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The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997

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Piers Brendon was not being whimsical when he titled this book after Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike Americans, who never considered themselves imperialists, the British took their imperial duties seriously. The sons and daughters of empire saw themselves as present-day Romans. They were steeped in the classics, they learned the languages of their subject peoples, and they prepared to spend many years abroad in the service of the Crown. Brendon makes the case (as did Niall Ferguson in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire) that they saw themselves on a civilizing mission, that their empire - unlike Rome's - was a liberal empire. The British Empire would be a caretaker government until the locals were deemed capable of self-government. The conflicting goals of developing self-government and maintaining loyalty to the Crown manifest themselves often during this period in the form of uprisings and rebellions.

The story begins with the surrender of Cornwallis to Washington at Yorktown in 1781 and ends with the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Ironically, the British thought that their empire had started to decline with the loss of the colonies in America, instead their most glorious - or most infamous - days were still ahead of them. After the Napoleonic Wars, the other European powers were greatly weakened. For the British the years from 1815 to 1914 were indeed the British Century. The Empire reached its apex during the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. It was an Empire on which the sun never set, consisting of a quarter of the world's population and habitable land.

Being an inherently contradictory enterprise, liberal empire naturally had its seamy side. Brendon does not shy away from recounting the exploitation, racism, brutality, and the massacres that occurred. There was the Indian Rebellion, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the uprising in Ceylon in 1818, to name a few of the most brutal. In other words, Brendon presents enough evidence of violence and tragedy in this book to disabuse anyone of the merits of trying to impose a liberal empire. The question of which side was civilized and which side was savage comes to mind often.

That being said, Brendon paints some memorable portraits of the larger-than-life characters that animated the Empire. He seems especially fond of the Victorians in all their excesses. There were the arch-imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes, Lord Cromer, Kitchener, HM Stanley (and Dr Livingstone, I presume) with their outsized views of themselves. There were also colorful literati such as Rudyard Kipling, Richard Burton, and Joseph Conrad who were great travelers, as well as great writers.

This book is well worth reading as the endgame of the British empire is still unraveling today. Many of ongoing conflicts being played out today in Pakistan, India, Iraq, Isreal, Palestine, etc. were to some degree set in motion when the British forces withdrew from those areas. The British Empire - like the Roman - still casts a long shadow.

The message of Piers Brendon's magnificent history of the British Empire is that its fall was inevitable and that that is the fate of all other empires, past and future. Because empires are founded on brutality and illegitimacy, says Brendon, their fault lines in the end prove too great. Brendon starts his account of the British Empire's fall with defeat at Yorktown in the American War of Independence - more than a century before the Empire reached its geographical apogee - because it was in America that the trust between Britain and its colonial peoples was first undermined. He carries on through the watershed of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and the 19th-century colonisation of Africa. The First World War badly shook the edifice, the Second World War sent it crashing down: in the two decades following 1945 Britain went from an empire of 700m people to one with very few subjects indeed. Something of Brendon's ambition can be seen in his Gibbon-echoing title and it's not hubris: this is a wonderful piece of narrative history. [...]

I lived in post-colonial Africa for two years, and saw firsthand the complicated legacy of the British Empire. Brendon's book has been well received but attacked bitterly by a few who seem to think he only looks at the negative side of occupying a country, coercing people, forcing them to learn a new language, changing their religion, regarding them as less than human and stealing their land. Where is the positive side of this?

Well, I have a small, but only a very small, amount of sympathy for that critique. The value of this book is that he shows, relentlessly and with a thousand examples the careless racism of the empire, the vast parade of eccentrics sent off to manage it and the injustices that would be bizarre, ironic and comic if people hadn't died from them.

For make no mistake, freed from their original society, the whites sent to the empire often behaved oddly, badly, weirdly. And they still did in Kenya in the 80s.

What I miss in Brendon's book is the wider sweep of empire. His is a political history with occasional forays into cultural and religious issues. So the minor officials of the empire, the rank and file missionaries, the ordinary expatriates do not figure much here. And it is among those people (as a generalization) that you find those who loved their foreign country they were posted to and who were advocates for its people - at least some of the time.

So, while he does not make up the racism and oppression of the empire, he does underplay the complexity and that even in a colonialist system, something positive did get left behind to go with the oppression. I'm glad for his documenting of the contempt of the whites for the locals, the way they misplayed minor movements for reform into full scale rebellions and their utter disregard for human values. I only wish that, in addition to this, he'd given us more of how people, in the midst of an evil system, found ways to be human.

