Historiography of the British Empire

Historians led by Eli Heckscher have identified Mercantilism as the central economic policy for the empire before the shift to free trade in the 1840s.[25][26] Mercantilism is an economic theory practice, commonly used in Britain, France and other major European nations from the 16th to the 18th century that promoted governmental regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. It was the economic counterpart of political absolutism.[27][28] It involves a national economic policy aimed at accumulating monetary reserves through a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from the 16th to late-18th centuries. Mercantilism was a cause of frequent European wars and also motivated colonial expansion.

High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, are an almost universal feature of mercantilist policy. Other policies have included:[29]

• Building overseas colonies;
• Forbidding colonies to trade with other nations;
• Monopolizing markets with staple ports;
• Banning the export of gold and silver, even for payments;
• Forbidding trade to be carried in foreign ships;
• Export subsidies;
• Promoting manufacturing with research or direct subsidies;
• Limiting wages;
• Maximizing the use of domestic resources;
• Restricting domestic consumption with non-tariff barriers to trade.

The term "mercantile system" was used by its foremost critic Adam Smith.[30]

Mercantilism in its simplest form was bullionism which focused on accumulating gold and silver through clever trades (leaver the trading partner with less of his gold and silver). Mercantilist writers emphasized the circulation of money and rejected hoarding. Their emphasis on monetary metals accords with current ideas regarding the money supply, such as the stimulative effect of a growing money supply. In England, mercantilism reached its peak during the Long Parliament government (1640–1660). Mercantilist policies were also embraced throughout much of the Tudor and Stuart periods, with Robert Walpole being another major proponent. In Britain, government control over the domestic economy was far less extensive than on the Continent, limited by common law and the steadily increasing power of Parliament.[31] Government-controlled monopolies were common, especially before the English Civil War, but were often controversial.[32]

The Anglo-Dutch Wars were fought between the English and the Dutch for control over the seas and trade routes.

With respect to its colonies, British mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants – and kept others out – by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm. The government used the Royal Navy to protect the colonies and to fight smuggling – which became a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch.[33] The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country (not the colonists).[34]

Mercantilism helped create trade patterns such as the triangular trade in the North Atlantic, in which raw materials were imported to the metropolis and then processed and redistributed to other colonies.

British mercantilist writers were themselves divided on whether domestic controls were necessary. British mercantilism thus mainly took the form of efforts to control trade. Much of the enforcement against smuggling was handled by the Royal Navy, argued Neil Stout.[35] A wide array of regulations was put in place to encourage exports and discourage imports. Tariffs were placed on imports and bounties given for exports, and the export of some raw materials was banned completely. The Navigation Acts expelled foreign merchants from England's domestic trade. The nation aggressively sought colonies and once under British control, regulations were imposed that allowed the colony to only produce raw materials and to only trade with Britain. This led to smuggling by major merchants and political friction with the businessmen of these colonies. Mercantilist policies (such as forbidding trade with other empires and controls over smuggling) were a major irritant leading to the American Revolution.[36]

Mercantilism taught that trade was a zero-sum game with one country's gain equivalent to a loss sustained by the trading partner. Whatever the theoretical weaknesses exposed by economists after Adam Smith, it was under mercantilist policies before the 1840s that Britain became the world's dominant trader, and the global hegemon.[37] Mercantilism in Britain ended when Parliament repealed the Navigation Acts and Corn Laws by 1846.[38]

Scholars agree that Britain gradually dropped mercantilism after 1815. Free trade, with no tariffs and few restrictions, was the prevailing doctrine from the 1840s to the 1930s.[39]

John Darwin has explored the way historians have explained the large role of the Royal Navy and the much smaller role of the British Army in the history of the empire. For the 20th century, he explores what he calls a "pseudo-empire," oil producers in the Middle East. The strategic goal of protecting the Suez Canal was a high priority from the 1880s to 1956 and, by then, had expanded to the oil regions. Darwin argues that defence strategy posed issues of how to reconcile the needs of domestic politics with the preservation of a global Empire.[40] Darwin argues that a main function of the British defence system, especially the Royal Navy, was defence of the overseas empire (in addition of course to defence of the homeland).[41] The army, usually in co-operation with local forces, suppressed internal revolts, losing only the American War of Independence (1775–83).[42] Armitage considers the following to be the British creed:

Protestantism, oceanic commerce and mastery of the seas provided bastions to protect the freedom of inhabitants of the British Empire. That freedom found its institutional expression in Parliament, the law, property, and rights, all of which were exported throughout the British Atlantic world. Such freedom also allowed the British, uniquely, to combine the classically incompatible ideals of liberty and empire.[43]

Lizzie Collingham (2017) stresses the role of expanding the food supply in the building, financing and defending the trade aspect of empire-building.[44]

The first British Empire centered on the 13 American Colonies, which attracted large numbers of settlers from across Britain. In the 1900s - 1930s period the "Imperial School," including Herbert L. Osgood, George Louis Beer,[45] Charles M. Andrews and Lawrence Gipson[46] took a favourable view of the benefits of empire, emphasizing its successful economic integration.[47]

Regarding Columbia University historian Herbert L. Osgood (1855–1918), biographer Gwenda Morgan concludes:

Osgood brought a new sophistication to the study of colonial relations posing the question from an institutional perspective, of how the Atlantic was bridged. He was the first American historian to recognize the complexity of imperial structures, the experimental character of the empire, and the contradictions between theory and practice that gave rise, on both sides of the Atlantic, to inconsistencies and misunderstandings ... It was American factors rather than imperial influences that in his view shaped the development of the colonies. Osgood's work still has value for professional historians interested in the nature of the colonies' place in the early British Empire, and their internal political development.[48]

Much of the historiography concerns the reasons the Americans revolted in the 1770s and successfully broke away. The "Patriots", an insulting term used by the British that was proudly adopted by the Americans, stressed the constitutional rights of Englishmen, especially "No taxation without representation." Historians since the 1960s have emphasized that the Patriot constitutional argument was made possible by the emergence of a sense of American nationalism that united all 13 colonies. In turn, that nationalism was Rooted in a Republican value system that demanded consent of the governed and opposed aristocratic control.[49] In Britain itself, republicanism was a fringe view since it challenged the aristocratic control of the British political system. There were (almost) no aristocrats or nobles in the 13 colonies, and instead, the colonial political system was based on the winners of free elections, which were open to the majority of white men. In the analysis of the coming of the Revolution, historians in recent decades have mostly used one of three approaches.[50]

The Atlantic history view places the American story in a broader context, including revolutions in France and Haiti. It tends to reintegrate the historiographies of the American Revolution and the British Empire.[51][52][53]

The "new social history" approach looks at community social structure to find cleavages that were magnified into colonial cleavages.

