Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire

The Pax Britannica Trilogy #2

by Jan Morris

Jan Morris recreates the British Empire at its dazzling climax - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897, celebrated as a festival of imperial strength, unity, and splendour. This classic work of history portrays a nation at the very height of its vigour and self-satisfaction, imposing on the rest of the world its traditions and tastes, its idealists and rascals.'A beautiful book, superbly written in a bitter-sweet style . . . A marvellous account of what the empire was like.' Daily Express

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Travel, India, Audiobook, 19th Century

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Jan Morris was a British historian, author and travel writer. Morris was educated at Lancing College, West Sussex, and Christ Church, Oxford, but is Welsh by heritage and adoption. Before 1970 Morris published under her assigned birth name, "James ", and is known particularly for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, and for portraits of cities, notably Oxford, Venice, Trieste, Hong Kong, and New York City, and also wrote about Wales, Spanish history, and culture.

In 1949 Jan Morris married Elizabeth Tuckniss, the daughter of a tea planter. Morris and Tuckniss had five children together, including the poet and musician Twm Morys. One of their children died in infancy. As Morris documented in her memoir Conundrum, she began taking oestrogens to feminise her body in 1964. In 1972, she had sex reassignment surgery in Morocco. Sex reassignment surgeon Georges Burou did the surgery, since doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and Tuckniss divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time. They divorced later, but remained together and later got a civil union. On May, 14th, 2008, Morris and Tuckniss remarried each other. Morris lived mostly in Wales, where her parents were from.

Reviews

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second volume in the trilogy. The author centres the book around Queen Victoria's jubilee year of 1897, what might be called "Peak Empire" and uses that year as a nail to hang the story on.
This book succeeds not just by recounting details of battles and leaders but by painting a portrait of the Empire, letting the reader understand just what it was like, that's the big selling point of this trilogy for me so far, as i read it i really got the "feel" of the Empire.
What was it like being a redcoat soldier in a garrison in some remote corner of the Empire?
What was it like being the wife of a colonial administrator in India?
What was it like being a prospector in Rhodesia?
This book really gets you into the skin of the people who populated and ran the Empire.
It also discusses, honestly, the contradictions and failings of Empire, how the British, who valued liberty at home, kept others under the thumb and never entirely felt right about it.
All in all a brilliant book and i'm looking forward to the third and final book in the trilogy.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable book that provides a good snapshot of the British Empire as it was in 1897, and which really helps one's understanding of the magnitude, extent, impact, and influence of the Empire.

Lots of interesting facts (about England, the Empire, and its many colonies); and a very readable book, except maybe for the last 25-odd pages, which were trying my patience (chapters 25 & 26). Did I also detect on the author's part a little bias against the Irish?

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is written by the author Jan Morris, who once was James Morris (but not the James Morris profiled on Goodreads), but not to recognise her new name and sex is, for 2024, worse then transphobic it is an insult. Even more so as neither that neither volume I or III of the Pax Britannica trilogy of which this is volume III are not listed under Jan Morris's 'books' on Goodreads. I could spend every day explaining these mistakes to the Goodreads Librarians group but I don't have the time. Do you?

This is the same review I posted against Volume I and III of the Pax Britannica trilogy because my remarks are true to all volumes of really embarrassingly bad work. My Review:

This book, and its two companion volumes, is described by its author as an attempt to capture the feel of the British empire, the view it held of itself, written by a former imperial subject who lived through its final years and witnessed its ultimate collapse. Why that or its florid, and very readable prose, should excuse the grotesquely one-sided presentation of a historical period is hard to understand. What would we think of a history of Nazi Germany's empire building told as a history of the foibles and eccentricities of those madcap National Socialists! That funny little man with his silly mustache at the top of a pyramid of striving officials and soldiers! All those funny encounters between those cultured, educated German administrators attempting to create order in the vast, uncivilized reaches of their empire confronting recalcitrant Slavs, Poles, Ukrainians and who knows what others, those, 'new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child', that the German nation had sent out their best young men 'To serve your captives need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild' and what thanks do they get? None, all that happens is they 'reap his old reward, The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard' and after fighting 'The savage wars of peace' they find some Irish, Black, Indian, Pakistan, Pinko, Poufter, Leftie who, when 'your goal is nearest' come along and with 'Sloth and heathen Folly, Bring all your hopes to nought.'

