Customer Reviews

Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress

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Jan Morris is a fascinating personality. She originally was a he, and he was a guardsman in the British army, an officer from a good family. He left the service, became a historian, and then went to Denmark or wherever, and came back a she. She now writes unusual, affecting, eccentric, entertaining books that are terribly British and a bit disorganized. The Pax Brittanica trilogy is her life's work, near enough, though she's done other books that are very good. This one, however, is three volumes long, quite involved and very detailed. The series includes Heaven's Command, Pax Britannica, and Farewell the Trumpets. The first generally deals with the Empire in the 1840s on, the second follows things through the thirties, and the third follows the empire through its disbandment.

As I said, Morris is eccentric. This means that though the books are sort of chronological, they aren't exactly sorted the way you would expect, and this isn't really a history of the empire or the era. Instead, it's an anecdotal collection of tales, incidents, and sketches, marvelously told. Sort of like the difference between going through a cafeteria once and a sumptuous buffet where you go back and forth, taking time with what you enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed the books, though I would hesitate to recommend them to someone who wasn't clear on either geography, or at least some basic history of the British Empire. Since this isn't either of those, you need them to understand what she's talking about occasionally.

I just finished this magnificient volume. Morris has surely written a masterpiece. Many a time I have felt transfigured to 19th century India or sensed the wind on the African veld. The writing is stupendous. The portraits of characters just stunning. Alas! My only quibble is no pictures. NO PICTURES!!!! I have the Harcourt Brace publication and there are no pictures. Oh how I would like to see what Sleeman looked like! Nonetheless well worth the price.

The slightest curiosity about history, along with love of good writing will be satisfied/overjoyed by this series. Morris has a way of illuminting and adding texture through his tangents and grasp of time, place and the incidental. Morris knows how to make history the story that it is, without compromising the factual. Requiring this book in studies would make more people less wary of history. And, the best part is there are three volumes, all equally wonderful.

I'm always in the middle of reading history books, which I love: like a Chinese dinner, the fun is in the contrasts. (Someone else here was using a buffet in a slightly different sense.) Currently, I'm reading The Orientalist by Tom Reiss, Freedom from Fear by David Kennedy, The First Crusade by Thomas Asbridge, and of course, Heaven's Command by James Morris. All of them fill my minumum requirement for history books - good narrative. This may sound like a no-brainer, but some supposedly great history, for example, Bancroft Prize winner The Name of War, by Jill Lepore, is virtually unreadable.

James Morris's Pax Britannia is quite the opposite. I don't think I've ever read such delightful prose in a history book. To absorb information is work, and I rate a narrative is by how long it carries me before my brain needs a rest. So, what about Heaven's Command? I'm enjoying reading the other books mentioned above, but when I reach my fatigue point I can pick up Pax Britannica, or anything else by James/Jan Morris, and suddenly I'm refreshed. Here's an sample, referring to one of the Victorian nabobs in India: "He looks like one of those over-informed progressives whose inflexible convictions wither the small talk at frivolous dinner-parties."

It could be, as another reviewer has pointed out, that Morris's chronology isn't precise and that the style is episodic and anedcotal, but two things: First, whatever the chronology, it's not rambling. Yes, Morris follows the chapter on the Irish Famine with a chapter on the British Raj - obviously no chronology there. But there's synthesis going on here, a juxtaposition of the cruel and stupid administration of Ireland with the humane and enlightened administration of India. This thematic ordering of chapters is far better for gaining insight - at least Morris's insight - than a simple chronology. Second, "anecdotal" implies unscholarly. If you read enough history, you can tell when someone knows what they're talkng about and when they're faking it. Morris's assertions have weight. In fact, when some of the citations are dubious, Morris does not hesitate to say so, as in "I pass along this anecdote for what it's worth, not believing a word of it."

I suspect that the reason Morris's history is such a delight to read is that she also happens to be one of the great travel writers in the English language, and her first-hand experiences around the world have yielded a sense of immediacy brought home by a conversational writing style. It has also gained her authority, for Morris has actually visited many, perhaps even most, of the locations in Pax Britannica, and collected oral histories by the ancient inhabitants.

I may be at a slight advantage, because I've seen James Morris as Jan Morris, one of the expert commentators in the excellent Channel 5/PBS series Queen Victoria's Empire. Once one gets over the sex-change, one becomes aware of a bright and slightly mordant wit, which comes through in the prose of Heaven's Command. I highly recommend the series (ignore some of the inane reviews) as a general introduction to Pax Britannia.

If you read history for pleasure as well as enlightenment, I doubt if you could do much better than this book. Like all great historians, James Morris is a great storyteller. I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.

Gripping beginning to Morris' British Empire Trilogy. Wish that some of our leaders had read the section on Afghanistan. Opens a window to a time with amazing parallels and contrast to our own

I have always wondered how the British managed to gain their empire and, more importantly, how they were able to ignore certain facts staring them straight in the eye -- that other peoples and races have achieved great cultural accomplishments and are fully as human as the British. How could the British have come to regard the Zulu and other Africans as being, more or less, animals ?

The blindness of great empires and their makers is always fascinating.

James Morris is a magnificent writer. The portraits he paints of the people involved in this great play of destiny are vivid. From event to event, the book reads like an endlessly absorbing epic.

Truly great writing about a fascinating story.