Churchill S Empire

‘I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.’ These notorious words, spoken by Churchill in 1942, encapsulate his image as an imperial die-hard, implacably opposed to colonial freedom – a reputation that has prevailed, and which Churchill willingly embraced to further his policies. Yet, as a youthful minister at the Colonial Office before World War I, his political opponents had seen him as a Little Englander and a danger to the Empire. Placing Churchill in the context of his times and his contemporaries, Richard Toye evaluates his position on key Imperial questions and examines what was conventional about Churchill’s opinions and what was unique. Combining a lightness of touch and entertaining storytelling with expert and insightful analysis, the result is a vivid and dynamic account of a remarkable man and an extraordinary era. 'Wonderfully informative' Daily Telegraph 'Excellent' Spectator ‘Mature, intelligent, thoughtful, judicious’ Washington Times ‘One of Britain's smartest young historians’ Independent

From the bestselling author of Destiny of the Republic, this thrilling biographical account of the life and legacy of Wintson Churchill is a "nail-biter and top-notch character study rolled into one" (The New York Times). At the age of twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England. He arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels and jumpstart his political career. But just two weeks later, Churchill was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape—traversing hundreds of miles of enemy territory, alone, with nothing but a crumpled wad of cash, four slabs of chocolate, and his wits to guide him. Bestselling author Candice Millard spins an epic story of bravery, savagery, and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters—including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener, and Mohandas Gandhi—with whom Churchill would later share the world stage. But Hero of the Empire is more than an extraordinary adventure story, for the lessons Churchill took from the Boer War would profoundly affect twentieth century history.

In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire. They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire. Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years. Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British—including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two. Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India’s liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, would become the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world. Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.

A dogged enemy of Hitler, resolute ally of the Americans, and inspiring leader through World War II, Winston Churchill is venerated as one of the truly great statesmen of the last century. But while he has been widely extolled for his achievements, parts of Churchill's record have gone woefully unexamined.As journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. A series of Churchill's decisions between 1940 and 1944 directly and inevitably led to the deaths of some three million Indians. The streets of eastern Indian cities were lined with corpses, yet instead of sending emergency food shipments Churchill used the wheat and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe. Combining meticulous research with a vivid narrative, and riveting accounts of personality and policy clashes within and without the British War Cabinet, Churchill's Secret War places this oft-overlooked tragedy into the larger context of World War II, India's fight for freedom, and Churchill's enduring legacy. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as this groundbreaking historical investigation reveals, his mismanagement -- facilitated by dubious advice from scientist and eugenicist Lord Cherwell -- devastated India and set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.

A sweeping, brilliantly vivid history of the sudden end of the British empire and the moment when America became a world superpower. "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Winston Churchill's famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously affirmed his loyalty to the world-wide institution that he had served for most of his life. Britain fought and sacrificed on a worldwide scale to defeat Hitler and his allies-and won. Yet less than five years after Churchill's defiant speech, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. As the sun set on Britain's Empire, the age of America as world superpower dawned. How did this rapid change of fortune come about? Peter Clarke's book is the first to analyze the abrupt transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana. His swiftly paced narrative makes superb use of letters and diaries to provide vivid portraits of the figures around whom history pivoted: Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and a host of lesser-known figures though whom Clarke brilliantly shows the human dimension of epochal events. The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is a captivating work of popular history that shows how the events that followed the war reshaped the world as profoundly as the conflict itself.

Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

This book examines Gibbon's interpretations of empire and the intellectual context in which he formulated them against a background of the eighteenth- and late twentieth-century knowledge of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Gibbon's ideas of empire, his understanding of monarchy and the balance of power, his sources and working methods, the structure of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his attitude towards the barbarians, the contrasting treatments of the eastern and western Empire, his appreciation of past civilizations and their material remains, his audience and their reactions - contemporary and Victorian - are considered in the light of the latest research on eighteenth-century intellectual history on the one hand and on late antiquity, Byzantium and the Middle Ages on the other. The book breaks new ground in taking the form of a dialogue between experts on the fields about which Gibbon himself wrote, and eighteenth-century intellectual historians.

In LORD CHURCHILL’S COUP, Stephen Saunders Webb further advances his revisionist interpretation of the British Empire in the seventeenth century. Having earlier demonstrates that the Anglo=American empire was classic in its form, administered by an army, committed to territorial expansion, and motivated by crusading religion, Webb now argues that both England and its American social experiments were the underdeveloped elements of an empire emerging on both sides of the Atlantic and that the pivotal moment of that empire, the so-called “Glorious Revolution,” was in fact a military coup driven by religious fears. In a vigorous narrative, Webb populates this formative period of the Anglo-American past with colorful and commanding characters. At the center is John Churchill. We see him rise from page boy to earl of Marlborough, winning battlefield glory, influence, and promotion; and his corresponding rise from ensign of the English army taking control of the destiny of the later Stuart monarchs of Britain and America. Webb shows us Churchill increasingly alarmed by the Catholicizing course of his patron, James II, and becoming instrumental in the organization of a successful coup to protect Anglicanism and the constitution. We see the resulting alliance with William of Orange, the Protestant champion of Europe, quickly turn sour as William makes himself king; and we see Churchill, now transformed into imperial politician, once again in power—able to secure the succession of Queen Anne and negotiate the terms of resumption of war against France. Throughout, Webb makes it clear that at the heart of Churchill’s ascent and actions is his vision of America as a decisive factor in the world war between England and France for impersonal supremacy. As the book ends, Churchill’s American agenda thus becomes central to the war aims of the Grand Alliance.