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Time’s Monster: How History Makes History
A New Statesman Best Book of the Year
"Powerful and radically important."
--Robert Gildea, Times Literary Supplement
"Bracingly describes the ways imperialist historiography has shaped visions of the future as much as the past."
--Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books
"An account of how the discipline of history has itself enabled the process of colonization...A coruscating and important reworking of the relationship between history, historians, and empire."
--Kenan Malik, The Guardian
"Satia's fearlessness in tackling big questions, even to the point of indicting the very discipline that has raised her to a position of not-inconsiderable eminence, suggests that she might well be the historian who could summon the courage to plunge into this chasm."
--Amitav Ghosh, Scroll
"In this searing book, Priya Satia demonstrates, yet again, that she is one of our most brilliant and original historians."
--Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
For generations, the history of the British empire was written by its victors, whose accounts of conquest guided the consolidation of imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. British historians' narratives of the development of imperial governance licensed the brutal suppression of colonial rebellion. Their reimagining of empire during the two world wars compromised decolonization. In this brilliant work, Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed.
From the imperial histories of John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill to the works of anticolonial thinkers such as William Blake, Mahatma Gandhi, and E. P. Thompson, Satia captures two opposing approaches to the discipline of history and illuminates the ethical universe that came with them. Against the backdrop of enduring inequalities and a crisis in the humanities, hers is an urgent moral voice.
"Powerful and radically important."
--Robert Gildea, Times Literary Supplement
"Bracingly describes the ways imperialist historiography has shaped visions of the future as much as the past."
--Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books
"An account of how the discipline of history has itself enabled the process of colonization...A coruscating and important reworking of the relationship between history, historians, and empire."
--Kenan Malik, The Guardian
"Satia's fearlessness in tackling big questions, even to the point of indicting the very discipline that has raised her to a position of not-inconsiderable eminence, suggests that she might well be the historian who could summon the courage to plunge into this chasm."
--Amitav Ghosh, Scroll
"In this searing book, Priya Satia demonstrates, yet again, that she is one of our most brilliant and original historians."
--Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
For generations, the history of the British empire was written by its victors, whose accounts of conquest guided the consolidation of imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. British historians' narratives of the development of imperial governance licensed the brutal suppression of colonial rebellion. Their reimagining of empire during the two world wars compromised decolonization. In this brilliant work, Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed.
From the imperial histories of John Stuart Mill and Winston Churchill to the works of anticolonial thinkers such as William Blake, Mahatma Gandhi, and E. P. Thompson, Satia captures two opposing approaches to the discipline of history and illuminates the ethical universe that came with them. Against the backdrop of enduring inequalities and a crisis in the humanities, hers is an urgent moral voice.
384 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2020
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1519 people want to read
About the author
Priya Satia
5 books36 followersPriya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of British History at Stanford University. She specializes in modern British and British empire history, especially in the Middle East and South Asia. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (2009), and her writing has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, the Nation, and the Huffington Post, among other publications.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
October 19, 2020
An award-winning author reconsiders the role of historians in political debate. For generations, British thinkers told the history of an empire whose story was still very much in the making. While they wrote of how conquest, imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean was consolidated. While they described the development of imperial governance, rebellions were brutally crushed. As they reimagined empire during the two world wars, decolonization was compromised. Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed. This is an account of the British empire that focuses on the role of the modern historical imagination in its unfolding, while also recovering alternative ethical visions embraced by anti-colonial thinkers.
Satia has penned a fascinating account of how historians can be complicit in the consolidation of power and how they can warp the history books by doing so. Written in a lively and accessible manner, she explores how British imperialism has been portrayed and how those who write the history books shouldn't sugarcoat, or avoid completely, the horrors of imperialism, colonialism, the exploitation and dehumanisation of people and the struggle that comes along with those. Satia specializes in British empire history and you certainly feel as though you are in good hands throughout. A thoroughly engrossing read as well as a timely, powerful and vitally important one, I highly recommend Time Monster to those who are interested in how historians shape the way we perceive the world. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.
Satia has penned a fascinating account of how historians can be complicit in the consolidation of power and how they can warp the history books by doing so. Written in a lively and accessible manner, she explores how British imperialism has been portrayed and how those who write the history books shouldn't sugarcoat, or avoid completely, the horrors of imperialism, colonialism, the exploitation and dehumanisation of people and the struggle that comes along with those. Satia specializes in British empire history and you certainly feel as though you are in good hands throughout. A thoroughly engrossing read as well as a timely, powerful and vitally important one, I highly recommend Time Monster to those who are interested in how historians shape the way we perceive the world. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.
March 3, 2021
The central question at the heart of Priya Satia's book is, why has the British Empire seemingly be given a free pass? Considering the still lasting effects of empire, from partition in India, to the slave trade, from famines and riots to the current mess in the Middle East, how is it that it is still a source of pride for a considerable proportion of the UK population and not considered on a par with other global wrongs like the Holocaust and Hiroshima? The answer posited is history, in particular the kinds of narrative history perused by and within Empire as events were taking part. People used history to justify their acts, to suggest the colonised were savages being saved, so suggest that the arc of history is towards progress and therefore "colonising and developing" other nations become a national duty, a moral duty. And because the history of histories is cumulative, more recent Marxist or other side historical accounts are battering against a general perception of history boiled into the general understanding of the discipline.
This is all very convincing a and well argued, and she uses her own previous scholarship to make her point. Having previously questioned for example how a devout Quaker could also be Britain's biggest arms manufacturer Satia has already acquainted herself with the moral gymnastics people commit to feel internally consistent. There is an academically even handed tone here, where she is very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to her actors motives, having been told that such things are justified by the passage of history or progress (all themselves historical theories). A chapter which comes out of her book on Spies In Arabia looks at the conflicts around "Great Man" theories particularly T.E.Lawrence and how that colours the narrative both in the UK and abroad. It can get quite exhausting in places, and I think she perhaps dives a bit too deep sometimes revisiting old stomping grounds. There is very little here for example on Africa, and whilst I think she proves her point admirably by the time the Scramble For Africa is underway, there is perhaps more to be said about how some of that late colonialism is mediated not just through history and culture. This is also true about the USA / Canada / Australia and New Zealand, all of who's colonial stories add another interesting wrinkle to the morality of Empire (granting independence to the countries which have been completely settled creating a dichotomy with India and its huge indigenous population).
