Historiography of the British Empire

The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to develop a history of the British Empire. Historians and their ideas are the main focus here; specific lands and historical dates and episodes are covered in the article on the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation, its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people who became imperialists or anti-imperialists, together with their mindsets. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the histories of the United States (which broke away in 1776), the British Raj (dissolved in 1947), and the African colonies (independent in the 1960s). John Darwin (2013) identifies four imperial goals: colonising, civilising, converting, and commerce.John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013)
Historians have approached imperial history from numerous angles over the last century. In recent decades scholars have expanded the range of topics into new areas in social and cultural history, paying special attention to the impact on the natives and their agency in response.The newer themes are emphasized in Sarah E. Stockwell, ed., The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008) The cultural turn in historiography has recently emphasised issues of language, religion, gender, and identity. Recent debates have considered the relationship between the "metropole" (Great Britain itself, especially London), and the colonial peripheries. The "British world" historians stress the material, emotional, and financial links among the colonizers across the imperial diaspora. The "new imperial historians", by contrast, are more concerned with the Empire's impact on the metropole, including everyday experiences and images. Phillip Buckner says that by the 1990s few historians continued to portray the Empire as benevolent.Phillip Buckner, "Presidential Address: Whatever Happened to the British Empire?" Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la Société historique du Canada (1993) 4#1 pp. 3–32, quote on p. 6
==See also==
* British Empire Economic Conference (1932)
* Cambridge School of historiography led by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson
* Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
* Historiography of the United Kingdom
* Historiography of the causes of World War I
* Imperial Conference, Covers the meetings of prime ministers in 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1921, 1923, 1926, 1930, 1932, in 1937
** 1887 Colonial Conference
* Imperial War Cabinet
* International relations of the Great Powers (1814–1919)
* New Imperialism, re 1880–1910
* Pageant of Empire
* Porter–MacKenzie debate what role did colonialism play in shaping British culture
* The Cambridge History of the British Empire
* The Oxford History of the British Empire
* Timeline of imperialism
* Western imperialism in Asia
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
* "Making History", Coverage of leading British historians and institutions from the Institute of Historical Research
== Further reading ==
=== Basic bibliography ===
* Bayly, C. A. ed. Atlas of the British Empire (1989). survey by scholars; heavily illustrated
* Brendon, Piers. "A Moral Audit of the British Empire", History Today (October 2007), Vol. 57, Issue 10, pp. 44–47, online at EBSCO
* Brendon, Piers. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 (2008), wide-ranging survey
* Bryant, Arthur. The History of Britain and the British Peoples, 3 vols (1984–90), popular.
* Dalziel, Nigel. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire (2006), 144 pp.
* Darwin, John. The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (2009) excerpt and text search
* Darwin, John. Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (2013)
* Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002); Also published as Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2002).
* Howe, Stephen ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (2009) online review
* Jackson, Ashley. The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction (2013) excerpt.
* James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1998). A one-volume history of the Empire, from the American colonies to the Handover of Hong Kong; also online
* Knaplund, Paul. The British empire, 1815–1939 (1941), very wide-ranging; online
* Marshall, P. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996). online
* Olson, James S., and Robert S. Shadle; Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (1996) 
* Panton, Kenneth J., ed. Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (2015) 766 pp.
* Simms, Brendan. Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire (2008), 800 pp. excerpt and text search
===Overviews===
* Belich, James. Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1780-1930 (Oxford University Press, 2009), 448 pp.; focus on British settlement colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, emphasizing the heavy British investments involved
* Black, Jeremy. The British Seaborne Empire (2004)
* Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (2nd edn 2001) 739 pp.; detailed economic history that presents the new "gentlemanly capitalists" thesis;
* Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850 (2004), 464 pp.
* Hyam, Ronald. Britain's Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion (1993).
* Judd, Denis. Empire: The British Imperial Experience, From 1765 to the Present (1996).
* Levine, Philippa. The British Empire: sunrise to sunset (3rd ed. Routledge, 2020) excerpt
* Lloyd, T. O. The British Empire, 1558-1995 Oxford University Press, 1996
* Muir, Ramsay. A short history of the British commonwealth (2 vol 1920-22; 8th ed. 1954). online
* Parsons, Timothy H. The British imperial century, 1815–1914: A world history perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
* Royal Institute of International Affairs. The Colonial Problem (1937); broad-based review of current status of European colonies, especially British Empire. online.
* Robinson, Howard . The Development of the British Empire (1922), 465 pp. edition.
* Rose, J. Holland, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (general editor), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols (1929–61); vol 1: "The Old Empire from the Beginnings to 1783" 934pp online edition Volume I
** Volume II: The Growth of the New Empire 1783-1870 (1968) online
* Smith, Simon C. British Imperialism 1750-1970 (1998). brief
* Stockwell, Sarah, ed. The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008), 355 pp.