That Britain, just as much as the Nazis, or other empire builder:

'ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant' (created a desert and called it peace, a quote from Tacitus)

is what makes this compulsively readable book an offense because it is apologia for a system that ground a quarter of the world under the heels of some incredibly mediocre people. It was about power and millions not having it and a very, very few white Englishmen from a miniscule part of that nation's population having it. Of course there were a few women involved, there were Irish, Scottish and Welsh men who took part and behaved as abominably as their English counterparts, there were even men from poor and working class backgrounds enthusiastically taking part in the rapine and plunder; but the agenda was set and lead by that minority of over breed and unthinking products of England's upper middle and gentry classes.

I try to find a reason to excuse this, and the other volumes in the Pax Britannica trilogy, almost pathological racism. That Jan Morris was an outsider in many ways as well as a liberal, possibly free thinking, individual makes it worse, though it is a salutary lesson on far attitudes have changed in the past half century, thank goodness. The Pax Britannica trilogy are only worth reading as a demonstration of the delusions the British had and the lies they told about their empire. It is unbelievable how long it took for people in the UK to actually grasp the reality of their country's deeds abroad and how resistant they were to referring to, or viewing, the 1857 Indian rebellion as anything but 'the Indian or Sepoy mutiny'.

All those noble Englishmen intent on doing good, all those funny, childlike foreigners stopping them, is it really that excessive to draw comparisons with Nazi empire building?

I come from England's oldest colony (Ireland) and despite how much I regard the actions of England over many hundreds of years as baleful but I do not believe that the Irish Famine of 1845-1852 was a deliberate policy of genocide. It was the result of viewing Ireland through the lens of what mattered for England. For longer than half a millennium Ireland was dealt with as an adjunct of England. It mattered only in so far as it impinged on England. That is the story of all England's imperial possessions, particularly India. Britain didn't allow the 1943 Bengal famine to happen through hatred of Indians (though Churchill's rampant and openly expressed disdain for Indians does suggest, as far as he was concerned, their deaths was not something for him to lose sleep over) but because India only existed to make Britain great and powerful. Irish peoples opinions or desires, exactly like those of the people of India, just did not matter. The English rulers of Ireland, India and elsewhere thought they knew better what was good for ordinary Irish or Indian people then the Irish or Indians who claimed to be their leaders.

It is more than military repression, economic exploitation and cultural debasement that left a legacy in former colonies, a quarter of the world ended up with Stockholm syndrome.

Books like the Pax Britannica trilogy need to be banished to Trotsky's capacious dustbin of history. You should only be reading them if you have read at least a few of the following in part:

'Barbed Wire Imperialism: British Empire of Camps (1876-1903)' by Aidan Forth
'Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire' by Caroline Elkins
'Inglorious Empire, What the British Did in India, by Shashi Tharoor
'Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan' by William Dalrymple
'The Anarchy: the Relentless Rise of The East India Company' by William Dalrymple
'Imperial Twilight: the Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age' by Stephen R. Platt 'Paddy’s Lament: Ireland 1846-1847: Prelude to Hatred' by Thomas Gallagher
'The Scramble for Africa' by Thomas Pakenham

I could go on and on, there is a wealth of information available now that was undreamt of when Jan Morris wrote these books. Caroline Eakins has revealed, via long legal battles, how much of Britain's colonial history has been systematically suppressed, destroyed and hidden. This isn't about portraying Britain as bad it is about growing up and accepting that if for 500 years a quarter of the world was impoverished to make a few thousand Brits wealthy it is time to face up to that. If you are one of the vast majority of British people whose ancestors never benefited from that wealth then perhaps it will make you look with a critical eye and those who did and their descendants who are still benefiting.

[Gerald Sinstadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The year 1897 is the peg upon which Jan Morris hangs her overview of the British Empire in the hour of its greatest glory. 1897 because it was the year of Victoria's golden jubilee, Queen for sixty years. As we approach a similar milestone in the reign of Elizabeth II the book acquires added piquancy.