This is an readably dense but accessible bit of meta history, but I think it probably doesn't quite make the leap to a more general market. This is partially by choice I fear; in its conclusion one of its bugbears is "Popular History", which is unsurprisingly about topics which tend not to trouble the consciences of its consumers (more World War II bombers, less Amritsar Massacre). I do think she also disregards popular culture in general, it feels impossible to me to talk about the effect of Lawrence Of Arabia on the British understanding of Empire, without mentioning the David Lean film, and the ossifying effect of the cinema of Empire, and the period drama industry normalising a kind of British experience. So whilst I think she is right as Churchill knew writing the hostories , and this is a great bit of historiography, if she wanted to answer her own question - particularly when looking at Brexit and that little Englander mentality - she should have not just asked what are the histories that allow Empire impunity, but where are they being told.
[NetGalley ARC]
This is all very convincing a and well argued, and she uses her own previous scholarship to make her point. Having previously questioned for example how a devout Quaker could also be Britain's biggest arms manufacturer Satia has already acquainted herself with the moral gymnastics people commit to feel internally consistent. There is an academically even handed tone here, where she is very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to her actors motives, having been told that such things are justified by the passage of history or progress (all themselves historical theories). A chapter which comes out of her book on Spies In Arabia looks at the conflicts around "Great Man" theories particularly T.E.Lawrence and how that colours the narrative both in the UK and abroad. It can get quite exhausting in places, and I think she perhaps dives a bit too deep sometimes revisiting old stomping grounds. There is very little here for example on Africa, and whilst I think she proves her point admirably by the time the Scramble For Africa is underway, there is perhaps more to be said about how some of that late colonialism is mediated not just through history and culture. This is also true about the USA / Canada / Australia and New Zealand, all of who's colonial stories add another interesting wrinkle to the morality of Empire (granting independence to the countries which have been completely settled creating a dichotomy with India and its huge indigenous population).
This is an readably dense but accessible bit of meta history, but I think it probably doesn't quite make the leap to a more general market. This is partially by choice I fear; in its conclusion one of its bugbears is "Popular History", which is unsurprisingly about topics which tend not to trouble the consciences of its consumers (more World War II bombers, less Amritsar Massacre). I do think she also disregards popular culture in general, it feels impossible to me to talk about the effect of Lawrence Of Arabia on the British understanding of Empire, without mentioning the David Lean film, and the ossifying effect of the cinema of Empire, and the period drama industry normalising a kind of British experience. So whilst I think she is right as Churchill knew writing the hostories , and this is a great bit of historiography, if she wanted to answer her own question - particularly when looking at Brexit and that little Englander mentality - she should have not just asked what are the histories that allow Empire impunity, but where are they being told.
[NetGalley ARC]
August 13, 2024
Britain’s empire is both valorised and reviled, still mourned as lost and still loathed as genocidal, brutal, and exploitative; appreciated for its cultural worlds and repudiated for its attempted destruction of those cultural worlds it encountered and occupied. In England it is both written out of our past and remains a key driver in self-image and public policy (the Brexit debacle being as much about an effort to reclaim a mythical imperial past as anything else), while evoked in the ‘culture wars’ and celebrated, mainly but not exclusively, on the right on the basis of a balance sheet approach that seems to equate the provision of railways with the destruction of local economies and mass enslavement of humans. Its very complexity demands insight, and close exploration of its times, especially as one of the things we critics are accused of is imposing the views of the now on ‘back then’ – so that close exploration needs to address both the views of the advocates of empire, and those of empire’s subaltern.
This multi-layered exploration of the making and shaping of ideas about empire and empire’s practice grapples with that problem and is one of those books that merits multiple revisits. It’s complexity and therefore its richness and importance comes from its dual stranded character, where on the one hand this is a historiography and an intellectual history of Britain’s empire, unpacking the ways we wrote empire into existence from the late 18th through the mid-20th century. The second aspect of it is an exploration of the philosophical underpinning of that historiography not in terms of philosophy-the-discipline, but in terms of the practice of empire. Satia reminds us of the importance of this question when she notes that for much of the era of empire, it was the study of history that was considered the ideal training for government and governance – so the historians of the era were also the leaders of the state and empire. That is to say, she makes clear that historians’ views mattered.
Satia’s case is delicately balanced, between being clear that the views about and practices of empire were at all times contested, while also being shaped through a series of shifts in dominant outlooks shaping the writing and doing of empire. There is a real sense throughout that she sees in Britain a sense that empire was not only inevitable but inescapable, something that even if disliked or antithetical to one’s moral code was something we just had to live with. Yet she also makes clear that this was a means of justification, alongside the notion that Britain’s empire was accidental and on balance liberal. Her case is clear – empire was a conscious driven policy and practice of the state even as the understanding and framing, writing and enactment of it varied. At times it was a mechanism for sustaining war with imperial rivals and as means of maintaining ‘progress’, while at the times its framing was as a form of atonement for excess – the 1857 Indian Rebellion plays a significant role in her analysis, although she also makes clear that the imperial politics of whiteness played out differently elsewhere, especially in dominions and settler colonies.
One of the very great strengths of the analysis is Satia’s attention to other, especially South Asian, modes of thought and historical thinking. Much as she builds an understanding of the many strands of outlook and cultural practice that sustained British views and outlooks, she is also able to draw on representative texts such as Urdu poetry to explore other imperial epistemologies. In this aspect of the discussion there is a very real sense that she is giving substance to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s now ¼ of a century old call to provincalize Europe. This is perhaps the key part of the vitality of the argument, where Satia points not only to that disruption within empire, but also through her close readings of family-linked strands in British history, most closely the father and son duo of E.J. and E.P. Thompson, shows the complexity of relationships between those epistemologies and tendencies in contemporary British history.
It’s not an easy read, but it is, at least in my field, essential – disruptive and challenging, both historiographically and in its casting of the British state, the reach of empire, and modes of thought and state-imperial praxis. It’s also one I’ll revisit, soon I suspect.