===Oxford History===
* Louis, William. Roger (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols (1998–99).
** Vol. 1 "The Origins of Empire" ed. Nicholas Canny online
** Vol. 2 "The Eighteenth Century" ed. P. J. Marshall online
** Vol. 3 The Nineteenth Century ed. Andrew Porter (1998). 780 pp. online edition
** Vol. 4 The Twentieth Century ed. Judith M. Brown (1998). 773 pp. online edition
** Vol. 5 "Historiography", ed. Robin W. Winks (1999) online
====Oxford History Companion series====
* Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes, eds. Environment and Empire (2007)
* Bickers, Robert, ed. Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas (2014)
* Buckner, Phillip, ed. Canada and the British Empire (2010)
* Etherington, Norman. Missions and Empire (2008) on Protestant missions
* Harper, Marjory, and Stephen Constantine, eds. Migration and Empire (2010)
* Kenny, Kevin, ed. Ireland and the British Empire(2006) excerpt and text search
* Peers, Douglas M. and Nandini Gooptu, eds. India and the British Empire (2012)
* Schreuder, Deryck and Stuart Ward, eds. Australia's Empire (2010) 
* Thompson, Andrew, ed. Britain's Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century (2012)
===Atlases, geography, environment===
* Bartholomew, John. Atlas of the British empire throughout the world (1868 edition) online 1868 edition; (1877 edition) online 1877 edition, the maps are poorly reproduced
* 
* Dalziel, Nigel. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire (2006), 144 pp
* Faunthorpe, John Pincher. Geography of the British colonies and foreign possessions (1874) online edition
* Lucas, Charles Prestwood. A Historical Geography of the British Colonies: part 2: West Indies (1890) online edition
* Lucas, Charles Prestwood. A Historical Geography of the British Colonies: part 4: South and East Africa (1900) online edition
* MacKenzie, John M. The British Empire through buildings: Structure, function and meaning (Manchester UP, 2020) excerpt.
* Porter, A. N. Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (1994)
* The Year-book of the Imperial Institute of the United Kingdom, the colonies and India: a statistical record of the resources and trade of the colonial and Indian possessions of the British Empire (2nd. ed. 1893) 880pp; online edition
===Political, economic and intellectual studies===
* Andrews, Kenneth R. Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (1984).
* Armitage, David. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000).
* 
* Armitage, David, ed. Theories of Empire, 1450–1800 (1998).
* Armitage, David, and M. J. Braddick, eds. The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, (2002)
* Barker, Sir Ernest, The Ideas and Ideals of the British Empire (1941).
* Baumgart, W. Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (1982)
* Bayly, C. A. Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1831 (1989).
** Stern, Philip J. "Early Eighteenth-Century British India: Antimeridian or antemeridiem?." Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 21.2 (2020) pp 1–26, focus on Bayly.
* Bell, Duncan The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (2007)
* Bell, Duncan (ed.) Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth Century Political Thought (2007)
* Bennett, George (ed.), The Concept of Empire: Burke to Attlee, 1774–1947 (1953).
* Blaut, J. M. The Colonizers' Model of the World 1993
* Bowen, H. V. Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756-1833 (2006), 304pp
* 
* 
* 
* Collingham, Lizzie. The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World (2017).
* Crooks, Peter, and Timothy H. Parsons, eds. Empires and bureaucracy in world history: from late antiquity to the twentieth century (Cambridge UP, 2016) chapters 1, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17.
* Darby, Philip. The Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches to Asia and Africa, 1870-1970 (1987)
* Doyle, Michael W. Empires (1986).
* Dumett, Raymond E. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire. (1999). 234 pp.
* Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson. "The Imperialism of Free Trade" The Economic History Review, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1953), pp. 1–15 in JSTOR, online free at Mt. Holyoke highly influential interpretation in its day
* Gilbert, Helen, and Chris Tiffin, eds. Burden or Benefit?: Imperial Benevolence and Its Legacies (2008)
* Harlow, V. T. The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763–1793, 2 vols. (1952–64).
* Heinlein, Frank. British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945-1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind (2002).
* Herbertson, A. J. The Oxford Survey of the British Empire, (1914) 
* Ingram, Edward. The British Empire as a World Power: Ten Studies (2001)
* Jackson, Ashley. British Empire and the Second World War (2006)
* Johnson, Robert. British Imperialism (2003). historiography
* , First World War
* Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (1976).
* Koehn, Nancy F. The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire (1994) 
* Knorr, Klaus E., British Colonial Theories 1570–1850 (1944).
* Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945 (1978) 
* McIntyre, W. David. The commonwealth of nations: Origins and impact, 1869–1971 (U of Minnesota Press, 1977); Comprehensive coverage giving London's perspective on political and constitutional relations with each possession.link
* 
* Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (1999).