Yes, we all know empires are wrong. Bad. Insupportable. But Piers Brendon lays it on with a trowel. 600-plus pages of gap-toothed, gin-soaked, racist, inept, deviant, greedy, "daemonic" Brits oppressing the poor, noble natives. This is essentially a massive editorial on the evils of colonialism, and it gets old about 100 pages in. The author falls into the all-too-common trap for historians--of judging the past through the moral lens of the present. Instead of a dispassionate view of Empires as a tragic, but often inevitable outgrowth of human nature and power politics, we again get the tired liberal trope of the predatory West defiling the world. Ho hum!

I feel as if you need an extensive background of the British Empire to read this book. There are endless referances to people/places/events that are unexplained. You will also need a dictionary handy while reading for there are many overly complex words that are just unessasary. Also, much of the book is made up references and short stories that dont lead anywhere and dont relate to eachother. I continuously found my self thinking "get to the point". But there would be no point and the story would seem to move on.

I feel like I gained no real concept of the fall of the empire by reading this. I am not going to accept that the empire was evil in all forms like the author suggests. The best you can gain from this is novalty trivia information. The book needs to be a 5 volume series to explain and connect all the sources or a 100 page summary, but this was not worth my time, and thus I give my greatest insult to a book: I did not finish reading it.

The only relation to Gibbon is that the Author says it does.

This is a good summation of the impact the British nation had on a number of subject states during a period of 220 years. Said simply it is a saga of imperial aggression which was powered by a superior military who in turn were supported by a county governed by elitists and latter day "Romans."

You may find this a useful reference volume to assist you in understanding the early histories of those countries whose current tragedies fill our daily headlines. Shamefully many of their woes had their origin under British rule.

One final note: this vast volume could have benefited from more aggressive editing both in length and in grammar. The author has a tendency to turn simple thoughts into strained, entangled and wordy utterances.

Piers Brendon's "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 11781 - 1997" certainly will strike well-versed readers as a clever homage to Edward Gibbon's justly celebrated literary landmark on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. While it isn't nearly as vast in scope as Gibbon's work, it does come across as a brilliant bit of historical writing in its own right, tracing the rise and fall of a British Empire that claimed mastery of the world's oceans in the aftermath of the American Revolution and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Over his own broad canvas, Brendon shows how and why the British Empire, regarded by many of its most diehard admirers as a "liberal empire", was truly a substantial contradiction in terms, often promoting both harsh, brutal imperial rule and benevolent "guardianship" to the teeming tens of millions that it ruled in Africa, Asia, North America, and even in the British Isles (referring of course to Ireland). But Brendon doesn't dwell overwhelmingly over the worst aspects of British imperial rule; he often refers to its eventual successes, describing how in the "non-white, non-European" portions of its vast global empire, British subjects, whether Africans, Indians, or Malaysians, eventually learned substantial aspects of democratic rule and a commitment to just rule under well-established law; a political legacy which Great Britain has bequeathed successfully to many of its former colonies throughout the globe. With its ample cast of colorful characters - both European and native non-European - Brendon's book is one of the most intriguing, most engaging, narrative histories I have stumbled upon, and one that is well deserving of a wide readership.

First, Brendon seems really enamored with his comparison of the British Empire to the Roman Empire - he refuses to be quiet about it. This is, of course, not really an original thought. Pretty much everyone who even drifted through their British History survey course made that connection at one time or another. I think it might rank for one of the most tired historical comparisons in existence.

Second, Brendon seems to misunderstand what made Gibbon great. His opinion seems to be that Gibbon was a historian of the first order because of trivia, and this reflects itself in The Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Yes, Gibbon did give wonderful little details about everything, but in the end they served to illustrate a character point, and didn't form the core (or, in Brendon's case, the everything). Instead of really being told anything about, say, the Duke of Wellington, I'm given snippets of anecdotes about him and related to him, and not in any structured way to prove any point. It's almost stream of consciousness on Brendon's part. Furthermore, on one side (the British), the anecdotes are almost invariably bad, and when they aren't, Brendon dismisses them anyway as a racist and a bigot without any support. (This first struck me in the section on Cornwallis in India - Brendon very begrudgingly notes the positive reforms Cornwallis carried out, and gives his standard gossip on his incorruptibility, but then dismisses him as a racist and a cheat without giving so much as an example.) The native rulers are almost always portrayed positively. Sticking with the first India section, Tipu Sultan is portrayed as a man of letters, a generous man, a great ruler, with a vast library. No mention is made of his massacres against Hindus or Christians, which, when similar acts were perpetrated by Brits, got us a three page pillory of everything British. His clothes are awe-inspiringly described in magnificence - only to turn around and condemn British who do the same.