This multi-layered exploration of the making and shaping of ideas about empire and empire’s practice grapples with that problem and is one of those books that merits multiple revisits. It’s complexity and therefore its richness and importance comes from its dual stranded character, where on the one hand this is a historiography and an intellectual history of Britain’s empire, unpacking the ways we wrote empire into existence from the late 18th through the mid-20th century. The second aspect of it is an exploration of the philosophical underpinning of that historiography not in terms of philosophy-the-discipline, but in terms of the practice of empire. Satia reminds us of the importance of this question when she notes that for much of the era of empire, it was the study of history that was considered the ideal training for government and governance – so the historians of the era were also the leaders of the state and empire. That is to say, she makes clear that historians’ views mattered.
Satia’s case is delicately balanced, between being clear that the views about and practices of empire were at all times contested, while also being shaped through a series of shifts in dominant outlooks shaping the writing and doing of empire. There is a real sense throughout that she sees in Britain a sense that empire was not only inevitable but inescapable, something that even if disliked or antithetical to one’s moral code was something we just had to live with. Yet she also makes clear that this was a means of justification, alongside the notion that Britain’s empire was accidental and on balance liberal. Her case is clear – empire was a conscious driven policy and practice of the state even as the understanding and framing, writing and enactment of it varied. At times it was a mechanism for sustaining war with imperial rivals and as means of maintaining ‘progress’, while at the times its framing was as a form of atonement for excess – the 1857 Indian Rebellion plays a significant role in her analysis, although she also makes clear that the imperial politics of whiteness played out differently elsewhere, especially in dominions and settler colonies.
One of the very great strengths of the analysis is Satia’s attention to other, especially South Asian, modes of thought and historical thinking. Much as she builds an understanding of the many strands of outlook and cultural practice that sustained British views and outlooks, she is also able to draw on representative texts such as Urdu poetry to explore other imperial epistemologies. In this aspect of the discussion there is a very real sense that she is giving substance to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s now ¼ of a century old call to provincalize Europe. This is perhaps the key part of the vitality of the argument, where Satia points not only to that disruption within empire, but also through her close readings of family-linked strands in British history, most closely the father and son duo of E.J. and E.P. Thompson, shows the complexity of relationships between those epistemologies and tendencies in contemporary British history.
It’s not an easy read, but it is, at least in my field, essential – disruptive and challenging, both historiographically and in its casting of the British state, the reach of empire, and modes of thought and state-imperial praxis. It’s also one I’ll revisit, soon I suspect.
April 12, 2024
This book has such an interesting premise and the general argument that people's understandings of history and and their role in history influenced their actions in the present was interesting. When the book actually talked about this argument, I enjoyed it. However, the writing in this book was absolutely terrible. It was incredibly dense and difficult to follow and the author wandered all over the place talking about things that were not at all related to the topic.
The author seemed to want to talk about anything and everything she had ever learned.
This book is in desperate need of a good editor.
I did find several parts enlightening, especially in the later chapters, but most of the book was quite a slog.
The author seemed to want to talk about anything and everything she had ever learned.
This book is in desperate need of a good editor.
I did find several parts enlightening, especially in the later chapters, but most of the book was quite a slog.
July 29, 2021
Contains possibly the most comprehensive overview of historiography I’ve read in one book and then goes on to put forward a convincing narrative on the impact of history and memory of empire on politics and society, race and nationalism. Thoroughly enjoyed and I’ll definitely be dipping back in for info in the future.
One point about Thatcher’s redesigning of the school history curriculum was a particular lightbulb moment.
One point about Thatcher’s redesigning of the school history curriculum was a particular lightbulb moment.
June 20, 2023
This was everything I loved in my History degree, in one book.
Priya Satia lays out our problematic historical narrative based on "progress" and shows how it has contributed to colonialism even still today. There are still groups arguing the "pros" of empire and justify the exploitation and horrors experienced. The first step is to recognise this dangerous narrative and the power of historiography to do so, which this book brilliantly does.
Priya Satia lays out our problematic historical narrative based on "progress" and shows how it has contributed to colonialism even still today. There are still groups arguing the "pros" of empire and justify the exploitation and horrors experienced. The first step is to recognise this dangerous narrative and the power of historiography to do so, which this book brilliantly does.
December 20, 2024
I don’t really know how to rate this, so 4 stars seems like a good compromise. This is a good intellectual history of history itself, and I think the UK subtitle (about the British Empire) probably better captures the subject. Satia’s points about how people conceive of time and how that connects to the justification of empire and the Anthropocene were fascinating. However, like most Belknap books the prose was dense and kinda inaccessible, making the middle of the book tough to get through.
August 31, 2025
So good!! Really relevant for anyone still wanting to debate the “pros and cons” of the British empire & how historians have shaped empire
January 10, 2023
Recommended reading for any historian, and possibly more widely.
Satia makes a compelling argument that 'historicism' or the way history was imagined as progress, leading to an ultimate telos, and time of redemption in the eyes of future historians, allowed imperialists to 'manage their consciences' about empire. Colonialism, even if understood as morally wrong at the time, was a 'burden' that would eventually lead to an overall good in the 'development' of the colonies. I found this book especially strong in articulating why certain ideas of how we conceive of progress, development, growth, modernity, liberalism etc. in the present are in fact the products of this particular historical time and are not as 'neutral' as they may seem. She points to free market liberalism, the 'survival of the fittest' mentality from natural history and self-conceptions of historical agency as part of the exercise of 'managing conscience' - that empire would eventually 'prove' to be good at some kind of culmination of history.
Especially interesting also was her discussion of historical agency - individuals like Winston Churchill had 'historical scripts' where he was 'supposed' to be a history-maker because of his own grand heritage. She asks how much Marx writing about the inevitability of working-class revolution, in this sense also made working class people perceive themselves as historical agents of revolution. She makes interesting comparisons to how Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg perceive themselves as historical agents in the present.
Methodologically she uses contemporary literature, primary sources about individual's feelings about empire, philosopher's works, and importantly, historians accounts from the period. It does focus considerably on the complicity of the historical discipline in the imperial project and analyses how J.R. Seeley's histories of empire managed the consciences of contemporaries in regards to empire. Later 'subaltern' historical schools, e.g. E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, Dipesh Chakrabarty, attempted to 'rescue' and redeem the victims of history by writing their stories. She argues that in some ways the power of the historian has been displaced by 'political theorists', social scientists and economists. Yet, she identifies these disciplines themselves as part of the detached 'conscience management' of colonial thought - where the 'economy' abstracted real people and could be controlled in a civilised, distanced way. Historians thus have their own disciplinary complicity to reckon with. In her final chapter, she calls for a greater recognition of our interdependence and relatedness, an escape from 'human-centred' history and towards a discipline operating within the 'fulness' of historical time.
