The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism

by Antoinette Burton

The Trouble with Empire contends that dissent and disruption were constant features of imperial experience and that they should, therefore, drive narratives of the modern British imperial past. Moving across the one hundred years between the first Anglo-Afghan war and Gandhi's salt marches, the book tracks commonalities between different forms of resistance in order to understand how regimes of imperial security worked in practice. This emphasis on protest and struggle is intended not only to reveal indigenous agency but to illuminate the limits of imperial power, official and unofficial, as well.

"Pax Britannica"-the conviction that peace was the dominant feature of modern British imperialism-remains the working presumption of most empire histories in the twenty-first century. The Trouble with Empire , in contrast, originates from skepticism about the ability of hegemons to rule unchallenged and about the capacity of imperial rule to finally and fully subdue those who contested it. The book follows various forms of dissent and disruption, both large and small, in three the theater of war, the arena of market relations, and the realm of political order.

Tracking how empire did and did not work via those who struggled against it recasts ways of measuring not simply imperial success or failure, but its very viability across the uneven terrain of daily power. The Trouble with Empire argues that empires are never finally or fully accomplished but are always in motion, subject to pressures from below as well as above. In an age of spectacular insurgency and counterinsurgency across many of the former possessions of Britain's global empire, such a genealogy of the forces that troubled imperial hegemony are needed now more than ever.

Genres: History, World History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Research, European History, School

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2015

About the author

Antoinette Burton is Catherine C. and Bruce A. Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, Department of History, University of Illinois. Among her books are Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India and At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain.

Also Antoinette M. Burton

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and useful read for World History teachers. Burton shows how colonials subjects contested the authority of the British Empire throughout its existence. Burton argues that scholars need to look beyond facile rise and fall narratives of the British Empire. As a World History teacher this book encouraged me to incorporate resistance to empire from the beginnings of discussions of the "New" imperialism in the 19th century, instead of reserving these stories for a later discussion of decolonization. I will also be mining the book for stories to illustrate the ongoing, Empire-wide resistance to British imperialism. From the Epilogue (p. 219):

"...the history of the British empire is not rise and fall but skirmish, scramble, stumble, recover; not up and down but perpetual crash and burn; not success and failure but fail, fail, fail and make the most of it--with an eye on your backyard and your hand on your Martini rifle."

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. it has so much potential in terms of argument but it is just not well written. Page-long paragraphs and chapters that just don't end cloud good research and an obviously well-read author.

Perhaps Burton has a point that the trouble with British imperial histories is that they are not written with dissent and disruption in the lead. Yet, so long as a book is as inaccessible as this one, it doesn't really matter what is in the lead.

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book that challenges us to rethink how we understand (and teach) the history of imperialism. Burton presents a compelling case for the role that people’s had in continually shaping the economic, military, and political structures of empires. Instead of thinking about empire as a story of rise and fall, it’s better to think of it as one of repeated stumbles and failings until the final end of control.

[Vicky P · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking volume on the needs of imperial history to move beyond the whiggish long narrative arc of British imperialism that dominates the historiography currently. There is a thesis, one that bears further examining, but this book is primarily a call for further scholarship and for, the way Burton phrases it, a paradigm shift, illustrated with copious examples from primary and secondary sources.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

British Empire was characterized by persistent instability as opposed to a rise, height, and fall of empire.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burton made the British Empire interesting again.