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5 - The British Empire

from Part I - Imperial and Postcolonial Settings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Krishan Kumar
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Empire, in the Western tradition, was a unitary and universal thing. There was and could be only one empire at any one time, and it was, in principle at least, a world empire. In this case, all roads led to and from Rome. Herodotus had introduced the idea, if not the term, of translatio imperii, the transfer of empire from one ruler to another. In his account the succession was from the Assyrians to the Medes, to the Persians. Later writers saw the Macedonians, in the person of Alexander the Great, as successor to the Persians, and later still it was relatively easy to see the Romans, with their admiration for Greek culture, as heirs to the Hellenistic empire of Alexander.

Keywords

EmpireBritish EmpireImperialismNationalismIdeologies of EmpireOverseas empiresDecolonization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 88 - 107
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 1994).Google Scholar
Darwin, John, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Niall, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2004).Google Scholar
Jasanoff, Maya, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850 (London: Fourth Estate, 2005).Google Scholar
Kumar, Krishan, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Louis, W. R. (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–1999).Google Scholar
MacKenzie, J. M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Porter, Bernard, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Thompson, Andrew (ed.), Britain’s Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Ward, Stuart (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Wilson, Kathleen, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London, Routledge, 2003).Google Scholar

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