For historians and related disciplines, this is an important and self-reflecting book. It is not always an easy read, especially during deeper analysis of literature I happened to be unfamiliar with. Moreover, it has hard to prove her point precisely because of its very nature. The strength of the book is in its theoretical premise and new contribution to understanding empire - but whether her 'historicism' was so key to imperial 'conscience management' is not absolutely persuasive. I would consider this book to be a powerful conjecture, especially relevant to our present-day attempts to reckon with empire. It will provide anyone, provided they have some historical background, with a new way of thinking about the role of different disciplines in managing our own morality today.
Satia makes a compelling argument that 'historicism' or the way history was imagined as progress, leading to an ultimate telos, and time of redemption in the eyes of future historians, allowed imperialists to 'manage their consciences' about empire. Colonialism, even if understood as morally wrong at the time, was a 'burden' that would eventually lead to an overall good in the 'development' of the colonies. I found this book especially strong in articulating why certain ideas of how we conceive of progress, development, growth, modernity, liberalism etc. in the present are in fact the products of this particular historical time and are not as 'neutral' as they may seem. She points to free market liberalism, the 'survival of the fittest' mentality from natural history and self-conceptions of historical agency as part of the exercise of 'managing conscience' - that empire would eventually 'prove' to be good at some kind of culmination of history.
Especially interesting also was her discussion of historical agency - individuals like Winston Churchill had 'historical scripts' where he was 'supposed' to be a history-maker because of his own grand heritage. She asks how much Marx writing about the inevitability of working-class revolution, in this sense also made working class people perceive themselves as historical agents of revolution. She makes interesting comparisons to how Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg perceive themselves as historical agents in the present.
Methodologically she uses contemporary literature, primary sources about individual's feelings about empire, philosopher's works, and importantly, historians accounts from the period. It does focus considerably on the complicity of the historical discipline in the imperial project and analyses how J.R. Seeley's histories of empire managed the consciences of contemporaries in regards to empire. Later 'subaltern' historical schools, e.g. E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, Dipesh Chakrabarty, attempted to 'rescue' and redeem the victims of history by writing their stories. She argues that in some ways the power of the historian has been displaced by 'political theorists', social scientists and economists. Yet, she identifies these disciplines themselves as part of the detached 'conscience management' of colonial thought - where the 'economy' abstracted real people and could be controlled in a civilised, distanced way. Historians thus have their own disciplinary complicity to reckon with. In her final chapter, she calls for a greater recognition of our interdependence and relatedness, an escape from 'human-centred' history and towards a discipline operating within the 'fulness' of historical time.
For historians and related disciplines, this is an important and self-reflecting book. It is not always an easy read, especially during deeper analysis of literature I happened to be unfamiliar with. Moreover, it has hard to prove her point precisely because of its very nature. The strength of the book is in its theoretical premise and new contribution to understanding empire - but whether her 'historicism' was so key to imperial 'conscience management' is not absolutely persuasive. I would consider this book to be a powerful conjecture, especially relevant to our present-day attempts to reckon with empire. It will provide anyone, provided they have some historical background, with a new way of thinking about the role of different disciplines in managing our own morality today.
June 30, 2021
One of the finest books on history and colonies toon. A bit dense but ultimately very rewarding. I could relate to parts of the partition - my parents went through it and I guess my generation will have those horrors imprinted in our minds
September 13, 2023
A long time ago, I studied nineteenth-century British historiography - that of the Reformation. So I was immediately intrigued by this fascinating, highly reflective study that goes beyond investigating how historical thinking informed political decisions and popular opinion in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Britain and its empire, to explaining how history as a discipline is complicit in the making of our exploitative and dehumanizing world order, and to opening up new ways for humans to think about history as a whole (incorporating insights from south Asian and anti-colonial thought). How did people of conscience, who existed in a particularly moralistic era, reconcile their beliefs with the depredations of empire? In fact, as Priya Satia shows, a knowledge of history was no hindrance - and indeed it was considered the subject most worthy of study by statesmen and what we might call today “thought leaders.”
For much of modern history, Satia argues, historians were not critics of power, as we anxious, left-leaning bookworms might hope, but sophisticated apologists for it. The great British historical tradition that arose in the nineteenth century, sprung out of Enlightenment ideals, developed alongside the Empire and was ineluctably entangled with it. And - by extension - the modern-day, institutional historical profession, despite many developments, is still in many ways complicit. Witness the industry of self-congratulatory, patriotic histories that any American bookstore’s shelves groan with, or the enthusiastic support given by some establishment historians (like Niall Ferguson) to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Certainly, as the profession well, professionalized, in the twentieth century things changed. In recent decades, historians, like stout Cortez, have surveyed with eyes of varying nobility the oceans of thought derived from other disciplines (anthropology, sociology, cultural studies) and even, to an extent, non-Western perspectives. But there is so much more work to be done, and new horizons to explore.
What I like about this book is that it not only examines a period and a body of material from a detailed, expert point of view, but approaches history from a broad, philosophical, even religious perspective. Satia goes a long way back in setting the stage, referencing Herodotus, Thucydides, the Mahabharata, before arriving at the Enlightenment and thinkers like Leibniz and Kant. The immensely influential work of men like Thomas Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, J.R. Seeley, and Lord Acton, emerging from the Enlightenment tradition, served to provide a sturdy foundation for the liberal imperialist narrative. That is, normal moral compunctions can be suppressed when faced with the violence and corruption inherent in Empire because history is the outworking of a greater Providence (personal or impersonal, depending on the historian’s religious beliefs). British civilization brought the benefits of political and economic progress to regions of the world that suffered under disorder and despotism. As long as it could be claimed that British rule was a moral, civilizing force, any number of punitive and expansionary actions could be justified. The emergence of Social Darwinism later in the nineteenth century provided a new, additional slant. For example, famines in south Asia from 1874 onward killed millions due to the government’s laissez-faire attitude (notably, this was identified and criticized by Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of biological evolution!), but they could safely be categorized as the result of natural forces beyond human control. The use of machine guns and aerial bombing on indigenous populations could be sanitized by characterizing them as inherently violent and superstitious people who could only be governed by violence. As abhorrent as these arguments might seem, the old assumptions and arguments are present today - maybe diluted or given varying veneers of sophistication, but they are there.