The ideological approach that centres on republicanism in the United States.[54] Republicanism dictated there would be no royalty, aristocracy or national church but allowed for continuation of the British common law, which American lawyers and jurists understood and approved and used in their everyday practice. Historians have examined how the rising American legal profession adapted British common law to incorporate republicanism by selective revision of legal customs and by introducing more choice for courts.[55][56]

Historians agree that in the 1840s, Britain adopted a free-trade policy, meaning open markets and no tariffs throughout the empire.[81] The debate among historians involves what the implications of free trade actually were. "The Imperialism of Free Trade" is a highly influential 1952 article by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson.[82][83] They argued that the New Imperialism of the 1880s", especially the Scramble for Africa, was a continuation of a long-term policy in which informal empire, based on the principles of free trade, was favoured over formal imperial control. The article helped launch the Cambridge School of historiography. Gallagher and Robinson used the British experience to construct a framework for understanding European imperialism that swept away the all-or-nothing thinking of previous historians.[84] They found that European leaders rejected the notion that "imperialism" had to be based upon formal, legal control by one government over a colonial region. Much more important was informal influence in independent areas. According to Wm. Roger Louis, "In their view, historians have been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas outside the formal British Empire. Key to their thinking is the idea of empire 'informally if possible and formally if necessary.'"[85] Oron Hale says that Gallagher and Robinson looked at the British involvement in Africa where they, "found few capitalists, less capital, and not much pressure from the alleged traditional promoters of colonial expansion. Cabinet decisions to annex or not to annex were made, usually on the basis of political or geopolitical considerations."[86]

Reviewing the debate from the end of the 20th century, historian Martin Lynn argues that Gallagher and Robinson exaggerated the impact. He says that Britain achieved its goal of increasing its economic interests in many areas, "but the broader goal of 'regenerating' societies and thereby creating regions tied as 'tributaries' to British economic interests was not attained." The reasons were:

the aim to reshape the world through free trade and its extension overseas owed more to the misplaced optimism of British policy-makers and their partial views of the world than to an understanding of the realities of the mid-19th century globe ... the volumes of trade and investment...the British were able to generate remained limited ... Local economies and local regimes proved adept at restricting the reach of British trade and investment. Local impediments to foreign inroads, the inhabitants' low purchasing power, the resilience of local manufacturing, and the capabilities of local entrepreneurs meant that these areas effectively resisted British economic penetration.[87]

The idea that free-trade imperial states use informal controls to secure their expanding economic influence has attracted Marxists trying to avoid the problems of earlier Marxist interpretations of capitalism. The approach is most often applied to American policies.[88]

Historians have begun to explore some of the ramifications of British free-trade policy, especially the effect of American and German high tariff policies. Canada adopted a "national policy" of high tariffs in the late 19th century, in sharp distinction to the mother country. The goal was to protect its infant manufacturing industries from low-cost imports from the United States and Britain.[89][90] The demand increasingly rose in Great Britain to end the free trade policy and impose tariffs to protect its manufacturing from American and German competition.[91] The leading spokesman was Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) and he made "tariff reform" (that is, imposing higher tariffs) a central issue in British domestic politics.[92] By the 1930s the British began shifting their policies away from free trade and toward low tariffs inside the British Commonwealth, and higher tariffs for outside products. Economic historians have debated at length the impact of these tariff changes on economic growth. One controversial formulation by Bairoch argues that in the 1870–1914 era: "protectionism = economic growth and expansion of trade; liberalism = stagnation in both".[93] Many studies have supported Bairoch but other economists have challenged his results regarding Canada.[94]

Gentlemanly capitalism is a theory of New Imperialism first put forward by P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins in the 1980s before being fully developed in their 1993 work, British Imperialism.[95] The theory posits that British imperialism was driven by the business interests of the City of London and landed interests. It encourages a shift of emphasis away from seeing provincial manufacturers and geopolitical strategy as important influences, and towards seeing the expansion of empire as emanating from London and the financial sector.[96][97]

English historian Jeremy Black argues that:

Slavery and the slave trade are the most difficult and contentious aspect of the imperial legacy, one that captures the full viciousness of power, economic, political, and military, and that leaves a clear and understandable hostility to empire in the Atlantic world, Moreover, within Britain, slavery and the slave trade became and become, ready ways to stigmatize empire, and increasingly so, notably as Britain becomes a multiracial society. [104]

One of the most controversial aspects of the Empire is its role in first promoting and then ending slavery.[105] In the 18th century, British merchant ships were the largest element in the "Middle Passage", which transported millions of slaves to the Western Hemisphere. Most of those who survived the journey wound up in the Caribbean, where the Empire had highly profitable sugar colonies, and the living conditions were bad (the plantation owners lived in Britain). Parliament ended the international transportation of slaves in 1807 and used the Royal Navy to enforce that ban. In 1833, it bought out the plantation owners and banned slavery. Historians before the 1940s argued that moralistic reformers such as William Wilberforce were primarily responsible.[106]

Historical revisionism arrived when West Indian historian Eric Williams, a Marxist, in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), rejected this moral explanation and argued that abolition was now more profitable, as a century of sugar cane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable. It was more profitable to sell the slaves to the government than to keep up operations. The 1807 prohibition of the international trade, Williams argued, prevented French expansion on other islands. Meanwhile, British investors turned to Asia, where labor was so plentiful that slavery was unnecessary. Williams went on to argue that slavery played a major role in making Britain prosperous. The high profits from the slave trade, he said, helped finance the Industrial Revolution. Britain enjoyed prosperity because of the capital gained from the unpaid work of slaves.[107]

Since the 1970s, numerous historians have challenged Williams from various angles, and Gad Heuman has concluded, "More recent research has rejected this conclusion; it is now clear that the colonies of the British Caribbean profited considerably during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars."[108][109] In his major attack on the Williams's thesis, Seymour Drescher argues that Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 resulted not from the diminishing value of slavery for Britain but instead from the moral outrage of the British voting public.[110] Critics have also argued that slavery remained profitable in the 1830s because of innovations in agriculture so the profit motive was not central to abolition.[111] Richardson (1998) finds that Williams's claims regarding the Industrial Revolution are exaggerated, as profits from the slave trade amounted to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain. Richardson further challenges claims (by African scholars) that the slave trade caused widespread depopulation and economic distress in Africa but that it caused the "underdevelopment" of Africa. Admitting the horrible suffering of slaves, he notes that many Africans benefited directly because the first stage of the trade was always firmly in the hands of Africans. European slave ships waited at ports to purchase cargoes of people who were captured in the hinterland by African dealers and tribal leaders. Richardson finds that the "terms of trade" (how much the ship owners paid for the slave cargo) moved heavily in favour of the Africans after about 1750. That is, indigenous elites inside West and Central Africa made large and growing profits from slavery, thus increasing their wealth and power.[112]

Economic historian Stanley Engerman finds that even without subtracting the associated costs of the slave trade (shipping costs, slave mortality, mortality of British people in Africa, defence costs) or reinvestment of profits back into the slave trade, the total profits from the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the British economy during any year of the Industrial Revolution.[113] Engerman's 5% figure gives as much as possible in terms of benefit of the doubt to the Williams argument, not solely because it does not take into account the associated costs of the slave trade to Britain, but also because it carries the full-employment assumption from economics and holds the gross value of slave trade profits as a direct contribution to Britain's national income.[114] Historian Richard Pares, in an article written before Williams's book, dismisses the influence of wealth generated from the West Indian plantations upon the financing of the Industrial Revolution, stating that whatever substantial flow of investment from West Indian profits into industry there was occurred after emancipation, not before it.[115]

University of Lucknow founded by the British in 1867 in India

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was the foremost historian of his day, arguing for the "Whig interpretation of history" that saw the history of Britain as an upward progression always leading to more liberty and more progress. Macaulay simultaneously was a leading reformer involved in transforming the educational system of India. He would base it on the English language so that India could join the mother country in a steady upward progress. Macaulay took Burke's emphasis on moral rule and implemented it in actual school reforms, giving the British Empire a profound moral mission to civilize the natives.

