Legacy of Violence

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that interrogates the pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe.

Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly 500 colonial subjects, Britain's empire was the largest empire in human history. For many, it epitomized our nation's cultural superiority, but what legacy have we delivered to the world?

Spanning more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals evolutionary and racialized doctrines that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve British imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in Victorian calls for punishing indigenous peoples who resisted subjugation, and how over time, this treatment became increasingly institutionalized. Elkins reveals how, when violence could no longer be controlled, Britain retreated from its empire, whilst destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.

Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of Violence implicates all sides of the political divide regarding the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting both the empire and British imperial identity, Elkins upends long-held myths and sheds new light on empire's role in shaping the world today.

© Caroline Elkins 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Masterful, crucial … as unflinching as it is gripping, as carefully researched as it is urgently necessary

    Jill Lepore, author of These Truths

  • Masterly… demonstrates that the British Empire, far from being part good, part bad, baked together from the outset state-sponsored violence and institutional racism with a periodic rewriting of its history as one of progress and civilisation, covering up atrocities and hiding or destroying incriminating documents. This book is dynamite

    Robert Gildea, author of Empires of the Mind

  • The history of the British Empire that we desperately need today… Sweeping, forceful, and passionately argued… A monumental achievement

    Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch

  • A gripping, richly peopled, epic narrative… In stunning prose and drawing on staggering research, Elkins uncovers the reality of routine and ruthlessly violent suspension of law and militarized policing as imperial personnel and practices moved from crisis to crisis around the globe

    Priya Satia, author of Time's Monster: How History Makes History

  • In nothing was the British Empire more successful than its skilful concealment of the violence that it unleashed across the globe, over centuries. Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence is a laudably ambitious attempt at unearthing this hidden legacy, the bitter fruits of which are becoming more and more visible every day

    Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg's Curse

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