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² Recent examples include Howe, Stephen, “British Worlds, Settler Worlds, World Systems, and Killing Fields,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 4 (2012): 691–725CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghosh, Durba, “Another Set of Imperial Turns?,” American Historical Review 117, no. 3 (2012): 772–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ballantyne, Tony, “The Changing Shape of the Modern British Empire and Its Historiography,” Historical Journal 53, no. 2 (2010): 429–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ For a model on how to address these interconnected issues with sensitivity and insight, see Eley, Geoff, A Crossed Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶ These included the Beit Professor at Oxford, the Smuts Professor and Vere Harmsworth Professor at Cambridge, and the Rhodes Professor at Kings College London.

⁷ Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 6, no. 2 (1963): 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961).Google Scholar

⁸ Cain, Peter and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism 1688–1990, 2 vols. (London, 1993).Google Scholar

⁹ For a recent assessment of Mackenzie and the “Studies in Imperialism” series, see Thompson, Andrew S., ed., Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2013).Google Scholar

¹⁰ A point made about Africanists by Zimmerman, Andrew, “Africa in Imperial and Transnational History: Multi-Sited Historiography and the Necessity of Theory,” Journal of African History 54, no. 3 (2013): 331–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ The latter point had already been made from a political economy perspective, especially by Hobsbawm, Eric in Industry and Empire (New York, 1968)Google Scholar and his great trilogy on nineteenth-century Europe, The Age of Revolution (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, The Age of Capital (New York, 1975)Google ScholarPubMed, and The Age of Empire (New York, 1987)Google ScholarPubMed, but this approach gained remarkably little purchase in British imperial historiography. I am grateful to Richard Price for reminding me of this tradition.

¹² Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

¹³ My first foray into this subject was “Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, no. 3 (1996): 345–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I recently offered a reassessment, “Postcolonialism and History,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies, ed. Huggins, Graham (Oxford, 2013), 467–88.Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Mackenzie, John M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Pomeranz, Kenneth, “Histories for a Less National Age,” American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (2014): 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ An example of a prominent new imperial historian who embraced world history is Burton, Antoinette, A Primer for Teaching World History: Ten Design Principles (Durham, 2012).Google Scholar

¹⁸ The report can currently be found on the North American Conference on British Studies' website, http://www.nacbs.org/archive/nacbs-report-on-the-state-and-future-of-british-studies, accessed September 2014.

¹⁹ Louis, Wm. Roger, “Foreword,” The Oxford History of the British Empire, vols. 1–5 (Oxford, 1998–1999), vii.Google Scholar

²⁰ For my own critique, see Kennedy, Dane, “The Boundaries of Oxford's Empire,” International History Review 23, no. 3 (2001): 604–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²² Levine, Philippa, ed., Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Morgan, Philip D. and Hawkins, Sean, eds., Black Experience and the Empire (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Beinart, William and Hughes, Lotte, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2007).Google Scholar

²³ Darwin, John, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (New York, 2012)Google Scholar, 12. Italics added.

²⁴ Albright on the NBC Today show on 5 February 1998; Foreign Minister Hubert Verdrine in “To Paris, U.S. Looks Like a ‘Hyperpower,’” New York Times, 19 February 1999.

²⁵ This paragraph draws on my essay, “On the American Empire from a British Imperial Perspective,” International History Review 29, no. 1 (2007): 83–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an early warning of the neocon agenda, see Thomas E. Ricks, “Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate over US Role,” Washington Post, 21 August 2001, A1, A13. The intellectual roots of neo-conservatism's embrace of empire are traced in Norton, Anne, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, 2004).Google Scholar

²⁶ Michael Ignatieff, “The Burden,” New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003, 22–54. The liberal case for an American empire is dissected in Bacevich, Andrew J., American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA, 2002).Google Scholar

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²⁸ Ferguson, Niall, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York, 2004).Google Scholar

²⁹ Fleming, N. C., “Echoes of Britannia: Television History, Empire and the Critical Public Sphere,” Contemporary British History 24, no. 1 (2010): 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York, 2005).Google Scholar

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³³ Porter, Bernard, Empire and Superempire: Britain, America and the World (New Haven, CT, 2006).Google Scholar

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³⁵ Parsons, Timothy H., The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall (New York, 2010).Google Scholar

³⁶ Kagan, Kimberly, ed., The Imperial Moment (Cambridge, MA, 2010)Google Scholar. On Kagan's role in Afghanistan, see Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Civilian Analysts Gained Petraeus's Ear While He Was Commander in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, 18 December 2012.

³⁷ Go, Julian, Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present (Cambridge, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁹ H. W. Crocker III, “What America Could Learn From the British Empire: Frugality,” Washington Times, 27 October 2011.

⁴⁰ Quotes come from the film 2016: Obama's America (2012). Also see D'Souza, Dinesh, The Roots of Obama's Rage (Washington, DC, 2011).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Quoted in Joan Walsh, “Mike Huckabee's Mau Mau Fantasies,” Salon, 2 March 2011, www.salon.com.

⁴² Quoted in Richard Reeves, “That Mau Mau in the White House,” Real Clear Politics, 15 September 2010, www.realclearpolitics.com.

⁴³ For a valuable overview, see de Groot, Joanna, Empire and History Writing in Britain c. 1750–2012 (Manchester, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Robert Cooper, “The New Liberal Imperialism,” Guardian, 7 April 2002.

⁴⁵ See Naughtie, James, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency (New York, 2004).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Quoted in Richard Gott, “Let's End the Myths of Britain's Imperial Past,” Guardian, 19 October 2011.