Paul Bogle, a Baptist deacon, was hanged for leading the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica, 1865

Yale professor Karuna Mantena has argued that the civilizing mission did not last long, for she says that benevolent reformers were the losers in key debates, such as those following the 1857 rebellion in India, and the scandal of Governor Edward Eyre's brutal repression of the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica in 1865. The rhetoric continued but it became an alibi for British misrule and racism. No longer was it believed that the natives could truly make progress, instead they had to be ruled by heavy hand, with democratic opportunities postponed indefinitely. As a result:

The central tenets of liberal imperialism were challenged as various forms of rebellion, resistance and instability in the colonies precipitated a broad-ranging reassessment ... the equation of 'good government' with the reform of native society, which was at the core of the discourse of liberal empire, would be subject to mounting skepticism."[116]

English historian Peter Cain, has challenged Mantena, arguing that the imperialists truly believed that British rule would bring to the subjects the benefits of ‘ordered liberty’. thereby Britain could fulfill its moral duty and achieve its own greatness. Much of the debate took place in Britain itself, and the imperialists worked hard to convince the general population that the civilising mission was well underway. This campaign served to strengthen imperial support at home, and thus, says Cain, to bolster the moral authority of the gentlemanly elites who ran the Empire.[117]

Mark Harrison argues that the history of public health administration in India dates from the assumption of Crown rule in 1859. Medical experts found that epidemic disease had seriously depleted the fighting capacity of British troops in repressing the rebellion in 1857 and insisted that preventive measures were much more effective than waiting for the next epidemic to break out.[118] Across the Empire it became a high priority for Imperial officials to establish a public health system in each colony. They applied the best practices as developed in Britain, using an elaborate administrative structure in each colony. The system depended on trained local elites and officials to carry out the sanitation improvements, quarantines, inoculations, hospitals, and local treatment centers that were needed. For example, local midwives were trained to provide maternal and infant health care. Propaganda campaigns using posters, rallies, and later films were used to educate the general public.[119] A serious challenge came from the intensified use of multiple transportation routes and the emergence of central hubs such as Hong Kong all of which facilitated this spread of epidemics such as the plague in the 1890s, thus sharply increasing the priority of public health programs.[120] Michael Worboys argues that the 20th-century development and control of tropical diseases had three phases: protection of Europeans in the colonies, improvement in health care of employable natives, and finally the systematic attack on the main diseases of the natives. BELRA, a large-scale program against leprosy, had policies of isolation in newly established leper colonies, separation of healthy children from infected parents, and the development in Britain of chaulmoogra oil therapy and its systematic dissemination.[121][122]

Danald McDonald has argued the most advanced program in public health (apart from the dominions) was established in India, with the Indian Medical Service (IMS).[123] The Raj set up the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine between 1910 and its opening in 1921 as a postgraduate center for tropical medicine on the periphery of the Empire.[124][125]

In the 18th century, and even more so in the 19th century, missionaries based in Britain saw the Empire as a fertile field for proselytizing for Christianity. Congregations across Britain received regular reports and contributed money.[126] All the main denominations were involved, including the Church of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the Nonconformists. Much of the enthusiasm emerged from the Evangelical revival.[127][128][129] The two largest and most influential operations were the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) founded in 1701,[130] and the more evangelical Church Mission Society, founded in 1799, also by the Church of England.[131]

Before the American Revolution, Anglican and Methodist missionaries were active in the 13 Colonies. The Methodists, led by George Whitefield, were the most successful according to Mark Noll. After the revolution an entirely distinct American Methodist denomination emerged that became the largest Protestant denomination in the new United States.[132] As historians such as Carl Bridenbaugh have argued, a major problem for colonial officials was the demand of the Church of England to set up an American bishop; this was strongly opposed by most of the Americans.[133] Increasingly colonial officials took a neutral position on religious matters, even in those colonies such as Virginia where the Church of England was officially established, but in practice controlled by laymen in the local vestries. After the Americans broke free, British officials decided to enhance the power and wealth of the Church of England in all the settler colonies, especially British North America (Canada).[134]

Missionary societies funded their own operations that were not supervised or directed by the Colonial Office. Tensions emerged between the missionaries and the colonial officials. The latter feared that missionaries might stir up trouble or encourage the natives to challenge colonial authority. In general, colonial officials were much more comfortable with working with the established local leadership, including the native religions, rather than introducing the divisive force of Christianity. This proved especially troublesome in India, were very few local elites were attracted to Christianity. In Africa, especially, the missionaries made many converts. By the 21st century there were more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England.[135][136]

Christianity had a powerful effect far beyond the small circle of converts—it provided a model of modernity. The introduction of European medicine was especially important, as well as the introduction of European political practices and ideals such as religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, colonial reforms, and especially liberal democracy.[137] Increasingly the missionaries realized their wider scope and systematically added secular roles to their spiritual mission. They tried to upgrade education, medical care, and sponsored the long-term modernization of the native personality to inculcate European middle-class values. Alongside their churches they established schools and medical clinics, and sometimes demonstrated improved farming techniques.[138] Christian missionaries played a public role, especially in promoting sanitation and public health. Many were trained as physicians, or took special courses in public health and tropical medicine at Livingstone College, London.[139]

Furthermore, Christian missionary activities were studied and copied by local activists and had an influence upon religious politics, on prophetic movements such as those in Xhosa societies, on emerging nationalism in South African and India, the emergence of African independent churches, and sometimes upgrading the status of native women.[140]

Historians have begun to analyze the agency of women in overseas missions. At first, missionary societies officially enrolled only men, but women increasingly insisted on playing a variety of roles. Single women typically worked as educators. Wives assisted their missionary husbands in most of his roles. Advocates stopped short of calling for the end of specified gender roles, but they stressed the interconnectedness of the public and private spheres and spoke out against perceptions of women as weak and house-bound.[141]