Surprising figures make appearances. In particular, Satia uses her own earlier work on Joseph Priestley and the Quaker arms manufacturer Samuel Galton (ancestor of Francis, whose eugenic ideas also appear later) to show how consciences were forged and assuaged as the Empire expanded and faced moral challenges - from slavery, rebellions (the 1857 Indian Mutiny being most significant), and natural disasters. The romantic poets, in particular Lord Byron, infused the imperial mission with a desire to liberate and redeem suffering foreign peoples. Hannah Arendt, one of the great critics of totalitarianism, gave the British Empire something of a pass. After all, it was one of the key victors over fascism, and accorded its subjects at least a bare minimum of human rights. I found most educational Satia’s discussion of orientalism, and her treatment of south Asian anti-colonialists like Mohamed Iqbal, Rabindrinath Tagore, and Gandhi.
I also enjoyed Satia’s discussions of Brexit, which are both wry (comparing it with the Partition of India) and deeply serious and relevant. She notes that in a sense Brexit is a misguided attempt to return to an era of glorious imperial achievement. The UK’s unwillingness to return artworks looted in the colonial era reflects an unwillingness to morally reckon with the empire and its crimes. Most “Westerners” (inaccurate but useful) still believe the political and economic “progress” bestowed upon imperial subjects was worth the crimes committed against them. A similar argument is still used in the United States when considering slavery and the possibility of tangible and real recompense. Imagine a world where real healing from the ghosts of history was possible.
Satia deals well with the commonly-heard and fallacious “pros and cons” argument: without imperial and colonial crimes, people in developing countries wouldn’t have railways, industrial development, iphones, whatever. First, it presupposes that these kinds of things can be totted up in a ledger, as if at the end of the financial year. Secondly, counterfactuals are inherently dubious (if fun to think about in a speculative fiction context - I’d recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt here). Finally, it’s unclear whether the marks of “progress” are really that beneficial for formerly subjugated peoples. Ultimately, for example, “improvements” in British India were designed to benefit the British economy, British security, and to prop up the British colonial government. I’d wonder also if they are that beneficial on an absolute level, given industrial civilization has brought us to the brink of environmental apocalypse. In her particularly wide-ranging and passionate final chapter, Satia considers “The Past and Future of History”, concluding that we “might tell new, more encompassing, more chaotic stories that will return us to the fullness of time.”
Herbert Butterfield might have approved. His short book The Whig Interpretation of History (originally published in 1931) was an earlier attack on the liberal, triumphalist historical tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.* Whig history, in short, was the idea that the central theme of British history was progress, dividing individuals and events into those that furthered it, and those that merely were hindrances to be avoided or defeated. The problem with this approach - based on an understanding of divine Providence, or historical destiny - is that it does a disservice both to historical heroes - in that it gives them a sort of ahistorical (or unhistorical) foreknowledge of their place in the grand conception - and villains, in that it denies them a historical understanding of their own motivations. It is worth noting that Butterfield was a devout Christian, and he had his own ideas about divine Providence in history - but in his writing it was more ironic, in a manner more recognizable today. It manifested itself more in unintended consequences, surprises and contingencies. I see Satia’s work as a much broader and deeper update of Butterfield for the Anthropocene.
This review cannot do justice to the many insights of this important book. If you’re seriously interested in history, I unreservedly recommend reading it. This is a challenging read, not “popular” history - but it is aimed at a wider audience than professional historians.
*Side note: from about the end of the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth, the Whigs were one of the two great British political parties (the other being the Tories). The Whigs were (broadly) pro-constitutional monarchy and pro-parliament, (later) anti-slavery and pro-Catholic Emancipation, pro-free trade, and somewhat more recognizably “liberal” in the modern sense.
For much of modern history, Satia argues, historians were not critics of power, as we anxious, left-leaning bookworms might hope, but sophisticated apologists for it. The great British historical tradition that arose in the nineteenth century, sprung out of Enlightenment ideals, developed alongside the Empire and was ineluctably entangled with it. And - by extension - the modern-day, institutional historical profession, despite many developments, is still in many ways complicit. Witness the industry of self-congratulatory, patriotic histories that any American bookstore’s shelves groan with, or the enthusiastic support given by some establishment historians (like Niall Ferguson) to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Certainly, as the profession well, professionalized, in the twentieth century things changed. In recent decades, historians, like stout Cortez, have surveyed with eyes of varying nobility the oceans of thought derived from other disciplines (anthropology, sociology, cultural studies) and even, to an extent, non-Western perspectives. But there is so much more work to be done, and new horizons to explore.
What I like about this book is that it not only examines a period and a body of material from a detailed, expert point of view, but approaches history from a broad, philosophical, even religious perspective. Satia goes a long way back in setting the stage, referencing Herodotus, Thucydides, the Mahabharata, before arriving at the Enlightenment and thinkers like Leibniz and Kant. The immensely influential work of men like Thomas Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, J.R. Seeley, and Lord Acton, emerging from the Enlightenment tradition, served to provide a sturdy foundation for the liberal imperialist narrative. That is, normal moral compunctions can be suppressed when faced with the violence and corruption inherent in Empire because history is the outworking of a greater Providence (personal or impersonal, depending on the historian’s religious beliefs). British civilization brought the benefits of political and economic progress to regions of the world that suffered under disorder and despotism. As long as it could be claimed that British rule was a moral, civilizing force, any number of punitive and expansionary actions could be justified. The emergence of Social Darwinism later in the nineteenth century provided a new, additional slant. For example, famines in south Asia from 1874 onward killed millions due to the government’s laissez-faire attitude (notably, this was identified and criticized by Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of biological evolution!), but they could safely be categorized as the result of natural forces beyond human control. The use of machine guns and aerial bombing on indigenous populations could be sanitized by characterizing them as inherently violent and superstitious people who could only be governed by violence. As abhorrent as these arguments might seem, the old assumptions and arguments are present today - maybe diluted or given varying veneers of sophistication, but they are there.