So Brendon himself operates on an unjustified double-standard when it comes to dealing with the British and with the Native rulers. A large part of it seems to be there to convince us that the British Empire was in every facet evil, and a blight on humanity, when, to be honest, that's just poor and narrow-minded scholarship. Very few things are evil in every facet, and the interesting history is not history where the referee stacks the odds against one side, so to speak, especially when it's done as blatantly as by Brendon. It calls all of his claims into question, and only serves to discredit him. I want to note that I'm not asking for a Good-Evil dichotomy here, with the British as being good - I'm well aware of many, many of the bad things the British Empire did. But good did come with the British Empire, which Brendon himself acknowledges yet never wishes to really address. The side, as in all well-written history, is grey-grey. Multifarious interests coming into conflict, driving two peoples on a collision course.

The fact is, out of all of this, it's just boring history. Brendon managed to take the spectacular rise of one of the world's largest empires, and make it dull through the injudicious use of gossip and his own unbounded bias. It's interesting as a sketchbook in places, but it is nowhere history.

There will always be an England; but there will not be an empire! At the apogee of British might there were over 700 million subjects of the English crown. The British sway over the world's real estate was over 1/4 of the planet's land mass.the red on maps marked where the Union Jack held sway. In a conscious tribute to Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" author Brendon traces the fall of the British Empire from 1781 to 1997.
Brendon begins his long narrative with the fall of Lord Cornwallis to American and French forces at the battle of Yorktown in 1781. The British had just lost the American Revolutionary War as former colonies became 13 states in the new United States of America. At this nadir of the colonial enterprise few could have predicted Britannia's miraculous phoenix-like rise in the future. The empire grew apace in Asia where India, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australis, New Zealand and smaller lands became colonies of Mother Britain. England was the workshop of the world leading the industrial revolution and becoming the world's greatest navy. Great Britain was the most powerful nation in the world from the days of Victoria to the time between the world wars of the twentieth century.
Seventeen countries in Africa became colonized by the British while Canada was ruled from Westminster until 1867.
The last major colony to be granted independence was Hong Kong in 1997. The British Empire which had once stretched over eleven million miles was no more. The sun has not set on an empire where once the sun never set on British land.
Piers Brendon's book is 662 long. At time it is a jog and a bore; at other times a joy to read. He shows us the major characters in the story of empire and gives detailed accounts of how the lands under British rule were treated. We see the Easter rebellion in Dublin in 1916; Gandhi's sea march in 1930 in an effort to bring independence to India (granted in 1947);colonial struggles in such diverse lands as Cyprus, Ghana, Rhodesia, Kenya and the Sudan. We meet such flamboyant characters as Winston Churchill, Chinese Gordon, Lord Cromer and Cecil Rhodes. The Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; the Falklands War of 1982 and the flubbed Suez Invansion and conflict in the Middle East are also given chapters.
Brendon's book is like taking a tour to each of Her Majesty's former colonies. The English were often prejudiced, cruel and grasping rulers of their colonial possessions. Brendon is keen to point out British atrocities, sins and horrors against the people they ruled. However, the English did impart ideas of fair play
(sometimes) based on English law. The British colonial record is mixed; much to condemn; much to applaud.
The British Empire is the largest the world has ever known. English is now a universal language and many emerging nations look to British democracy as a beacon of light to guide them into an unkown future. The United States is now the most powerful nation on earth. Hopefully, American leaders can take the lessons Brendon imparts on governing foreign lands and profit by them.
Piers Brendon will educate and entertain you in this magnus opus of empire.The book is written in a clear style appealing to the modern reader of history. The book could be improved by including more maps. Brendon's expertise is astounding and he includes over 100 pages of footnotes as well as an extense bibilograpy. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire is essential reading for students of empire. Essential and excellent!

Emulating and respectful of Gibbon's tome on the Roman empire, the parallels made with Britain are meant to deconstruct the very imperial construct. Brendon makes the point that "the initial subjugation (of peoples and nations) is invariably savage and the subsequent occupation is usually repressive". However, the book is favorable of the attainments made when Britannia ruled before fulfilling its ultimate destiny, what The Times referred to as "a self-liquidating concern".

One of the biggest insights in the book was how lacking England was in a consistent strategy for the colonies. The empire was more a patchwork guilt-quilt than a deliberate strategy of conquest and domination. In fact, much of Brendon's book is a study of the strong and flawed individuals who influenced so much of history. The names Cornwallis, Durham, Macaulay, Palmerston, Dalhousie, Gladstone, Salisbury, and so many others had their own style which played a considerable role in how each colony was governed and eventually how the empire disintegrated.

This book starts with the revolt of the American colonies, whose independent nature was characterized by the observation, "The privates are all generals." This ragtag bunch under the single-minded leadership of Washington routed a professional force whose hubris led to its defeat. India's independence and other better-known aspects of the empire's history are supplemented by very interesting coverage of Kenya and the Sudan, Ceylon and Malaya, and Rhodesia and The Central African Federation which have received less attention. Brendon does well given the breadth of the subject, making it highly readable and informative but if one is looking for a real critique - you should look elsewhere.