questioning...This book puts Sanghera in the firmament of great imperial historians. Furthermore, his lucid and accessible writing reaches out to those with closed minds. For that he deserves all the accolades he is sure to get."—Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The i (UK)
"Empireworld is an ambitious and valuable conversation starter for a long overdue reckoning with Britain’s colonial past."—The Tablet (UK)
“Empireworld is a smart, illuminating exploration of how England exercised global power to create the world we know today.”—Booklist
“If you thought Empireland was beautifully written, this follow-up takes you even further on an extraordinary, entertaining, and eye-opening journey around the globe.” —Sadiq Khan, mayor of London
“Beautifully written, and not just a welcome corrective but a book for our times. This is essential reading.” —Peter Frankopan, author of The New Silk Road
“Engages in deep research and historical re-analysis. . . . Also a profoundly moving work of personal insight, intelligence, and compassion.” —Elizabeth Day, host of How to Fail
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-02-02
The author of Empireland, which plumbed the legacy of empire in Great Britain, offers a companion book that traces its effect across the world.
Writing to his fellow Britons, British Sikh journalist Sanghera strives to move beyond what he calls “balance-sheet thinking,” in which “the achievements of the British empire [are put] into inane ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories,” and to find nuance and complexity in it. His quest takes him abroad to Delhi (both Old and New), Barbados, Mauritius, and Lagos, with a fascinating sojourn in Kew Gardens, as well as to a “colossal number of history books and articles” that inform his examination. (The bibliography alone occupies nearly 60 pages.) As most readers will expect, the author’s survey of Britain’s imperial legacy includes the scars inflicted by slavery, indenture, and white supremacy, but they may be more surprised at some of his other findings. The time spent at Kew, for instance, yields the insight that the cultivation of non-native flora in colonial plantations had economic reverberations that continue into the present day. This and countless other facts Sanghera highlights are fascinating in their own right. However, to fully understand his argument, readers who are not steeped in imperial assumptions will need to be mindful of his British audience and the fact that abolition, for instance, in the minds of many “balance-sheeters,” somehow compensates for its earlier enslavement of some 3 million Africans. The author’s style is often disarmingly colloquial—“We cannot proffer solutions to the world’s greatest geopolitical problems without acknowledging that we created a bunch of them,” he remarks—a mannerism that amplifies his sincerity. If the scope of his interrogation is vaster and therefore harder to contain than that of his earlier work, his honest attempt to reckon with it is just as compelling.
A worthy, thought-provoking follow-up.