Surprising figures make appearances. In particular, Satia uses her own earlier work on Joseph Priestley and the Quaker arms manufacturer Samuel Galton (ancestor of Francis, whose eugenic ideas also appear later) to show how consciences were forged and assuaged as the Empire expanded and faced moral challenges - from slavery, rebellions (the 1857 Indian Mutiny being most significant), and natural disasters. The romantic poets, in particular Lord Byron, infused the imperial mission with a desire to liberate and redeem suffering foreign peoples. Hannah Arendt, one of the great critics of totalitarianism, gave the British Empire something of a pass. After all, it was one of the key victors over fascism, and accorded its subjects at least a bare minimum of human rights. I found most educational Satia’s discussion of orientalism, and her treatment of south Asian anti-colonialists like Mohamed Iqbal, Rabindrinath Tagore, and Gandhi.
I also enjoyed Satia’s discussions of Brexit, which are both wry (comparing it with the Partition of India) and deeply serious and relevant. She notes that in a sense Brexit is a misguided attempt to return to an era of glorious imperial achievement. The UK’s unwillingness to return artworks looted in the colonial era reflects an unwillingness to morally reckon with the empire and its crimes. Most “Westerners” (inaccurate but useful) still believe the political and economic “progress” bestowed upon imperial subjects was worth the crimes committed against them. A similar argument is still used in the United States when considering slavery and the possibility of tangible and real recompense. Imagine a world where real healing from the ghosts of history was possible.
Satia deals well with the commonly-heard and fallacious “pros and cons” argument: without imperial and colonial crimes, people in developing countries wouldn’t have railways, industrial development, iphones, whatever. First, it presupposes that these kinds of things can be totted up in a ledger, as if at the end of the financial year. Secondly, counterfactuals are inherently dubious (if fun to think about in a speculative fiction context - I’d recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt here). Finally, it’s unclear whether the marks of “progress” are really that beneficial for formerly subjugated peoples. Ultimately, for example, “improvements” in British India were designed to benefit the British economy, British security, and to prop up the British colonial government. I’d wonder also if they are that beneficial on an absolute level, given industrial civilization has brought us to the brink of environmental apocalypse. In her particularly wide-ranging and passionate final chapter, Satia considers “The Past and Future of History”, concluding that we “might tell new, more encompassing, more chaotic stories that will return us to the fullness of time.”
Herbert Butterfield might have approved. His short book The Whig Interpretation of History (originally published in 1931) was an earlier attack on the liberal, triumphalist historical tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.* Whig history, in short, was the idea that the central theme of British history was progress, dividing individuals and events into those that furthered it, and those that merely were hindrances to be avoided or defeated. The problem with this approach - based on an understanding of divine Providence, or historical destiny - is that it does a disservice both to historical heroes - in that it gives them a sort of ahistorical (or unhistorical) foreknowledge of their place in the grand conception - and villains, in that it denies them a historical understanding of their own motivations. It is worth noting that Butterfield was a devout Christian, and he had his own ideas about divine Providence in history - but in his writing it was more ironic, in a manner more recognizable today. It manifested itself more in unintended consequences, surprises and contingencies. I see Satia’s work as a much broader and deeper update of Butterfield for the Anthropocene.
This review cannot do justice to the many insights of this important book. If you’re seriously interested in history, I unreservedly recommend reading it. This is a challenging read, not “popular” history - but it is aimed at a wider audience than professional historians.
*Side note: from about the end of the seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth, the Whigs were one of the two great British political parties (the other being the Tories). The Whigs were (broadly) pro-constitutional monarchy and pro-parliament, (later) anti-slavery and pro-Catholic Emancipation, pro-free trade, and somewhat more recognizably “liberal” in the modern sense.
October 3, 2021
In his California gubernatorial campaign, Upton Sinclair remarked “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Priya Satia unearths dozens of other examples of cognitive dissonance in Time’s Monster, including extreme examples of the Quaker and grandfather of Francis, Samuel Galton’s justification of his arms manufacturing.
And while Sinclair was thinking of the individual, Satia focuses this book on a sort of nation-wide cognitive dissonance, absorbing stories that are effectively marketing materials for accepting an idea or decision, designed by historians. “Britain’s imperial career from the era of slavery to the current Brexit crisis depended on the sway of a particular historical sensibility that deferred ethical judgment to an unspecified future time.” Satia argues that historians have served as handmaidens of power, reframing how we justify acts of violence and suppression.
This is wonderful, focused history, with philosophical roots that reach back to Kant, Hegel, Priestly, Smith, Hume, and others. The chapter on Britain’s quasi-mystical fascination in the near-east goes a long way to explain for me the occult fascinations in Gravity’s Rainbow
But I’m not sure that Satia was entirely fair in elevating the responsibility of academic historians in convincing nations to accept unjust behavior. For example, Roland Barthes in Mythologies cites enough examples of politicians and newspaper men employing these tricks well enough on their own. I also think historical reductivism, as flawed as it may be under closer scrutiny, is just part of human nature. And it has more socially just flavors! For example, who wants to abandon MLK’s claim that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”?
Probably more importantly, I don’t understand Satia’s criticism of Liberalism, which she believed Britons used to justify their empire “…the world we live in today remains enthralled to Liberalism’s certainties, despite mounting evidence of its folly”. Satia doesn’t define Liberalism directly for the purpose of argument, but merely casts liberal thinkers such as JS Mill as guilty by association to Imperial sins. Liberal thought prioritized the importance of individual liberty, rule of law, and freedom of speech. The problem Satia really demonstrates is an inconsistent application of Liberal thinking. In fact, I would argue that books like Satia’s are excellent demonstrations of expanding Liberal thought, through seeking equal justice for subjugated groups. When Satia criticizes Popper’s own similar critique of historicism, it is because Popper “did not recognize that the Liberal values he valorized as an alternative to Fascism and Communism also originated in a view of history guided by natural laws, and have furnished the intellectual breeding ground of colonialism in which Fascism was rooted… He mistook Liberal ideals for historical reality in holding up Western Liberal Democracies as societies that have peacefully improved over time.”
And while Sinclair was thinking of the individual, Satia focuses this book on a sort of nation-wide cognitive dissonance, absorbing stories that are effectively marketing materials for accepting an idea or decision, designed by historians. “Britain’s imperial career from the era of slavery to the current Brexit crisis depended on the sway of a particular historical sensibility that deferred ethical judgment to an unspecified future time.” Satia argues that historians have served as handmaidens of power, reframing how we justify acts of violence and suppression.
