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Legacy of Violence

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that interrogates the pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe.

Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly 500 colonial subjects, Britain's empire was the largest empire in human history. For many, it epitomized our nation's cultural superiority, but what legacy have we delivered to the world?

Spanning more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals evolutionary and racialized doctrines that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve British imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in Victorian calls for punishing indigenous peoples who resisted subjugation, and how over time, this treatment became increasingly institutionalized. Elkins reveals how, when violence could no longer be controlled, Britain retreated from its empire, whilst destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.

Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of Violence implicates all sides of the political divide regarding the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting both the empire and British imperial identity, Elkins upends long-held myths and sheds new light on empire's role in shaping the world today.

© Caroline Elkins 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Masterful, crucial ... as unflinching as it is gripping, as carefully researched as it is urgently necessary
Jill Lepore, author of These Truths
Masterly... demonstrates that the British Empire, far from being part good, part bad, baked together from the outset state-sponsored violence and institutional racism with a periodic rewriting of its history as one of progress and civilisation, covering up atrocities and hiding or destroying incriminating documents. This book is dynamite
Robert Gildea, author of Empires of the Mind
The history of the British Empire that we desperately need today... Sweeping, forceful, and passionately argued... A monumental achievement
Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch
A gripping, richly peopled, epic narrative... In stunning prose and drawing on staggering research, Elkins uncovers the reality of routine and ruthlessly violent suspension of law and militarized policing as imperial personnel and practices moved from crisis to crisis around the globe
Priya Satia, author of Time's Monster: How History Makes History
In nothing was the British Empire more successful than its skilful concealment of the violence that it unleashed across the globe, over centuries. Caroline Elkins' Legacy of Violence is a laudably ambitious attempt at unearthing this hidden legacy, the bitter fruits of which are becoming more and more visible every day
Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse
Illuminating and authoritative... The repression and violence Elkins narrates on an epic scale matters because they continue to reverberate tragically in our global present
Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire
A work of deep archival achievement that creates a historical argument that is courageous and ambitious... This is a text for our times
Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
A thumping great study by a heavyweight academic historian
The Times, *Books to Look Out For 2022*
A clear, incisive account of the way in which the British maintained public order in the colonies through 'lawful lawlessness'... An exceedingly valuable book on the dark side of the British Empire
Wm. Roger Louis, Editor-in-Chief of Oxford History of the British Empire
Legacy of Violence is a formidable piece of research that sets itself the ambition of identifying the character of British power over the course of two centuries and four continents... this history could not be more timely
Observer
Author Caroline Elkins
Narrator Adam Barr
Duration 31 hours and 36 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529191486
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Colonialism and imperialism, General and world history, Political oppression and persecution, Racism and racial discrimination, Violence, intolerance and persecution in history
Availability AU, GB, IE

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