All over the map of the world in 1897 red marked the extent of British influence: "a begrudging kind of paradise," Morris calls it. A paradoxical paradise, too, for there was little uniformity to bind the various patches of land - from tiny atolls to semi-continents - which variably ruled themselves while always being subject to Victoria's government. "Legally," the author writes, "there was no such thing as a British Empire. It had no constitutional meaning. Physically, too, it was a kind of fiction, or bluff, in that it implied a far stronger power at the centre than really existed."

But it worked. Strengths and weaknesses everywhere, but still it worked. There can be no greater praise for this book than to say that it encompasses the whole, black, white and grey, while constantly illuminating it with the detail. I quickly abandoned making notes; they were already too numerous to marshall sensibly. Page after page offers a telling vignette, a memorable phrase. At random, then, this miniature of life in the Raj: "The soldiers flirted in the public gardens. The officers played polo, sailed their yachts in the harbour, and sometimes went to cockfights, abetted by local Irishmen with fingers along the sides of their noses." In a few dozen words, the reader is taken there, seeing it as it was.

This is serious history, seriously told, always enlivened, never cheapened, by Morris's love of a quirky anecdote. There are many but one, concerning William Packenham from a passage on memorable Royal Navy commanders, must suffice: "... when an elderly lady at a civic luncheon asked him if he was married, he replied courteously, 'No, madam, no. I keep a loose woman in Edinburgh.'"

Pax Britannica is a worthy successor to the first in Jan Morris's brilliant trilogy, and an irresistible appetiser for the third.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a snapshot of the British Empire in 1897 when “The British Empire sprawled across all the continents.” “Gladstone’s (Liberal) voice, the voice of the English conscience, was silent.” “British ascendancy” was “propped up with pomp and ceremony.” At that time British controlled Ireland, Gibraltar, Malta, 15 countries in Africa, 15 countries in America, 11 countries in Asia, everything around Australia, and a bunch of stuff in the Pacific and Indian Ocean – They controlled 372 million people. “It was the largest empire in the world, comprising nearly a quarter of the landmass of the earth.” “The nineteenth century had been pre-eminently Britain’s century. Jan uses the word “glorious”. According to Jan, the Brits were peopling the “empty” places with Brits. Jan likes the Terra Nullius idea; call it empty if no one (white) lives there. This was an age of capital looking for markets and Jan says, “vitality looking for opportunity”. Hong Kong becomes British in 1841. “Young Bertrand Russell was a self-confessed imperialist.” H G Wells “declared imperialist sympathies.” But both of them would soon permanently go strongly Left. The British Empire technically reaches it largest size in 1933 (493 million people). Jan says the British Empire was taking on great “responsibility” while being “paternally authoritarian.”

Brit Mindset: “The deepest impulse of Empire was to be rich.” Anti-imperialist J.A. Hobson thought Brit imperialism was about justifying and selling excess production, through opening new markets and investments. The New Imperialists believed raiding India had provided the capital for the Industrial Revolution and which was now providing dividends (for those not under the boot).” Their math told them “The more people you ruled, the greater your labor force.” The “Scramble for Africa” Jan says was the “mainspring of the New Imperialism”. Cecil Rhodes felt expansion beyond Britain was necessary in order to displace it’s growing and restive population and find (force) new markets for Brit goods. The best thing the British Empire ever did was abolish its West African slave trade. India at this time was ruled from Calcutta by the Viceroy. Cecil Rhodes created Rhodesia. “Most Rhodesians thought of the African either as a savage or as a slave.” “Few settlers bothered to learn the languages of the country.” “The British government in India was a despotism of great efficiency, in which the Indians had virtually no say.” India was a land that spoke 800 languages back then. In these days, only 1% of Indians of school age went to school. “In Ceylon, they revered the memory of Major Thomas Rogers of Her Majesties Ceylon Rifle Regiment, who was supposed to have shot 600 elephants.” Luckily for the elephants, he was then killed by lightning.

Costs of Empire: “an almost ceaseless running battle against reluctant people.” “It took almost constant force to uphold it.” In 1897, the Brits had 72,000 men in India and 32,000 in other colonial stations. In addition, “the Indian Army (350,000+) was absolutely at the disposal of the British Government and it was free because the occupier (my choice of word) made India pay for it. Fun Fact: a full one-half of the men in the British Navy (which last time I checked was water-based) couldn’t swim.


