The British Empire was the biggest empire in all history. At its peak it governed a quarter of the world’s land and people and dominated all its seas.

Though little now remains of the Empire as a political power, its legacy is all around us. It laid the foundation for the global triumph of capitalism. It gave the world its common language, English. It exported both Protestantism and parliaments. And it defeated a succession of rival empires from the Habsburgs’ to Hitler’s.

In the twenty-first century another English-speaking superpower seems to bestride the globe. But today’s American empire was yesterday’s British colony. For better and for worse, the world we now know is in large measure the product of Britain’s Age of Empire.

How did a rainy island in the North Atlantic manage to achieve all this? What were the special factors that enabled Britain to make the modern world – and made the modern world so British? These are the crucial questions addressed by Niall Ferguson in Empire.

This was the first age of globalization. But it was, says Ferguson, globalization with gunboats. Empire shows how the British wrested power from their rivals by a combination of imitation and intimidation. It shows how mass migration from Britain turned the American and Australian continents white – and how the missionary movement sought to enlighten the ‘dark’ continents of Africa and Asia. Above all, Empire explains how the British Empire rose – and why it finally fell. Ferguson’s answers are controversial but compelling.

There has never been a better time to reassess the achievements – both good and evil – of the British world order. With unrivalled verve and clarity, Empire unfolds the imperial story for a new generation of readers.

‘A brilliant book … full of energy, imagination and curiosity’ 
Evening Standard

‘A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story – triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all’
 Jan Morris 

‘Dazzling … wonderfully readable’ 
New York Review of Books

‘Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence’ 
Sunday Times

‘An enormous saga … crammed with the kind of anecdotes that leave the reader wanting more’
Sunday Herald