False Dawn: European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Europe and the World in Age of Expansion)

Europe and the World in the Age of Expansion #6

by Raymond F. Betts

The False Dawn was first published in 1975. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. As the author explains, the false dawn that greeted and disappointed the visitors in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India is a literary image that might serve as a value judgment of modern overseas empire in general. Commenting that the term "empire" is now badly tarnished, Professor Betts points out that no bright dawn of understanding has yet appeared on the academic horizon. With this perceptive viewpoint, he traces the course of European imperialism beginning with the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and ending with a final glance toward the Western Front in August, 1914. Reviewing the book in the Historian , Lawrence J. Baack calls it "a clear and concise essay on the nature of European imperialism." In its review Choice "Undergraduates and graduate students alike will welcome this book as a readable general introduction to more technical works."

Genres: History

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Dr. Raymond Frederick Betts was an American academic and historian. After completing undergraduate studies at Rutgers University in 1949 and receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree, he earned his MA from Columbia University only a year later, in 1950. He earned his PhD, also from Columbia University, in 1958 (according to one source he also received a doctoral degree from the Université Grenoble in 1955). Professor Betts began his academic career as an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College in 1956. In 1961 he moved to Grinnell College in Iowa, where he spent ten years, initially as an associate professor. In 1971 he accepted a position as professor of history at the University of Kentucky, where he spent the remainder of his career, retiring in 1990. Professor Betts was considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of French colonialism.