In the colonies that became dominions, education was left primarily in the hands of local officials. The Imperial government took a strong hand in India, and most of the later colonies. The goal was to speed up modernization and social development through a widespread system of elementary education for all natives, plus high school and eventually university education for selected elites. The students were encouraged to attend university in Britain.[142][143]

Much of the older historiography, as represented by The Cambridge History of the British Empire, covers the detailed month-to-month operations of the Imperial bureaucracy. More recent scholarship has examined who the bureaucrats and governors were, as well as the role of the colonial experience on their own lives and families. The cultural approach asks how bureaucrats represented themselves and enticed the natives to accept their rule.[144]

Wives of senior bureaucrats played an increasingly important role in dealing with the local people, and in sponsoring and promoting charities and civic good will. When they returned to Britain they had an influential voice in shaping upper-class opinion toward colonization. Historian Robert Pearce points out that many colonial wives had a negative reputation, but he depicts Violet Bourdillon (1886–1979) as "the perfect Governor's wife." She charmed both British businessmen and the locals in Nigeria, giving the colonial peoples graciousness and respect; she made the British appear to be not so much rulers, as guides and partners in social, economic and political development.[145]

Some British colonies were ruled directly by the Colonial Office in London, while others were ruled indirectly through local rulers who are supervised behind the scenes by British advisors, with different economic results as shown by Lakshmi Iyer (2010).

In much of the Empire, large local populations were ruled in close cooperation with the local hierarchy. Historians have developed categories of control, such as "subsidiary alliances", "paramountcy", "protectorates", "indirect rule", "clientelism", or "collaboration". Local elites were co-opted into leadership positions, and often had the role of minimizing opposition from local independence movements.[146]

Fisher has explored the origins and development of the system of indirect rule. The British East India Company starting in the mid-18th century stationed its staff as agents in Indian states which it did not control, especially the Princely States. By the 1840s The system became an efficient way to govern indirectly, by providing local rulers with highly detailed advice that had been approved by central authorities. After 1870, military more and more often took the role; they were recruited and promoted officers on the basis of experience and expertise. The indirect rule system was extended to Many of the colonial holdings in Asia and Africa.[147]

Economic historians have explored the economic consequences of indirect rule, as in India[148] and West Africa.[149]

In 1890 Zanzibar became a protectorate (not a colony) of Britain. Prime minister Salisbury explained his position:

The condition of a protected dependency is more acceptable to the half civilised races, and more suitable for them than direct dominion. It is cheaper, simpler, less wounding to their self-esteem, gives them more career as public officials, and spares of unnecessary contact with white men.[150]

Colonel Sir Robert Groves Sandeman (1835–1892) introduced an innovative system of tribal pacification in Balochistan that was in effect from 1877 to 1947. He gave financial allowances to tribal chiefs who enforced control, and used British military force only when necessary. However the Government of India generally opposed his methods and refused to allow it to operate in India's North West Frontier. Historians have long debated its scope and effectiveness in the peaceful spread of Imperial influence.[151]

Although environmental history was growing rapidly after 1970, it only reached empire studies in the 1990s.[152][153][154] Gregory Barton argues that the concept of environmentalism emerged from forestry studies, and emphasizes the British imperial role in that research. He argues that imperial forestry movement in India around 1900 included government reservations, new methods of fire protection, and attention to revenue-producing forest management. The result eased the fight between romantic preservationists and laissez-faire businessmen, thus giving the compromise from which modern environmentalism emerged.[155]

In recent years numerous scholars cited by James Beattie have examined the environmental impact of the Empire.[156] Beinart and Hughes argue that the discovery and commercial or scientific use of new plants was an important concern in the 18th and 19th centuries. The efficient use of rivers through dams and irrigation projects was an expensive but important method of raising agricultural productivity. Searching for more efficient ways of using natural resources, the British moved flora, fauna and commodities around the world, sometimes resulting in ecological disruption and radical environmental change. Imperialism also stimulated more modern attitudes toward nature and subsidized botany and agricultural research.[157] Scholars have used the British Empire to examine the utility of the new concept of eco-cultural networks as a lens for examining interconnected, wide-ranging social and environmental processes.[158]

In 1914 the six volume The Oxford Survey Of The British Empire gave comprehensive coverage to geography and society of the entire Empire, including the British Isles.[159]

Since the 1950s, historians have tended to concentrate on specific countries or regions.[160] By the 1930s, an Empire so vast was a challenge for historians to grasp in its entirety. The American Lawrence H. Gipson (1880–1971) won the Pulitzer Prize for his monumental coverage in 15 volumes of "The British Empire Before the American Revolution", published 1936–70.[46] At about the same time in London, Sir Keith Hancock wrote a Survey of Commonwealth Affairs (2 vol 1937–42) that dramatically widened the scope of coverage beyond politics to the newer fields of economic and social history.[161]

In recent decades numerous scholars have tried their hand at one volume surveys including T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1995 (1996); Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience From 1765 To The Present (1998); Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1998); Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002); Brendan Simms, Three victories and a defeat: the rise and fall of the first British Empire (2008); Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997 (2008), and Phillip J. Smith, The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire: Mercantilism, Diplomacy and the Colonies (2015).[162] There were also large-scale popular histories, such as those by Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vol. 1956–58) and Arthur Bryant, The History of Britain and the British Peoples (3 vols. 1984–90). Obviously from their titles a number of writers have been inspired by the famous The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols 1776–1781) by Edward Gibbon.[163] Brendon notes that Gibbon's work, "became the essential guide for Britons anxious to plot their own imperial trajectory. They found the key to understanding the British Empire in the ruins of Rome."[164] W. David McIntyre, The commonwealth of nations: Origins and impact, 1869–1971 (University of Minnesota Press, 1977) provides comprehensive coverage giving London's perspective on political and constitutional relations with each possession.

Ireland, in some ways the first acquisition the British Empire, has generated a very large popular and scholarly literature.[165] Marshall says historians continue to debate whether Ireland should be considered part of the British Empire.[166] Recent work by historians pays special attention to continuing Imperial aspects of Irish history,[167] postcolonial approaches,[168] Atlantic history,[169] and the role of migration in forming the Irish diaspora across the Empire and North America.[170][171][172]

Until the late 20th century, historians of Australia used an Imperial framework, arguing that Australia emerged from a transfer of people, institutions, and culture from Britain. It portrayed the first governors as "Lilliputian sovereigns". The historians have traced the arrival of limited self-government, with regional parliaments and responsible ministers, followed by Federation in 1901 and eventually full national autonomy. This was a Whiggish story of successful growth into a modern nation. That interpretation has been largely abandoned by recent scholars.[173] In his survey of the historiography of Australia, Stuart Macintyre shows how historians have emphasized the negative and tragic features between the boasts.[173] Macintyre points out that in current historical writing:

The process of settlement is now regarded as a violent invasion of a rich and subtle indigenous culture, the colonists' material practices as destructive of a fragile environment, their aesthetic response to it blinkered and prejudiced, the cultivation of some British forms timid and unresponsive.[174]