⁴⁷ Benedict Brogan, “It's Time to Celebrate the Empire, Says Brown,” Daily Mail, 15 January 2005. Brown went on to say: “we should talk, and rightly so, about British values that are enduring… Our strong traditions of fair play, of openness, of internationalism, these are great British values.”

⁴⁸ Andrew Gimson, “Conservative Party Conference 2011,” Telegraph, 5 October 2011; “British Empire Medal to Return says David Cameron,” BBC News, 28 October 2011, www.bbc.com/news/.

⁴⁹ “William Hague Says UK Must Shed ‘Guilt’ Over Empire,” BBC News, 31 August 2012, www.bbc.com/news/.

⁵⁰ Rory Baxter, “Pupils Should Be Proud of British Heroism,” PS Public Service.Co.UK, 23 April 2013; Laurie Penny, “Michael Gove and the Imperialists,” New Statesman, 1 June 2010.

⁵¹ Ferguson credited his sons with the inspiration for this idea, though he also acknowledged that his daughter showed less enthusiasm for video war games. See Jeevan Vasagar, “Niall Ferguson aims to shape up history curriculum with TV and war games,” Guardian, 9 July 2010.

⁵² Jeremy Paxman, “‘Our Empire Was an Amazing Thing,’” Telegraph, 16 February 2012.

⁵³ Richard Eden, “Sir David Attenborough Battles Jeremy Paxman over the ‘Good’ British Empire,” Telegraph, 3 June 2012. In a rich irony, David Attenborough defended the 1973 BBC series “The British Empire” against critics who complained that it cast the empire in too negative a light: he was then the BBC's director of programming. See Fleming, “Echoes of Britannia,” 4.

⁵⁴ Jeal, Tim, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (New Haven, CT, 2007).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Tim Jeal, “Remembering Henry Stanley,” Telegraph, 16 March 2011.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Rama Lakshmi, “In India, Cameron Voices Regret for 1919 Massacre,” Washington Post, 21 February 2013, A10.

⁵⁸ Newsinger, John, The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire (London, 2006).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Gott, Richard, Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (London, 2011)Google Scholar, 3.

⁶⁰ Hunt, Tristram, Ten Cities That Made an Empire (London, 2014)Google Scholar; Kwarteng, Kwasi, Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World (New York, 2011)Google Scholar, 2, 8. The journalist and historian Pankaj Mishra also recently launched a high-profile salvo against Ferguson, calling him an “evangelist-cum-historian of empire” and comparing him to the early twentieth-century American racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard in an incendiary review in the London Review of Books 33, no. 21 (2011), 11–12Google Scholar. Ferguson threatened to sue Mishra for defamation. See Peter Beaumont, “Niall Ferguson Threatens to Sue over Accusation of Racism,” Guardian, November 26, 2011. Mishra has also recently published a study of Asian critics of empire, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (New York, 2012).Google Scholar

⁶¹ See, for example, Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study of Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar; Pitts, Jennifer, Turn to Empire: The Rise of Liberal Imperialism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mantena, Karuna, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism (Princeton, NJ, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Koditschek, Theodore, Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain (Cambridge, 2011).Google Scholar

⁶² Lawrence James, “Yes, Mistakes Were Made, But We Must Never Stop Being Proud of the Empire,” Mail Online, 18 April 2012. Also see Jane Warren, “Why Should We Apologise for the Empire?,” Express, 12 May 2012, express.co.uk and John Allen, “To Talk about British Atrocities in Kenya During the Mau Mau Era is Nonsense,” Guardian, 9 May 2012, guardian.co.uk.

⁶³ Elkins, Caroline, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Anderson, David, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York, 2005).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ For commentaries on the case from each of the three historical experts, see David M. Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court and the ‘Lost’ British Empire Archives: Colonial Conspiracy or Bureaucratic Bungle?”; Caroline Elkins, “Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire, and the High Court of Justice”; and Bennett, Hew, “Soldiers in the Court Room: The British Army's Part in the Kenya Emergency under the Legal Spotlight,” all published in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 5 (2011): 699–748.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ David M. Anderson, “Atoning for the Sins of Empire,” New York Times, 13 June 2013; Caroline Elkins, “Britain Has Said Sorry to the Mau Mau. The Rest of the Empire is Still Waiting,” Guardian, 6 June 2013.

⁶⁶ Robert D. Kaplan, “In Defense of Empire,” The Atlantic, April 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine.

⁶⁷ Colin Freeman, “Britain May Have Invaded 90 Per Cent of the World, But We're Not Hated Everywhere,” Telegraph, 8 November 2012. The article was a commentary on Laycock, Stuart, All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To (London, 2012).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Davies, Norman, The Isles (New York, 2001)Google Scholar, 1053.

⁶⁹ Wiener, Martin J., “The Idea of ‘Colonial Legacy’ and the Historiography of Empire,” Journal of the Historical Society 13, no. 1 (2013): 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For someone who once famously argued that British industrial decline in the late twentieth century was attributable to the embrace of gentlemanly values by the middle class a century earlier, Weiner's insistence that the adverse effects of British imperial rule has passed its sell-by date for the Indians, Africans, and other former colonial peoples who gained their independence some fifty years ago seems curiously inconsistent with his earlier views on the past's power to shape the present. See Wiener, Martin J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Darwin, Unfinished Empire, xii, xiii. Also see his The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar. Taken together, Darwin devotes nearly 1,300 pages to this ramshackle empire in these two books.

⁷¹ This is the subject of a forthcoming book edited by Antoinette Burton and me, titled How Empire Shaped Us (Bloomsbury), with contributions from a wide array of British imperial historians.