The modern era is one in which men, and I mean men, increasingly conscious of their own agency as historical actors, try to shape worl events according to certain historical scripts. Whether as revolutionaries or conquerors or industrialists or settlers. The notions of progress that drove the spread of industrial capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism, depended on ability to suppress conscience by recourse to assumptions about race, religion, and culture. Dreams of utopic ends again and again justified horrific means.
This is wonderful, focused history, with philosophical roots that reach back to Kant, Hegel, Priestly, Smith, Hume, and others. The chapter on Britain’s quasi-mystical fascination in the near-east goes a long way to explain for me the occult fascinations in Gravity’s Rainbow
But I’m not sure that Satia was entirely fair in elevating the responsibility of academic historians in convincing nations to accept unjust behavior. For example, Roland Barthes in Mythologies cites enough examples of politicians and newspaper men employing these tricks well enough on their own. I also think historical reductivism, as flawed as it may be under closer scrutiny, is just part of human nature. And it has more socially just flavors! For example, who wants to abandon MLK’s claim that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”?
Probably more importantly, I don’t understand Satia’s criticism of Liberalism, which she believed Britons used to justify their empire “…the world we live in today remains enthralled to Liberalism’s certainties, despite mounting evidence of its folly”. Satia doesn’t define Liberalism directly for the purpose of argument, but merely casts liberal thinkers such as JS Mill as guilty by association to Imperial sins. Liberal thought prioritized the importance of individual liberty, rule of law, and freedom of speech. The problem Satia really demonstrates is an inconsistent application of Liberal thinking. In fact, I would argue that books like Satia’s are excellent demonstrations of expanding Liberal thought, through seeking equal justice for subjugated groups. When Satia criticizes Popper’s own similar critique of historicism, it is because Popper “did not recognize that the Liberal values he valorized as an alternative to Fascism and Communism also originated in a view of history guided by natural laws, and have furnished the intellectual breeding ground of colonialism in which Fascism was rooted… He mistook Liberal ideals for historical reality in holding up Western Liberal Democracies as societies that have peacefully improved over time.”
February 24, 2021
Priya Satia’s brilliant new book, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History features two major projects: on one hand, she explores the narratives of the British Empire, particularly in South Asia and the Middle East, arguing for that the world has collectively suffered from imperial amnesia. On the other, she depicts how historians through the ages have consistently had a hand in cleansing Britain’s colonial memories and helped prop up grandiloquent images of empire. That is, despite the British Empire’s devastating effects on peoples the world over, causing wars and slavery and looting and bloodshed, we do not hold them accountable in the same way Germany is held accountable for Nazism. Why is this? Satia tersely puts forward that this British exoneration is the work of complicit historians, from whom the balance of power and politics has long been intertwined.
Time’s Monster an engaging, if heavy read. Over the course of the book, Satia shepherds us through British conceptions of agency, the 1857 Indian Rebellion, and early 20th century orientalisms of the Middle East, among other major historical events. Through it all, she continues to hone in on her core argument about historical amnesia and the hand different historians have played in doing so.
At times, her argument seems simplistic: of course historians write history! Yet, Satia quite artfully demonstrates how this isn’t quite so simple, patiently explaining how the historiography of the British Empire has been written, and how we still perceive things from a colonial manner. In fact, she effectively argues that the entire discipline of history is still very much beholden to British and, more largely, European modes of historical thought. Even through recent attempts to decolonize our histories, we are still shackled to imagining history through very Eurocentric eyes.
So then, Satia’s most affecting cogitations spring from how one might imagine new modes of organizing community and new modes of historical thought. How can we re-imagine history in a manner that is divorced from colonialist thinking, without colonialist tools of perceiving the world? Satia doesn’t provide any easy answers here, but readily punctures a gap in the discipline for future historians to grapple with.
Time’s Monster an engaging, if heavy read. Over the course of the book, Satia shepherds us through British conceptions of agency, the 1857 Indian Rebellion, and early 20th century orientalisms of the Middle East, among other major historical events. Through it all, she continues to hone in on her core argument about historical amnesia and the hand different historians have played in doing so.
At times, her argument seems simplistic: of course historians write history! Yet, Satia quite artfully demonstrates how this isn’t quite so simple, patiently explaining how the historiography of the British Empire has been written, and how we still perceive things from a colonial manner. In fact, she effectively argues that the entire discipline of history is still very much beholden to British and, more largely, European modes of historical thought. Even through recent attempts to decolonize our histories, we are still shackled to imagining history through very Eurocentric eyes.
So then, Satia’s most affecting cogitations spring from how one might imagine new modes of organizing community and new modes of historical thought. How can we re-imagine history in a manner that is divorced from colonialist thinking, without colonialist tools of perceiving the world? Satia doesn’t provide any easy answers here, but readily punctures a gap in the discipline for future historians to grapple with.
October 28, 2020
In Time’s Monster, historian and Stanford professor Priya Satiya dismantles the ways in which historians interpreted, justified, promoted and helped consolidate the British empire over the past three centuries. How traditional history narratives of linear progress and agency of great men influenced colonial and imperial policy as well as how they continue to influence narratives behind Brexit. In this, Time’s Monster is a particularly timely book albeit likely too academic to open its arguments up to a more general reader.
While there is a lot to admire about Satiya’s book, in particular, her call for contemporary historians to engage with politics and policy in a way that Timothy Snyder has in recent years (On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom), I also found Time’s Monster a frustrating and somewhat limited read. In recent years, Satiya writes, economists and political scientists have sidelined historians but at the same time, economic historians exposed the very exploitative nature of empires. Exclusion of economic history in her argument for interdisciplinary connections between biology, geology, astronomy and history just didn’t work for me. Furthermore, Satiya mainly focuses on India and Arabia (she previously wrote about Britain’s covert empire in the Middle East in Spies in Arabia) and there isn’t enough engagement with the rest of the British empire. And, for a book that exposes flaws in writing of history as agency of great men, there are simply too many mentions of Byronic impulses and people inspired by Lawrence. I’d still recommend the book to students of history and particularly those engaging with the legacy of empire.
My thanks to Penguin, Allen Lane and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Time’s Monster.
