Very readable survey history. ( )

This trilogy of books about the British Empire was written thirty years ago, and the author’s methods and views are now completely unfashionable in academia and discredited by the resenters of post colonial (pseudo) theory.

Morris’s mission is to capture the aesthetic of empire, and this he certainly does. The whole conception of the book is deeply artistic, the three volumes standing in relation to one another as a triptych. The first volume describes in a vaguely chronological fashion the gaining of the Empire, from the dilettante beginnings of the East India Company to the increased professionalism and hardening of attitudes after the Indian Mutiny in 1857, to Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897. The second volume is an in-depth look at all aspects of the Empire at the climacteric of the Jubilee, taking in the structure, the life, the technology, the art, the wars and the attitudes towards Empire: a vertical slice right through the heart of Empire. The third volume takes us back to a chronology of the decline of the Empire, from the jubilee to Churchill’s death in 1965, a few years before the start of the writing...

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/08/pax-britannica-trilogy-james-morris.html ( )

The conclusion to the best survey of the British Empire that I have ever read. ( )