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Reading lists

Fifteen non-fiction books to inspire you

A History of the British Empire

Legacy of Violence

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, a revelatory, fearless history of the British Empire that lays bare its pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century.In this groundbreaking work, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Caroline Elkins uncovers the systematic brutality at the heart of the British Empire. Drawing on more than a decade of research across four continents and newly declassified archives, she exposes the global network of detention camps, torture, and cover-ups that underpinned the imperial project - from Kenya to Malaya and beyond.Far from isolated incidents, Elkins reveals a pattern of violence, used to secure and maintain Britain’s interests across the globe. Legacy of Violence is meticulously researched, passionately argued, and deeply relevant to today’s debates about empire, accountability and historical memory.A NEW YORK TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, HISTORY TODAY AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Masterly… This book is dynamite’ Robert Gildea‘Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance’ BBC History Magazine‘Crucial… as unflinching as it is gripping’ Jill Lepore

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

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

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

Illuminating and authoritative... The repression and violence Elkins narrates on an epic scale matters because they continue to reverberate tragically in our global present

Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire

A work of deep archival achievement that creates a historical argument that is courageous and ambitious... This is a text for our times

Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

A thumping great study by a heavyweight academic historian

A clear, incisive account of the way in which the British maintained public order in the colonies through 'lawful lawlessness'... An exceedingly valuable book on the dark side of the British Empire

Wm. Roger Louis, Editor-in-Chief of Oxford History of the British Empire

Legacy of Violence is a formidable piece of research that sets itself the ambition of identifying the character of British power over the course of two centuries and four continents... this history could not be more timely

Legacy of Violence...is deeply researched... a powerful, compelling read

Fascinating... [Legacy of Violence] is a harrowing read, and one that brings the violence of empire sharply into focus

Vividly written... [Elkins] brings together...episodes in order to draw out what she sees as their commonalities in British imperial doctrine

[Elkins'] magnum opus... Elkins' achievement is to chronicle how makeshift responses to rebellion evolved into a chillingly standardised playbook for the use of force

Legacy of Violence is beautifully written and follows through on its arguments doggedly... This is an important book that deserves to be read by everyone who wants to understand and argue against the current attempt to reinvigorate the romance of the British Empire

A dark, riveting book... her [Elkins'] method is what gives the book its intensity

Fascinating... a real page-turner... the writing is backed up with considerable academic research... the evidence of systematic oppression, presented as powerfully and relentlessly as it is here, will be difficult to resist

Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance

BBC History Magazine, *Best Books of 2022*

Caroline Elkins is a professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard University and the founding director of Harvard's Centre for African Studies. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. 
 
Her first book, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her research for that book was the subject of the award-winning BBC documentary Kenya: White Terror. She also served as an expert in the historic Mau Mau reparations case, brought against the British Government by survivors of violence in Kenya. 
 
She is a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Guardian, Atlantic, Washington Post and New Republic. She lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.

A NEW YORK TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, HISTORY TODAY AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'Masterly... This book is dynamite' - ROBERT GILDEA, author of Empires of the Mind 
 
**Winner of the NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize 2024** 
**Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize** 
 
A searing, landmark study of the British Empire that lays bare its pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century. 
 
Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Caroline Elkins reveals the dark heart of Britain's Empire: a racialised, systemised doctrine of unrelenting violence, which it used to secure and maintain its interests across the globe. 
 
When Britain could no longer maintain control over that violence, it simply retreated - and sought to destroy the evidence. Legacy of Violence is a monumental achievement that explodes long-held myths and deserves the attention of anyone who seeks to understand empire's role in shaping the world today. 
 
'Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance' BBC History Magazine 
 
'Riveting' New Statesman 
 
'Crucial...as unflinching as it is gripping, as carefully researched as it is urgently necessary' Jill Lepore, author of These Truths

Caroline Elkins

A tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups

Caroline Elkins has starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their response to dissent by subject peoples. We all need reminding of that today

Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist supporters against the Kikuyu during the Mau Mau period should not be surprising. Nor, perhaps, the fact that the British government turned a blind eye, and later covered them up. What is surprising, however, is that it has taken so long to document the whole ghastly story-this is what makes Caroline Elkins's disturbing and horrifying account so important and memorable

The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya

The twentieth anniversary edition of Caroline Elkins’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé, now with a new introduction 
 
After decades of British rule in Kenya, 1952 saw the start of the Mau Mau uprising – a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million. Detainees in their thousands – possibly a hundred thousand or more – died from exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. For decades these events remained untold. 
 
Caroline Elkins conducted years of research to piece together this story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors. A groundbreaking account of Kenya’s fight for independence and its violent suppression, Britain's Gulag details the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to uphold its empire. 
 
'An extraordinary act of historical recovery' New Yorker 
'Disturbing and horrifying...important and memorable' Caroline Moorehead

Caroline Elkins

Praise for Britain's Gulag

A tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups

Caroline Elkins has starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their respo ...

Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist supporters against the Kikuyu ...

A tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups

Caroline Elkins has starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their respo ...

Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist supporters against the Kikuyu ...

A tale of systematic violence and high-level cover-ups

Caroline Elkins has starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their respo ...

Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist supporters against the Kikuyu ...

Books by Caroline Elkins

Articles featuring Caroline Elkins

Fifteen non-fiction books to inspire you

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