While there is a lot to admire about Satiya’s book, in particular, her call for contemporary historians to engage with politics and policy in a way that Timothy Snyder has in recent years (On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom), I also found Time’s Monster a frustrating and somewhat limited read. In recent years, Satiya writes, economists and political scientists have sidelined historians but at the same time, economic historians exposed the very exploitative nature of empires. Exclusion of economic history in her argument for interdisciplinary connections between biology, geology, astronomy and history just didn’t work for me. Furthermore, Satiya mainly focuses on India and Arabia (she previously wrote about Britain’s covert empire in the Middle East in Spies in Arabia) and there isn’t enough engagement with the rest of the British empire. And, for a book that exposes flaws in writing of history as agency of great men, there are simply too many mentions of Byronic impulses and people inspired by Lawrence. I’d still recommend the book to students of history and particularly those engaging with the legacy of empire.
My thanks to Penguin, Allen Lane and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Time’s Monster.
September 25, 2024
A more critical review came from author Zareer Masani. He criticizes Satia for conflating history, historiography, and historicism stating that "Most of Satia’s charge-sheet uses these terms as though they are interchangeable", and for relying on selective evidence, and making generalizations.
The review finds fault with Satia's alleged moral equivalence between British imperialism and Nazism, as well as her misrepresentation of Indian history by overlooking positive contributions of British colonialism and internal conflicts within Indian society.
Masani believes one example of this is when "..[Satia] castigates British Orientalists for perpetuating notions of Oriental despotism, but ignores the work of Orientalists like Sir William Jones and James Prinsep in rediscovering and celebrating India’s classical heritage."
Additionally, Satia's own argument is seen as potentially teleological, presenting a predetermined narrative of evil empire as the inevitable outcome of liberal imperialism.
Overall, while the book raises important questions about the role of historians in shaping narratives, the review finds its approach to be flawed and misleading due to its selective evidence, generalizations, and biases.
October 4, 2025
To sum up in a sentence, this is a fascinating book about "how 'good' people lived with and justified doing terrible things".
A fascinating book on the role of history as a mode of ethics in the modern period, how history was used to counter any narratives of anti-colonialism / imperialism and decoloniality to continue to justify the economic enterprise upon which the brutal British Empire was based. This book challenges the preeminent thinking of 'the ends justifying the means'; necessary evils for economic benefit; avoiding accountability by painting imperialism consequences as routine, like the unavoidable damage of storm etc.
A fascinating read. I disagree with criticisms that this book as being too dense is somehow a flaw, this is a deep dive into historicism, the prevailing philosophies and economic policies - what did you expect.
A fascinating book on the role of history as a mode of ethics in the modern period, how history was used to counter any narratives of anti-colonialism / imperialism and decoloniality to continue to justify the economic enterprise upon which the brutal British Empire was based. This book challenges the preeminent thinking of 'the ends justifying the means'; necessary evils for economic benefit; avoiding accountability by painting imperialism consequences as routine, like the unavoidable damage of storm etc.
A fascinating read. I disagree with criticisms that this book as being too dense is somehow a flaw, this is a deep dive into historicism, the prevailing philosophies and economic policies - what did you expect.
Read
July 12, 2025This is a book that I had high hope to learn some important insight about ways to see the world that we are in. As a lay person, I have indeed learnt some important facts and argument to criticism of British empire, imperialism and colonialism. But I also felt like it wasn’t the most straightforward journey to understand these radical historical perspectives. It was difficult to grasp the Satia’s arguments from paragraph to paragraph. The ideas of history has no end, history from below, the fallacy of development and the continuing for justice are things that I would agreed tho. In the last chapter, Satia plants some hopes for radical historians. Perhaps I’m just not the most targeted reader of this book.
August 19, 2021
Great content, often well put and very important messages, especially about the need for more history knowledge in society.
So its a little ironic that it only gets three stars from me because this work is not accessible enough for the general reader. Just too rich and too many references for my sadly lacking historical chops.
Absolutely whetted my appetite for my history.
Truly empires are nazi like in all important aspects.
How many are the ways people contrive to think around that fact, ignore it, or pant false pictures and tell false narratives so that they can be the heroes in their own heads.
So its a little ironic that it only gets three stars from me because this work is not accessible enough for the general reader. Just too rich and too many references for my sadly lacking historical chops.
Absolutely whetted my appetite for my history.
Truly empires are nazi like in all important aspects.
How many are the ways people contrive to think around that fact, ignore it, or pant false pictures and tell false narratives so that they can be the heroes in their own heads.
August 20, 2023
Useful analysis of the way in which the changing discipline of history contributed to the development and continuation of the British Empire, enabling individuals and society to manage conscience and continue illegitimate forms of government. Satia draws together several of her previous research projects to give a wider perspective and ends with some suggestions about how history might be done and understood as humanity continues to create cycles of movement towards (and away from) freedom and justice in the context of the climate crisis.
September 6, 2022
A decent read looking at the role of historical thinking in empire
I thought the chapter on European Orientalist ideas about South Asian religion also shaping South Asians' study of their religions was particularly good, as scholarly conventions made it difficult for anyone to understand questions about Islam or Hinduism and worldly affairs outside of European Orientalism
I thought the chapter on European Orientalist ideas about South Asian religion also shaping South Asians' study of their religions was particularly good, as scholarly conventions made it difficult for anyone to understand questions about Islam or Hinduism and worldly affairs outside of European Orientalism
April 8, 2021
This is the history book I've been waiting for all my life. I say history, it's so much more than that. Honestly, if every British person (or at least those in power) could read this, the world would be a better place.
November 27, 2023
This book was eye-opening, provocative, engaging, and important. I loved the way that Satia grappled with the uncomfortable and challenged imbedded notions of history, race, religion, and power. She had really important insight.
Read
April 25, 2023這部書偏向歷史哲學，讀來就是不斷的辯證辯證辯證。
May 11, 2023
the best history book I've ever read ... thus far. ...
December 10, 2023
A great book about the dark side of adventure.
Want to read
August 18, 2024Partnership
September 2, 2024
Normally a historiography fan - this one not for me, found its style irritating.
September 18, 2024
The best history book I have ever read by quite a bit
January 26, 2025
Junk. Imagine how embarrassing it would to be present yourself as an historian and push out this worthless slop as your magnum opus!!
September 13, 2025
A possibly life-changing book. Beautifully written, thoughtfully constructed. The last chapter nearly made me cry. I would recommend this to anyone interested in historical theory.
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