31 quotes
The difficulty with the achievements of the empire is that they are much more likely to be taken for granted than the sins of the empire.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
The British Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. Yet its mode of operation was a triumph of minimalism.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
Reality did not take long to intrude.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
Even if it did not last for the thousand years that Churchill hopefully suggested it might, this was indeed the British Empire’s 'finest hour'.
Yet what made it so fine, so authentically noble, was that the Empire’s victory could only ever have been Pyrrhic.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
Yet imperialism did not have to pay to be popular. For many people it was sufficient that it was exciting.… As a source of entertainment – of sheer psychological gratification – the Empire’s importance can never be exaggerated.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
Once pirates, then traders, the British were now the rulers of millions of people overseas – and not just in India. Thanks to a combination of naval and financial muscle they had become the winners in the European race for empire.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
In 1615 the British Isles had been an economically unremarkable, politically fractious and strategically second-class entity. Two hundred years later Great Britain had acquired the largest empire the world had ever seen, encompassing forty-three colonies in five continents.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
European centrists are deeply confused about immigration. Many, especially on the centre-left, want to have both open borders and welfare states. But the evidence suggests that it is hard to be Denmark with a multicultural society. The lack of social solidarity makes high levels of taxation and redistribution unsustainable.
Like the Roman Empire in the early fifth century, Europe has allowed its defenses to crumble. As its wealth has grown, so its military prowess has shrunk, along with its self-belief. It has grown decadent in its shopping malls and sports stadiums. At the same time, it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith.
The creeping crisis of confidence in Empire had its roots in the crippling price Britain had paid for its victory over Germany in the First World War. The death toll for the British Isles alone was around three-quarters of a million, one in sixteen of all adult males between the ages fifteen and fifty. The economic cost was harder to calculate.
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003)
There were Chernobyl-like features of the way that the United States handled the [Covid] pandemic, in particular the reluctance of the responsible officials ever to admit any responsibility for any of the things that went wrong.