Books by John Darwin

A both controversial and comprehensive historical analysis of how the British Empire worked, from Wolfson Prize-winning author and historian John DarwinThe British Empire shaped the world in countless ways: repopulating continents, carving out nations, imposing its own language, technology and values. For perhaps two centuries its expansion and final collapse were the single largest determinant of historical events, and it remains surrounded by myth, misconception and controversy today.John Darwin's provocative and richly enjoyable book shows how diverse, contradictory and in many ways chaotic the British Empire really was, controlled by interests that were often at loggerheads, and as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength.

This volume covers the first part of the 20th-century processes of decolonisation within the British Empire, concluding with the independence of Ceylon, the first of the non-European-settled colonies. An introductory section demonstrates changes in attitude to colonial rule.

The sixth volume in Greenwood's ongoing series, this book is the first of three fine volumes to cover the twentieth century and the last stages in decolonization of the British Empire.

Tamerlane was the last of the 'world conquerors': his armies looted and killed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of China. Nomad horsemen from the Steppes had been the terror of Europe and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405, an epoch of history came to an end. The future belonged to the great dynastic empires - Chinese, Mughal, Iranian and Ottoman - where most of Eurasia's culture and wealth was to be found, and to the oceanic voyagers from Eurasia's 'Far West', just beginning to venture across the dark seas.After Tamerlane is an immensely important and stimulating work. It takes a fresh look at our global past. Our idea of world history is still dominated by the view from the West: it is Europe's expansion that takes centre-stage. But for much of the six-hundred year span of this book. Asia's great empires seemed much more than a match for the intruders from Europe. It took a revolution in Eurasia to change this balance of power, although never completely. The Chinese empire, against all the odds, has survived to this day. The British empire came and went. The Nazi empire was crushed almost at one. The rise, fall and endurance of empires - and the causes behind them - remain one of the most fascinating puzzles in world history.

As the greatest imperial power before 1939 Britain played a leading role in the great post-war shift in the relationship between the West and the Third World which we call 'decolonisation'. Was nationalism in colonial societies or indifference in Britain the key factor in the dissolution of the British Empire?