Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

This history of the British Empire argues that imperial expansion, from the early colonies and the slave-and-sugar Atlantic through India, Africa, and the settler dominions, organised trade, law, migration, and military power on a global scale. Ferguson follows administrators, investors, soldiers, and subject peoples, and sets costs in violence and extraction against the spread of markets, language, and institutions. The narrative runs from the seventeenth century to the twentieth-century unwind. The book is a synthetic, thesis-driven survey of how British rule helped produce the modern international economy and state system, and of who paid for that production.

Bound in blocked cloth with a front-board inset-label printed letterpress, using letterpress artwork created by Peter Chasseaud.Set in Nocturne Serif. Title page printed in 2 colours.32 pages of colour and black & white plates, and 9 maps. Printed endpapers. Plain slipcase.