The first major history was William Charles Wentworth, Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land: With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration, and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America (1819).[175] Wentworth shows the disastrous effects of the penal regime. Many other historians followed his path, with the six volume History of Australia by Manning Clark (published 1962–87) telling the story of "epic tragedy":

in which the explorers, Governors, improvers, and perturbators vainly endeavored to impose their received schemes of redemption on an alien, intractable setting.[176]

Since the 1980s a "history war" has been fought in Australia by scholars and politicians.[177] They angrily debate the concept of genocide in the treatment of Aboriginal populations.[178] They debate how "British" or "multicultural" Australia has been historically, and how it should be today.[179][180] The rhetoric has escalated into national politics, often tied to the question of whether the royalty should be discarded and Australia become a republic.[181] There have been angry statements by those adhering to the older pro-British position. Interest in the study of Australian history has plunged, and some schools and universities have sharply cut it back.[182]

Historians have used the founding of Australia to mark the beginning of the Second British Empire.[183] It was planned by the government in London and designed as a replacement for the lost American colonies.[184] The American Loyalist James Matra in 1783 wrote "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American Loyalists, Chinese and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts).[185] Matra reasoned that the land country was suitable for plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco; New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities; it could form a base for Pacific trade; and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists. At the suggestion of Secretary of State Lord Sydney, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the Individual". The government adopted the basics of Matra's plan in 1784, and funded the settlement of convicts.[186]

Michael Roe argues that the founding of Australia supports the theory of Vincent T. Harlow in The Founding of the Second British Empire, 17G3-1793, Vol. 2. New Continents and Changing Values (1964) that a goal of the second British empire was to open up new commerce in the Far East and Pacific. However, London emphasized Australia's purpose as a penal colony, and the East India Company was hostile to potential commercial rivals. Nevertheless, says Roe, the founders of Australia showed a keen interest in whaling, sealing, sheep raising, mining and other opportunities for trade. In the long run, he says, commerce was the main stimulus for colonization.[187]

Canadian historian Carl Berger argues that an influential section of English Canadians embraced an ideology of imperialism as a way to enhance Canada's own power position in the international system, as well as for more traditional reasons of Anglophillia. Berger identified Canadian imperialism as a distinct ideology, rival to anti-imperial Canadian nationalism or pro-American continentalism, the other nationalisms in Canada.[188]

For the French Canadians, the chief debate among historians involves the conquest and the incorporation into the British Empire in 1763.[189] One school says it was a disaster that retarded for a century and more the normal development of a middle class society, leaving Quebec locked into a traditionalism controlled by priests and landlords.[190] The other more optimistic school says it was generally advantageous in political and economic terms. For example, it enabled Quebec to avoid the French Revolution that tore France apart in the 1790s. Another example is that it integrated the economy into the larger and faster growing British economy, as opposed to the sluggish French economy. The optimistic school attributes the backwardness of the Quebec economy to deeply ingrained conservatism and aversion to entrepreneurship.[191][192]

In recent decades there have been four main schools of historiography in how historians study India: Cambridge, Nationalist, Marxist, and subaltern. The once common "Orientalist" approach, with its image of a sensuous, inscrutable, and wholly spiritual India, has died out in serious scholarship.[193]

The "Cambridge School", led by Anil Seal,[194] Gordon Johnson,[195] Richard Gordon, and David A. Washbrook,[196] downplays ideology.[197] However, this school of historiography is criticised for western bias or Eurocentrism.[198]

The Nationalist school has focused on Congress, Gandhi, Nehru and high level politics. It highlighted the Mutiny of 1857 as a war of liberation, and Gandhi's 'Quit India' begun in 1942, as defining historical events. This school of historiography has received criticism for Elitism.[199]

The Marxists have focused on studies of economic development, landownership, and class conflict in precolonial India and of deindustrialisation during the colonial period. The Marxists portrayed Gandhi's movement as a device of the bourgeois elite to harness popular, potentially revolutionary forces for its own ends. Again, the Marxists are accused of being "too much" ideologically influenced.[200]

The "subaltern school", was begun in the 1980s by Ranajit Guha and Gyan Prakash.[201] It focuses attention away from the elites and politicians to "history from below", looking at the peasants using folklore, poetry, riddles, proverbs, songs, oral history and methods inspired by anthropology. It focuses on the colonial era before 1947 and typically emphasises caste and downplays class, to the annoyance of the Marxist school.[202]

More recently, Hindu nationalists have created a version of history to support their demands for "Hindutva" ("Hinduness") in Indian society. This school of thought is still in the process of development.[203] In March 2012, Diana L. Eck in her India: A Sacred Geography (2013) argues that the idea of India dates to a much earlier time than the British or the Mughals and it was not just a cluster of regional identities and it wasn't ethnic or racial.[204][205][206] [207]

Debate continues about the economic impact of British imperialism on India. The issue was actually raised by conservative British politician Edmund Burke who in the 1780s vehemently attacked the East India Company, claiming that Warren Hastings and other top officials had ruined the Indian economy and society. Indian historian Rajat Kanta Ray (1998) continues this line of attack, saying the new economy brought by the British in the 18th century was a form of "plunder" and a catastrophe for the traditional economy of Mughal India. Ray accuses the British of depleting the food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the terrible famine of 1770, which killed a third of the people of Bengal.[208]

Rejecting the Indian nationalist account of the British as alien aggressors, seizing power by brute force and impoverishing all of India, British historian P. J. Marshall argues that the British were not in full control but instead were players in what was primarily an Indian play and in which their rise to power depended upon excellent cooperation with Indian elites. Marshall admits that much of his interpretation is still rejected by many historians.[209] Marshall argues that recent scholarship has reinterpreted the view that the prosperity of the formerly benign Mughal rule gave way to poverty and anarchy. Marshall argues the British takeover did not make any sharp break with the past. The British largely delegated control to regional Mughal rulers and sustained a generally prosperous economy for the rest of the 18th century. Marshall notes the British went into partnership with Indian bankers and raised revenue through local tax administrators and kept the old Mughal rates of taxation. Professor Ray agrees that the East India Company inherited an onerous taxation system that took one-third of the produce of Indian cultivators.[210]

In the 20th century historians generally agreed that imperial authority in the Raj had been secure in the 1800-1940 era. Various challenges have emerged. Mark Condos and Jon Wilson argue that the Raj was chronically insecure.[211][212] They argue that the irrational anxiety of officials led to a chaotic administration with minimal social purchase or ideological coherence. The Raj was not a confident state capable of acting as it chose, but rather a psychologically embattled one incapable of acting except in the abstract, the small scale, or short term.[213]

