Truth About Empire

Alan Lester is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor of History at La Trobe University. He has written eleven books on British colonialism, most recently Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century British Empire; and Deny and Disavow: The British Empire in the Culture War (co-authored; 2nd edition).

'Timely insights into both the British empire and into historiography past and present.'

• PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE Foreword — Sathnam Sanghera Introduction: The Truth About Colonial History — Alan Lester PART TWO: THE REALITIES OF COLONIALISM AROUND THE WORLD 1. What About Slavery? — Bronwen Everill 2. Tasmania and the Question of Genocide in the Black War, the History Wars and the Culture War — Lyndall Ryan 3. The Misuse of Indigenous and Canadian History in Colonialism — Adele Perry, Sean Carleton, and Omeasoo Wahpasiw 4. ‘When Men Burn Women Alive, We Hang Them’: Sati and ‘Civilising Mission’ in Colonial India — Andrea Major 5. ‘Unencumbered by the Scruples of Justice and Good Faith’: The Colonial Achievements of Raffles in Southeast Asia — Gareth Knapman 6. My Empire, Right or Wrong: Rhodes, Milner and the South African War — Saul Dubow 7. Written on the City: Imperial Britain and China — Robert Bickers PART THREE: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND RACE 8. Morality and the History of Abolition and Empire — Richard Huzzey 9. A Short History of a Controversial Comparison: Empire and Fascism in Black Political Thought During the 1930s — Liam Liburd 10. Escape from Empire: Decolonisation as Disentanglement, Erasure, and Evasion — Erik Linstrum 11. No End of a Reckoning — Stuart Ward 12. Colonialism: A Methodological Reckoning — Margot Finn