Ireland: On page 459, Jan tells us that for 750 years the Brits tried to subdue Ireland. In the fourteenth century, the Brits made it illegal to intermarry with Irish, learn Gaelic, or behave in Irish ways. (Note that the Brits put Protestant settlers on the resident Irish, just like they put Zionist settlers on the resident Palestinians.) In those days, if your inner narcissist needed you to play country gentleman but you didn’t have the cash, you took your British ass to Ireland where you could both displace an Irishman and still vote in English elections. The Irish were kept “quiet” by British barracks “all over” Ireland, and by Irish mercenaries and Anglo-Irish allies. To Jan’s credit, she writes that “military grandeur was hard to come by, when the forces in Ireland were virtually an army of occupation, constantly on guard.” And “it was a country, as everyone knew, that was only held together by coercion.” “Onward Christian Soldiers (the inversion of Christ’s teachings in “delicious” song form) was the hymn of the day”. Hilaire Belloc thoughtfully wrote at the time, “Whatever happens we have got, the Maxim gun and they have not.”

Romanticizing Empire: This book has lots of comforting People Magazine style stories of fancy people, like how “Lord Grey’s all-red bicycle had a coronet on it’s back mudguard.” “The viceroy moved ‘magnificently’ through India.” “The issues of Empire were mostly ‘glamorous’ irrelevances.” Gibraltar is the most “splendid British possession of all.” “British people were unmistakably British.” “The Navy had never seemed more ‘magnificent’ than it did in 1897.” The racecourse at Simla was “deliciously secluded.” “The Navy still lived in its ‘glorious’ past.” “It was very much an imperial Navy looking splendid and behaving stylishly.” Jan calls pigsticking a “tremendously exciting sport” (p. 286). what does that sport entail, Jan? A single man on horseback gallops after boars, tigers, buffaloes, and rhinoceri, trying to spear these animals - to injure or kill them for “sport”. “Whatever there was to chase or kill, the British pursued.” Then Jan (in a chapter called “The Glory”) refers to the “dum dum” bullet as part of a “good cause” (p.117). How can you ever justify using limb-destroying dum dums as part of a “good” cause? Not mentioned is that two years after Jan’s 1897 time slice, the Hague Convention of 1899 banned dum dums (soft-point bullets) for being “too inhumane”. Nor that that dum dums were originally created by a British Captain in Bengal India at the Dum Dum Arsenal Military Facility. Jan states (p.117) how “cruelly outnumbered Britons had been caught unfairly by surprise.” How during a war (before both Hague and Geneva), how do you get caught acting “unfairly”? And how can someone be “cruelly” outnumbered? “Hey Meeester, een an hour, when Jacques and Pierre get here, you shall be 'cruelly' outnumbered because zey are not very nice”.

Jan defending British Empire: The British Empire “pulled half Asia out of the Middle Ages half Africa out of barbarism.” Thank God the land of bad cuisine, rescued the ass of most of the people on earth from either darkness or barbarism. “For the colonists were British still, brought up in a tradition of social respect” (towards fellow Brits perhaps). The Empire brought the colonized “roads, railways, ports, posts, and telegraphs.” The Brits built the Aswan Dam. “One day a tribesman might be absolutely subject to the ‘fickle despotism’ of his hereditary chieftain, with no personal liberties whatever” (there was the “fickle despotism” of some British rulers in history too).

Three stars – a good book – especially if you are REALLY into the year 1897. Jan should have put where it chronologically belonged, her Sepoy Mutiny story of body parts flying everywhere from British guns (actually cannon blasts) into Volume One (Heaven’s Command); I accused her in my last review of not including any of the Sepoy death details in Volume One only to find it strangely here in Volume Two. Now I have to correct that review. Volume One was about Victoria’s reign seen through an Empire lens (and Volume Two was about 1897). My next review will be about Jan’s post-1897 Empire Volume Three, “Farewell the Trumpets”.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this second book of the Pax Britannica, we have all of the Empire from Newfoundland in 1583 to Bermuda in 1607 when 150 Englishmen shipwrecked on the reef during a hurricane and consequently, inspired William Shakespeare to write The Tempest. The European possessions are here, too. Gibralter, the Channel Islands, Malta, and Ireland, always Ireland. British Guiana and the Falklands, the Cape Colonies, as well. All of these and more join the big ones from the first part of this immense trilogy. Morris discusses the status of the British Empire as it existed on the day of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. This represents the height of empire and focuses on the self-satisfied pride of the populace in their position in the world of nations. Morris describes all aspects of empire and the style of government, architecture, technology, economics, and religion in each colony or possession. He also foreshadows the troubles to come by showcasing some of the discontent. Many of the colonies were, by this time, showing tiny gleamings of a sense of nationalism and, even in England, disenchantment with the idea of colonialism was seeing a faint start.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jan Morris wrote this in the 1960s, well before post-colonial theory was properly formulated or the fall out from the dismantling of colonial empires was as evident as it is today.
But I would recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone even remotely interested in the politics, culture and societies of the lands that fell within the scope of British rule, or in the phenomenon of an empire that reached to most continents yet was based in a small island off the coast of Europe.