The first historical studies appeared in the 1890s, and followed one of four approaches. The territorial narrative was typically written by a veteran soldier or civil servant who gave heavy emphasis to what he had seen. The "apologia" were essays designed to justify British policies. Thirdly, popularizers tried to reach a large audience, and finally compendia appeared designed to combine academic and official credentials. Professional scholarship appeared around 1900, and began with the study of business operations, typically using government documents and unpublished archives. The economic approach was widely practiced in the 1930s, primarily to provide descriptions of the changes underway in the previous half-century. Reginald Coupland, an Oxford professor, studied the Exploitation of East Africa, 1856–1890: The Slave Trade and the Scramble (1939). The American historian William L. Langer wrote The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890–1902 (1935), a book is still widely cited. The Second World War diverted most scholars to wartime projects and accounted for a pause in scholarship during the 1940s.[214]

By the 1950s, many African students were studying in British universities, and they produced a demand for new scholarship, and started themselves to supply it as well. Oxford University became the main center for African studies, with activity as well at Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. The perspective from British government policy-makers or from international business operations, slowly gave way to a new interest in the activities of the natives, especially in a nationalistic movements and the growing demand for independence. The major breakthrough came from Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, especially with their studies of the impact of free trade on Africa.[214][215]

The historiography of South Africa has been one of the most contentious areas of the British Empire, involving a three-way division of sharply differing interpretations among the British, the Boers, and the black African historians.[216][217] The first British historians emphasized the benefits of British civilization.[218] Afrikaner historiography began in the 1870s with early laudatory accounts of the trekkers and undisguised anger at the British. After many years of conflict and warfare, the British took control of South Africa and historians began conciliatory effort to bring the two sides together in a shared history. An influential large-scale effort was made by George McCall Theal (1837-1919), who wrote many books as school teacher and as the official historian, such as History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi (11 vol, 1897–1919). In the 1920s, historians using missionary sources started presenting the Coloured and African viewpoints, as in W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton: The Making of the South African Native Problem (London, 1929). Modern research standards were introduced by Eric A. Walker (1886–1976), who moved from a professorship at the University of Cape Town to become the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge, where he trained a generation of graduate students.[219] Afrikaner historiography increasingly defended apartheid.[220]

The dominant approach in recent decades is to emphasize the roots of the liberation movement.[221] Baines argues that the "Soweto uprising" of 1976 inspired a new generation of social historians to start looking for evidence that would allow the writing of history "from below"; often they adopted a Marxist perspective.[222]

By the 1990s, historians were exploring comparative race relations in South Africa and the United States from the late 19th century to the late 20th century.[223] James Campbell argues that black American Methodist missionaries to South Africa adopted the same standards of promoting civilization as did the British.[224][225]

The studies of policy-making in London and the settlement colonies like Canada and Australia are now rare. Newer concerns deal with the natives,[4] and give much more attention to native leaders such as Gandhi.[254] They address topics such as migration,[255] gender,[256] race,[257] sexuality,[258] environmentalism,[259] visualization,[260] and sports.[261] Thus there are entire chapters on economics, religion, colonial knowledge, agency, culture, and identity in the historiographical overview edited by Sarah E. Stockwell, The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008).[262] The new approaches to imperial history are often grouped together under the heading of the "new imperial history".[263] These approaches have been distinguished by two features. Firstly, they have suggested that the British empire was a cultural project as well as a set of political and economic relationships. As a result, these historians have stressed the ways in which empire building shaped the cultures of both colonized peoples and Britons themselves.

In particular they have shown the ways in which British imperialism rested upon ideas about cultural difference and in turn how British colonialism reshaped understandings of race and gender in both the colonies and at home in Britain. Mrinalini Sinha's Colonial Masculinity (1995) showed how supposed British manliness and ideas about the effeminacy of some Indians influenced colonial policy and Indian nationalist thought.[264] Antoinette Burton has been a key figure and her Burdens of History (1995) showed how white British feminists in the Victorian period appropriated imperialist rhetoric to claim a role for themselves in 'saving' native women and thereby strengthened their own claims to equality in Britain.[265] Historians like Sinha, Burton, and Catherine Hall have used this approach to argue that British culture at 'home' was profoundly shaped by the empire during the 19th century.[266]

The second feature that defines the new imperial history is its examination of the links and flows that connected different parts of the empire together. At first scholars looked at the empire's impact on domestic Britain, particularly in terms of everyday experiences. More recently, attention has been paid to the material, emotional, and financial links among the different regions.[267] Both Burton and Sinha stress the ways in which the politics of gender and race linked Britain and India. Sinha suggested that these linkages were part of an "imperial social formation", an uneven but integrative set of arguments, ideas and institutions that connected Britain to its colonies.[268] More recent work by scholars such as Alan Lester and Tony Ballantyne have stressed the importance of the networks that made up the empire. Lester's Imperial Networks (2001) reconstructed some of the debates and policies that linked Britain and South Africa during the 19th century.[269] Ballantyne's Orientalism and Race developed an influential new model for writing about colonialism in highlighting the "webs of empire" that he suggested made up the empire. These webs were made up of the flows of ideas, books, arguments, money, and people that not only moved between London and Britain's colonies, but also moved directly from colony to colony, from places like India to New Zealand.[270] Many historians now focus on these "networks" and "webs" and Alison Games has used this as a model for studying the pattern of early English imperialism as well.[271]

The major multi-volume multi-author coverage of the history of the British Empire is the Oxford History of the British Empire (1998–2001), five-volume set, plus a companion series.[272] Douglas Peers says the series demonstrates that, "As a field of historical inquiry, imperial history is clearly experiencing a renaissance."[273]

Max Beloff, reviewing the first two volumes in History Today, praised them for their readability and was pleased that his worry that they would be too anti-imperialist had not been realised.[274] Saul Dubow in H-Net noted the uneven quality of the chapters in volume III and also the difficulty of such an endeavour give the state of historiography of the British Empire and the impossibility of maintaining a triumphalist tone in the modern era. Dubow also felt that some of the authors had tended "to 'play safe', awed perhaps by the monumental nature of the enterprise".[275]

Madhavi Kale of Bryn Mawr College, writing in Social History, also felt that the history took a traditional approach to the historiography of the empire and placed the English, and to a lesser extent the Scottish, Irish and Welsh at the centre of the account, rather than the subject peoples of the empire. Kale summed up her review of volumes III-V of the history by saying it represented "a disturbingly revisionist project that seeks to neutralize ... the massive political and military brutality and repression" of the empire.[276]

A major unexpected development came after 1980 with a flood of fresh and innovative books and articles from scholars trained in non-British perspectives. Many had studied Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the dominions. The new perspective strengthened the field rather than destroying it. Further imaginative approaches, which occasioned sharp debates, came from literary scholars especially Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as anthropologists, feminists,[277] and other newcomers. Longtime experts suddenly confronted the strange new scholarship with theoretical perspectives such as post-structuralism and post-modernism. The colonial empire was becoming "postcolonial."[278][279] Instead of painting the globe red any more, the Empire's history became part of a new global history.[280] New maps were drawn emphasizing the oceans more than the land masses, yielding new perspectives such as Atlantic history."[281][282]

