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John Darwin

Biography

John Darwin

John Darwin is a University Lecturer and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He writes history and his books include BRITAIN AND DECOLONIZATION AND THE END OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE and AFTER TAMERLANE: the Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000.

John Darwin

Books by John Darwin

by John Darwin - History, Nonfiction

Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. UNFINISHED EMPIRE is a nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function.