In 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the British Empire appeared to be at its peak. Its glories were celebrated in all colonies (less enthusiastically in some than others). It was held together, she remarks near the end of the book, by a combination of force (in occupied lands) and sentiment. The New Imperialism was in full swing in England itself, and the millions of Britons who had emigrated and settled in the colonies identified very strongly with England as the mother country. And although the feelings of native inhabitants of the countries occupied and settled by the British varied, the glories of the Empire and its sovereign were celebrated around the globe.

Morris writes that she set out to try 'to evoke the feeling of Britishness in 1897 as it was manifested throughout the globe' (p.11). She has organised the book primarily in themes, ranging from migrations, glory, caste (which she uses often where I would use class, but nevertheless the fine gradings of status, inclusion and exclusion are dealt with0, the armies and navies that maintained British power, pioneers and settlers. architecture, dying young and the British empire as a development agency. More time is given to India than any other colony, appropriate to its central importance to British trade, wealth and sense of importance in the world.
She makes broad general statements that allow you to pout together things you haven't put together before, and to see familiar things in a new light. the broad weep is backed up with a glorious mass of anecdote. Sometimes the facts get lost in the sweep of a fine phrase or clever thought, but overall I found I enjoyed the broad sweep and general sparkling tone that didn't mind even the inaccuracies I picked up about my own part of the world, Adelaide inSouth Australia, where she has surveyor Light select the site of the future capital of South Australia by climbing a bluff near Holdfast Bay. There is not a hill, cliff or bluff for miles. There would have been a sand dune he could have climbed but that's it.

This broad survey, remarkable in its scope and depth, is a marvellous read, coloured throughout with Morris's sometimes sardonic view of the English and an eye for comedy and farce as well as pomp and circumstance.

On every page is an idea, a sentence that cries out to be noted - but I haven't done it because my notes would be far too long and I would rather re-read the lively prose of the original.

Now to gear myself for the wars and unravelling of the twentieth century.

[James Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkably detailed snapshot of life in the strangest empire of all during 1897, the year of its symbolic leader’s Diamond Jubilee. I implore anyone who reads this to get the latest edition with Morris’ 2012 introduction. Her reassessment doesn’t undercut what she wrote in the 60s, but the sobriety of distance makes her reflect very differently on the pomp, bluster, misconception and ‘inbred racism’ of the age. This only heightens the sense that while reading Pax Britannica proper, you are not actually reading it at all: you are there, back amongst one nation’s blinding celebration; and as a result you are closer than you thought you could be to understanding its infectious, manic, hysterical charm.

[Al Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An good follow up book to the Book, Heavens’s Command, continues the Survey style of the first book, just further along in time, a look at Victorian Empire at it’s Apogee.

[Robert Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. The second book of the trilogy which i regard as the best History written so far on the British Empire. The Author, with a laconic wit takes the reader on a tour of the many Imperial possessions interweaving the human stories in their time and place. So many people came from those small Islands and settled in so many diverse locations, provides us with an amazing array of lives led. Despite the flaws of the British Empire which the Author describes in detail one is left with the impression it did more good than harm. The reminders are still with us today to view such as, visiting an old Church in Ballycastle N.I. where the wall plaques list the Soldiers who fought in the Indian Mutiny, or the former Hill Station built by the Royal Engineers at Zomba in Malawi and here in Canada walking through the incomparable Stanley Park in Vancouver. jan morris is a very good Writer.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find this exceedingly interesting but it was ok. It focused a lot on India. As a Canadian I didn't get much out of it and the story of the founding of Ottawa as the capital total fallacy which makes me wonder what else was false in this.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second volume of JM's imperial history, zeroing in on the Jubilee of 1897, is genuinely extraordinary - brilliant, kitsch, kaleidoscopic, indefensible.