• Bayly, C. A. ed. Atlas of the British Empire (1989). survey by scholars; heavily illustrated
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• Brendon, Piers. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 (2008), wide-ranging survey
• Bryant, Arthur. The History of Britain and the British Peoples, 3 vols (1984–90), popular.
• Dalziel, Nigel. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire (2006), 144 pp.
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• Howe, Stephen ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (2009) online review
• Jackson, Ashley. The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction (2013) excerpt.
• James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1998). A one-volume history of the Empire, from the American colonies to the Handover of Hong Kong; also online
• Knaplund, Paul. The British empire, 1815–1939 (1941), very wide-ranging; online free to borrow
• Marshall, P. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996). online
• Olson, James S., and Robert S. Shadle; Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (1996) online edition
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• Belich, James. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1780-1930 (Oxford University Press, 2009), 448 pp.; focus on British settlement colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, emphasizing the heavy British investments involved
• Black, Jeremy. The British Seaborne Empire (2004)
• Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (2nd edn 2001 online 739 pp.; detailed economic history that presents the new "gentlemanly capitalists" thesis;
• Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (2004), 464 pp.
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• Judd, Denis. Empire: The British Imperial Experience, From 1765 to the Present (1996).
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• Stockwell, Sarah, ed. The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008), 355 pp.

• Louis, William. Roger (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols (1998–99).
  • Vol. 1 "The Origins of Empire" ed. Nicholas Canny online
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  • Vol. 4 The Twentieth Century ed. Judith M. Brown (1998). 773 pp. online edition
  • Vol. 5 "Historiography", ed. Robin W. Winks (1999) online

• Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes, eds. Environment and Empire (2007)
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• August, Thomas G. The Selling of the Empire: British and French Imperialist Propaganda, 1890-1940 (1985)
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• Broich, John. "Engineering the Empire: British Water Supply Systems and Colonial Societies, 1850-1900." Journal of British Studies 2007 46(2): 346-365. ISSN 0021-9371 Fulltext: at Ebsco
• Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (U of North Carolina Press, 1994).
• Chaudhuri, Nupur. "Imperialism and Gender." in Encyclopedia of European Social History, edited by Peter N. Stearns, (vol. 1, 2001), pp. 515-521. online
• Clayton, Martin. and Bennett Zon. Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s (2007) excerpt and text search
• Constantine, Stephen (2003). "British Emigration to the Empire-commonwealth since 1880: from Overseas Settlement to Diaspora?". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 31 (2): 16–35. doi:10.1080/03086530310001705586. S2CID 162001571.
• Finn, Margot (2006). "Colonial gifts: Family politics and the exchange of goods in British India, c. 1780-1820" (PDF). Modern Asian Studies. 40 (1): 203–231. doi:10.1017/s0026749x06001739.
• Hall, Catherine, and Sonya O. Rose. At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (2007)
• Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (2002)
• Hodgkins, Christopher. Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature (U of Missouri Press, 2002) online edition
• Hyam, Ronald. Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (1990).
• Karatani, Rieko. Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth, and Modern Britain (2003) online edition
• Kuczynski, Robert R. Demographic survey of the British Colonial Empire (1 vol 1948) vol 1 West Africa online; also vol 2 East Africa online
• Lassner, Phyllis. Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire (2004) online edition
• Lazarus, Neil, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (2004)
• Levine, Philippa, ed. Gender and Empire'. Oxford History of the British Empire (2004).
• McDevitt, Patrick F. May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880-1935 (2004).
• Midgley, Clare. Feminism and Empire: women activists in imperial Britain, 1790–1865 (Routledge, 2007)
• Morgan, Philip D. and Hawkins, Sean, ed. Black Experience and the Empire (2004).
• Morris, Jan. The Spectacle of Empire: Style, Effect and Pax Britannica (1982).
• Naithani, Sadhana. The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics (2010)
• Newton, Arthur Percival. The Universities And Educational Systems Of The British Empire (1924) online
• Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (2004)
• Potter, Simon J. News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System. Clarendon, 2003
• Price, Richard. "One Big Thing: Britain, its Empire, and Their Imperial Culture." Journal of British Studies 2006 45(3): 602-627. ISSN 0021-9371 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Price, Richard. Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa 2008.
• Rubinstein, W. D. Capitalism, Culture, and Decline in Britain, 1750-1990 (1993),
• Rüger, Jan. "Nation, Empire and Navy: Identity Politics in the United Kingdom 1887-1914" Past & Present 2004 (185): 159-187. ISSN 0031-2746 online
• Sauerberg, Lars Ole. Intercultural Voices in Contemporary British Literature: The Implosion of Empire (2001) online edition
• Sinha, Mrinalini, "Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century" (1995)
• Smith, Michelle J., Clare Bradford, et al. From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literature, 1840-1940 (2018) excerpt
• Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (1993).
• Trollope, Joanna. Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire (1983).
• Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part I: India." History of Education 34#3 (2005): 315-329.
  • Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire." History of Education 34#4 (2005): 441-454.
• Wilson, Kathleen. The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (2003).
• Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (2004)
• Wilson, Kathleen (2011). "Rethinking the Colonial State: Family, Gender, and Governmentality in Eighteenth-Century British Frontiers". American Historical Review. 116 (5): 1294–1322. doi:10.1086/ahr.116.5.1294.
• Xypolia, Ilia. British Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, 1923-1939:Divide, Define and Rule. Routledge, 2017

• Bailyn, Bernard. Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (1991) excerpt and text search
• Bruckner, Phillip. Canada and the British Empire (The Oxford History of the British Empire) (2010) excerpt and text search doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199563746.001.0001 online
• Elliott, J.H., Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (2006), a major interpretation excerpt and text search
• Kenny, Kevin, ed. Ireland and the British Empire (2004).
• Landsman, Ned. Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America (2010) excerpt and text search
• Lees, Lynn Hollen. Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1786-1941 (2017).
• Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (2001).
• Louis, William Roger. The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (1984) online edition
• Marshall, Peter, and Glyn Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution (1980) online edition
• Taylor, Alan. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (2010), on War of 1812
• Veevers, David. The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750 (2020) excerpt.

