Empire and history writing in Britain c.1750–2012

This wide-ranging and accessible book examines the effects of British imperial involvements on history writing in Britain since 1750. It provides a chronological account of the development of history writing in its social, political and cultural contexts, and an analysis of the structural links between those involvements and the dominant concerns of that writing. It looks at the impact of imperial and global expansion on the treatment of government, social structures and changes, and national and ethnic identity in scholarly and popular works, school histories, and ‘famous’ history books. In a clear and student-friendly way, it argues that involvement in empire played a transformative and central role within history writing as whole, reframing its basic assumptions and language, and sustaining a significant ‘imperial’ influence across generations of writers and diverse types of historical text.