[Joshua McCune · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Pax Britannica over a period of around 2 months, and it’s a very worthy book to spend so much time on.
Jan Morris (though, on my 1979 Penguin Books copy, she is known as James) discusses the state of the British Empire, using the 1895 Jameson Raid as her central point, fundamentally with an emphasis of 1897 - when the ‘Pax Britannica’ was, as the book lays out, at its height in terms of its imperial power over its subjects at the time. The book is - on the whole, though with some clear leanings at times - diplomatic in its discussion, thematic in its structure, and entirely focused upon the lives of those who created the Imperial ways and imperial policies, both contemporarily and retrospectively, and, to an equal extent, the people involved both in Britain and abroad; its subjects, lives changed for decades under British rule. Jan is clearly well-versed in the subject, but this does mean there assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge on the subject. When this book was initially published in 1968, of course, this was much more well known; it was within living memory for many, many more than it perhaps is today.
The structure is a massive selling point. Instead of being chronological, which might make it difficult to follow in its discussion of life across the whole Empire, Morris has structured this thematically, with sub-sections inside chapters on key elements, social, economic, and political, across the Empire and beyond. This means it can be picked up and put down at any point, and aside from some perhaps questionable section orders (Chapter 13 may be better placed towards the beginning, for instance), this book is easy to follow, and encourages the reader to reflect upon, in some ways admire, in many ways criticise, but fundamentally to recognise the British Empire for the problematic time of period that it was. One key aspect of the thematic structure is the use of poetry, quotes, and verbatim ideologies posed throughout, with a particularly strong emphasis on Rudyard Kipling‘s words, but with words from imperialists and opposers alike, to guide the reader effortlessly through the time period, as if they themselves were living the days being told. As some have noted in prior reviews, there’s a certain derision towards our non-English neighbours and this is no more evident than towards the end, a complete discussion about Irish citizens being perhaps the most explicitly biased section of it all. At its crux though, this is an incredibly well-written book, and is very much worth reading, whether you have prior knowledge of the Empire, or whether, like myself, you have very little knowledge of what went on at the time, an understandably embarrassing era for many today - one which is trying more and more to be forgotten and ignored by those on both sides of the era.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jan Morris’s Pax Britannica: Climax of an Empire (1968) is the second volume in her Pax Britannica trilogy, a sweeping and evocative history of the British Empire. This installment focuses on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period often regarded as the zenith of British imperial power. Through a combination of meticulous research, literary craftsmanship, and a keen sense of irony, Morris presents a rich and multifaceted portrait of the empire at its peak.


Rather than a conventional chronological history, Pax Britannica employs a thematic and episodic approach, offering vignettes that capture the political, cultural, and social dimensions of imperial rule. Morris moves fluidly between grand state occasions, such as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and the everyday realities of life in the colonies. Her prose is marked by a lyrical quality that brings historical events and personalities vividly to life.


One of the book’s greatest strengths is its ability to humanize the empire. Morris explores the lives of administrators, military officers, traders, missionaries, and local leaders, illuminating the diverse experiences that shaped the imperial world. Figures such as Joseph Chamberlain, Cecil Rhodes, and Rudyard Kipling appear alongside anonymous colonial officials and indigenous subjects, creating a textured narrative that reflects the complexity of imperial governance.


However, Morris does not present an uncritical celebration of British imperialism. While her tone is often nostalgic, she is attuned to the contradictions and injustices of the empire. She acknowledges its exploitative aspects, the racial hierarchies that sustained it, and the seeds of resistance growing within its territories. Yet, some critics have noted that her emphasis remains on the British perspective, sometimes at the expense of a deeper engagement with the voices and experiences of the colonized. Her treatment of imperial violence and resistance, while present, is often overshadowed by a fascination with the empire’s grandeur and eccentricities.