• Adams, James Truslow (1927). "On the Term 'British Empire'". American Historical Review. 22 (3): 485–459. JSTOR 1837801.
• Armitage, David (1999). "Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Analysis?". American Historical Review. 104 (2): 427–445. doi:10.2307/2650373. JSTOR 2650373.
• Bailkin, Jordanna (2015). "Where Did the Empire Go? Archives and Decolonization in Britain". American Historical Review. 120 (3): 884–899. doi:10.1093/ahr/120.3.884.
• Ballantyne, Tony (2010). "The Changing Shape of the Modern British Empire and its Historiography". Historical Journal. 53 (2): 429–452. doi:10.1017/s0018246x10000117.
• Barone, Charles A. Marxist Thought on Imperialism: Survey and Critique (1985)
• Bowen, Huw V (1998). "British Conceptions of Global Empire, 1756–83". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 26 (3): 1–27. doi:10.1080/03086539808583038.
• Black, Jeremy. Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World (Encounter Books, 2019) excerpt.
• Buckner, Phillip. "Presidential Address: Whatever happened to the British Empire?" Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada (1993) 4#1 pp. 3–32. online
• Burnard, Trevor (2007). "Empire Matters? The Historiography of Imperialism in Early America, 1492–1830". History of European Ideas. 33 (1): 87–107. doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.08.011. S2CID 143511493.
• Burton, Antoinette and Isabel Hofmeyr, eds. Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons (2014) excerpt
• Cannadine, David, "'Big Tent' Historiography: Transatlantic Obstacles and Opportunities in Writing the History of Empire", Common Knowledge (2005) 11#3 pp. 375–392 at Project Muse
• Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2002)
• Cannadine, David. "The Empire Strikes Back", Past & Present No. 147 (May, 1995), pp. 180–194
• Cannadine, David. Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (2018)
• Colley, Linda. "What Is Imperial History Now?" in David Cannadine, ed. What Is History Now? (2002), 132–147.
• Drayton, Richard. "Where does the world historian write from? Objectivity, moral conscience and the past and present of imperialism". Journal of Contemporary History 2011; 46#3 pp. 671–685. online
• Dumett, Raymond E. ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (1999) online
• Elton, G. R. Modern Historians on British History 1485–1945: A Critical Bibliography 1945–1969 (1969), annotated guide to 1000 history books on every major topic, plus book reviews and major scholarly articles. online
• Fieldhouse, David (1984). "Can Humpty‐Dumpty be put together again? Imperial history in the 1980s". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 12 (2): 9–23. doi:10.1080/03086538408582657.
• Fieldhouse, David K. "'Imperialism': An Historiographical Revision". Economic History Review 14#2 (1961): 187–209.
• Ghosh, Durba. "Another set of imperial turns?". American Historical Review 2012; 117#3 pp: 772–793. online
• Griffin, Patrick. "In Retrospect: Lawrence Henry Gipson's The British Empire before the American Revolution" Reviews in American History, 31#2 (2003), pp. 171–183 in JSTOR
• Hyam, Ronald (2001). "The study of imperial and commonwealth history at Cambridge, 1881–1981: Founding fathers and pioneer research students". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 29 (3): 75–103. doi:10.1080/03086530108583128. S2CID 161602517.
• Hyam, Ronald. Understanding the British Empire (2010), 576pp; essays by Hyam.
• Johnson David, and Prem Poddar, eds. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English (Columbia UP, 2005).
• Kennedy, Dane (2015). "The Imperial History Wars". Journal of British Studies. 54 (1): 5–22. doi:10.1017/jbr.2014.166.
• Lieven, Dominic. Empire: The Russian empire and its rivals (Yale UP, 2002), comparisons with Russian, Habsburg & Ottoman empires. excerpt
• MacKenzie, John M (2015). "The British Empire: Ramshackle or Rampaging? A Historiographical Reflection". Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 43 (1): 99–124. doi:10.1080/03086534.2015.997120. S2CID 161901237.
• Morris, Richard B. "The Spacious Empire of Lawrence Henry Gipson," William and Mary Quarterly, (1967) 24#2 pp. 170–189 at JSTOR; covers the "Imperial School" of Americanscholars, 1900–1940s
• Peers, Douglas M (2002). "Is Humpty Dumpty back together again?: The revival of imperial history and the Oxford History of the British Empire". Journal of World History. 13 (2): 451–467. doi:10.1353/jwh.2002.0049. S2CID 144790936.
• Pocock, J. G. A. (1982). "The Limits and Divisions of British History: In Search of the Unknown Subject". American Historical Review. 87 (2): 311–336. doi:10.2307/1870122. JSTOR 1870122.
• Prakash, Gyan (1990). "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 32 (2): 383–408. doi:10.1017/s0010417500016534. JSTOR 178920.
• Philips, Cyril H. ed. Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (1961), reviews the older scholarship
• Rasor, Eugene L. Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography (2000) 712pp online at Questio; also online free
• Shaw, A. G. L. (1969). "British Attitudes to the Colonies, Ca. 1820-1850". Journal of British Studies. 9 (1): 71–95. doi:10.1086/385581. JSTOR 175168.
• Stern, Philip J (2009). "History and Historiography of the English East India Company: Past, Present, and Future". History Compass. 7 (4): 1146–1180. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2009.00617.x.
• Syriatou, Athena (2013). "National, Imperial, Colonial and the Political: British Imperial Histories and their Descendants" (PDF). Historein. 12: 38–67. doi:10.12681/historein.181.
• Thompson, Andrew (2001). "Is Humpty Dumpty Together Again? Imperial History and the Oxford History of the British Empire". Twentieth Century British History. 12 (4): 511–527. doi:10.1093/tcbh/12.4.511.
• Webster, Anthony. The Debate on the Rise of British Imperialism (Issues in Historiography) (2006)
• Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (2004). excerpt and text search
• Winks, Robin, ed. Historiography (1999) vol. 5 in William Roger Louis, eds. The Oxford History of the British Empire online
• Winks, Robin W. The Historiography of the British Empire-Commonwealth: Trends, Interpretations and Resources (1966); this book is by a different set of authors from the previous 1999 entry online
• Winks, Robin W. "Problem Child of British History: The British Empire-Commonwealth", in Richard Schlatter, ed., Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966 (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp. 451–492
• Winks, Robin W., ed. British Imperialism: Gold, God, Glory (1963) excerpts from 15 historians from early 20th century, plus commentary and bibliography.

• Gabriel Glickman, "Britain and Empire, 1685-1730" Oxford Bibliographies, annotated books

• Board of Education. Educational Systems of the Chief Crown Colonies and Possessions of the British Empire (1905). 340pp online edition
• Boehmer, Elleke ed. Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870–1918 (1998) online edition
• Brooks, Chris. and Peter Faulkner (eds.), The White Man's Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (Exeter UP, 1996).
• Hall, Catherine. ed. Cultures of Empire: A Reader: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2000)
• Herbertson, A. J. and O. J. R. Howarth. eds. The Oxford Survey Of The British Empire (6 vol 1914) online vol 2 on Asia and India 555pp; on Africa; vole 1 America; vp; 6 General topics
• Madden, Frederick, ed. The End of Empire: Dependencies since 1948: Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth: The West Indies, British Honduras, Hong Kong, Fiji, Cyprus, Gibraltar, and the Falklands (2000) online 596pp
• Madden, Frederick, and John Darwin, ed. The Dependent Empire: 1900–1948: Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandates (1963) 908pp online
• Mansergh, Nicholas, ed. Documents and Speeches on Commonwealth Affairs, 1952–1962 (1963) 804pp online
• Wiener, Joel H. ed. Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, 1689-1971: A Documentary History (4 vol 1972) online at Questia 3400pp; Mostly statements by British leaders