Imperial Island: An Alternative History of the British Empire
In a curious inversion of historians’ habitual priorities, it is less interested in how British imperialism affected people in the colonies than how people from the colonies affected Britain, and British attitudes toward imperialism, immigration and race. These are interesting choices, but Riley struggles to justify them ... Imperial Island touches upon all the key moments of modern British history, from the Blitz and Live Aid to Britpop and Brexit, but in its effort to be so comprehensive in so short a space, it feels somewhat thin. Indeed, the book seems rather unsure of what it wants to be, and its tone shifts uneasily between journalism and scholarship, with telling consequences.
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Imperial Island rests on the assumption that racism in postwar Britain is self-evidently the upshot of colonialism ... The causal link, though, isn’t nearly as neat as Riley suggests. Arguably, she’s got it backwards ... Imperial Island may disappoint as "a history of empire in modern Britain", as the subtitle has it, but it nevertheless succeeds as a history of race relations ... But there is a habit of talking down to the reader, spelling out obvious ironies and rephrasing quotes just in case we lack the moral clarity to recognise enormities for what they are.
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Charlotte Lydia Riley... is seeking to join a coterie of critics of empire – some historians, some not – who have found a new (and often youthful) audience by expounding the rather simplistic thesis that the worst aspects of modern Britain can be traced directly to its imperial past. Riley’s book does this by examining, with considerable skill, Britain’s post-war retreat from empire ... One suspects, however, that she doesn’t cast an entirely cold eye upon the evidence she gathers ... When Riley puts on the hat of a historian, rather than a cheap polemicist, she has interesting things to say ... Riley’s picture is far from complete, reading sometimes like a primer of recent Left-ish obsessions.
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