Despite these limitations, Pax Britannica is a compelling and insightful work. It is not a conventional academic history—Morris’s background as a journalist and travel writer is evident in her stylistic choices—but it remains a valuable contribution to the study of empire. Her ability to blend historical detail with literary flair makes the book both informative and engaging. For scholars and general readers alike, Pax Britannica offers a unique and memorable perspective on the British Empire at its height, setting the stage for its eventual decline in the trilogy’s final volume.

GPT

[Andie · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Morris’s PAX BRITANNICA is the second volume in his trilogy of the British Empire, and which uses the Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 as the backdrop to this description of empire. Morris (who later transitioned to Jan) was a terrific writer. This elegant, absorbing, let-things-speak-for- themselves book focuses on the personalities, great and small, who shaped and controlled the Empire in its glory days. Of course there are many diversions, surprises and curiosities, and Morris, a master of dry, gentle irony, fully exploits his brilliant talents as a teller of stories. He is as much travel writer as historian. Much of the pleasure (and credibility) of PAX BRITANNICA rests in the fact that Morris visited most of the places of empire he describes - many of them as they were when he was writing the book in the 1960s. Nothing brings history to life like going to the places where it happened.

Morris describes the British Empire at its zenith. The final volume, Farewell the Trumpets, will describe the denouement.

[Alex Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To be born British, is to win in the lottery of life.”

History told as it ought to be told: with a heavy dose of verisimilitude and a light touch.

Jan Morris is a gifted and eloquent writer who has thoroughly researched and become one with her subject. This monumental trilogy, the Pax Britannica, is a labour of love that deftly and artfully brings the subject to life.

This volume is the 2nd volume of the series. It covers one of the most interesting and exciting periods in Britain’s long, rich goldmine of history.

This was the audiobook version. Masterful narration, fits the subject matter absolutely perfectly by Roy McMillan.

[Jay Daze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jann Morris is an amazing writer. This book should in no way be as witty and nuanced as it is. That said it was first published in 1968 so it way too easy on the Empire and the harms it perpetrated (it does criticize). But I'm grateful a writer with such depth of understanding and beauty of craft took up this subject when she did. It allows me to get that refractional look at history. See what people thought and believed and did in 1897 from a 1968 perspective and take it through a flawed and shakey view from 2025 - that is what I come to writing for, and I got it here.

[Andrew McClarnon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly mind expanding, a series of snappy essays that paint a portrait of the empire at its 'peak'. I love the footnotes that pepper most pages and anchor the anecdotes that form the basis of the text. The book describes the breadth of the moment, rather than the journey (towards or away), and in that way can appear rather disjointed, but allowable in the larger picture of the three books.

[Christopher Needham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erudite and often hilarious

A tour de force from a mistress of language, history and evoke of place. The breadth of study of hymn books and poetry is staggering as a counterpoint to historic detail. All done with a wit and charm that is hard to beat. Always wry and often hilarious.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd book in the trilogy for me. A wonderful read.I really enjoy the writing of Jan Morris. So much effort and research must have gone into the writing of these works. For someone like me who is interested in the history of the British Empire these books are invaluable.

[Bill Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

The central volume of the trilogy, describing the Empire at the time of the Jubilee in 1897. Described in a very perceptive way, with a wry humour, and more detailed than you'd expect given the volume of material.

[Robert Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe dated by the passing of time and a more critical view of Empire, but this trilogy really interested me as a teen some 40 years ago. A lovely writer of scenes and a sharp eye for characters and places

[JW · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memorable portrait of the British empire at its spiritual high point. Writing in the 1960s, Morris knew what so few then suspected: that the precipice was very near. Viewing things after the fall, Morris was sometimes critical, sometimes amazed, but usually bemused.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook. Loved it.

[Ellie Mackin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much suffers from "middle of a trilogy syndrome" also TW lots of racist slurs, could do with a serious update, although still an interesting read.

[Therese Dotray-Tulloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the Pax Bitannica Trilogy by the always fun to read JanMorris. I learned sooooo much!

[Nicholas Woode-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Detailed review coming soon.

[Constantine]

3 Hardcover volumes

[Dingo87 · Rating 3 out of 5]

It narrates the story of the british empire at his height, during Queen Victoria's rule. Same chapters better than others. Good book overall, suggested for people that love history and dates.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting look around the Empire at its zenith, greatly detailed for its length. Like volume 1 a mild history, unwilling to offend middle-class white sensibilities in any part of the former Empire.