* Pares, Richard. “The Economic Factors in the History of the Empire.” Economic History Review 7#2 (1937), pp. 119–144. online
* Porter, Bernard. The Lion's Share: A History of British Imperialism 1850-2011 (4th ed. 2012), Wide-ranging general history; strong on anti-imperialism. online
* Thornton, A.P. The Imperial Idea and its Enemies (2nd ed. 1985)
* Tinker, Hugh. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920 (1974).
* Webster, Anthony. Gentlemen Capitalists: British Imperialism in South East Asia, 1770-1890 (1998)
===Diplomacy and military policy===
* Bannister, Jerry, and Liam Riordan, eds. The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era (U of Toronto Press, 2012).
* Bartlett, C. J. British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (1989)
* , a standard history
* Black, Jeremy. America or Europe? British Foreign Policy, 1739-63 (1998) 
* Black, Jeremy, ed. Knights Errant and True Englishmen: British Foreign Policy, 1660-1800 (2003) essays by scholars
* Black, Jeremy. George III: America's last king (Yale UP, 2006).
* Chandler, David, and Ian Beckett, eds. The Oxford History of the British Army (2003). excerpt
* Colley, Thomas. Always at War: British Public Narratives of War (U of Michigan Press, 2019) online review
* Cotterell, Arthur. Western Power in Asia: Its Slow Rise and Swift Fall, 1415 - 1999 (2009) popular history; excerpt
* Dilks, David. Retreat from Power: 1906-39 v. 1: Studies in Britain's Foreign Policy of the Twentieth Century (1981); Retreat from Power: After 1939 v. 2 (1981)
* Haswell, Jock, and John Lewis-Stempel. A Brief History of the British Army (2017).
* Jackson, Ashley. The British Empire and the Second World War (2007) 624pp; Comprehensive coverage.
* Jackson, Ashley. "New Research on the British Empire and the Second World War: Part II." Global War Studies 7.2 (2010): 157-184; historiography
* Jones, J. R. Britain and the World, 1649-1815 (1980)
* Langer, William L. The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902 (2nd ed. 1950)
* Mulligan, William, and Brendan Simms, eds. The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, 1660-2000 (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 345 pages
* Nester, William R. Titan: The Art of British Power in the Age of Revolution and Napoleon (2016) excerpt
* O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (2014).
* Strang, Lord William. Britain in World Affairs: A survey of the Fluctuations in British Power and Influence from Henry VIII to Elizabeth II (1961). Online Popular history by a diplomat.
* Vickers, Rhiannon. The Evolution of Labour's Foreign Policy, 1900-51 (2003) focus on decolonization
* Webster, Charles. The Foreign Policy of Palmerston (1951) 
* Wiener, Joel H. ed. Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, 1689-1971: A Documentary History (1972) 876pp [ primary sources
* 
=== Slavery and race ===
* Auerbach, Sascha. Race, Law, and "The Chinese Puzzle" in Imperial Britain (2009).
* Ballantyne, Tony. Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (2002)
* Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (2009) excerpt and text search
* Dumas, Paula E. Proslavery Britain: Fighting for slavery in an era of abolition (Springer, 2016).
* Eltis, David, and Stanley L. Engerman. "The importance of slavery and the slave trade to industrializing Britain." Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 123-144. online
* Green, William A. British slave emancipation, the sugar colonies and the great experiment, 1830-1865 (Oxford, 1981)
* 
* Grant, Kevin. A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884-1926 (2005).
* Killingray, David, and Martin Plaut. "Race and Imperialism in the British Empire: A Lateral View." South African Historical Journal (2020): 1-28. 
* Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, David. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (2008).
* Look Lai, Walton. Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918 1993.
* Morgan, Philip D. and Sean Hawkins, eds. Black Experience and the Empire(2006), Oxford History Companion series
* Quinault, Roland. "Gladstone and slavery." The Historical Journal 52.2 (2009): 363-383. 
* Robinson, Ronald, John Gallagher, Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians: The Climax of Imperialism in the Dark Continent (1961) 
* Taylor, Michael. "The British West India interest and its allies, 1823–1833." English Historical Review 133.565 (2018): 1478-1511. , focus on slavery
* Walker, Eric A., ed. The Cambridge history of the British Empire Volume VIII: South Africa, Rhodesia and the High Commission Territories (1963) online
=== Social and cultural studies; gender ===
* August, Thomas G. The Selling of the Empire: British and French Imperialist Propaganda, 1890-1940 (1985)
* Bailyn, Bernard, and Philip D. Morgan (eds.), Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (1991)
* Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (1988).
* Broich, John. "Engineering the Empire: British Water Supply Systems and Colonial Societies, 1850-1900." Journal of British Studies 2007 46(2): 346-365. Fulltext: at Ebsco
* Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (U of North Carolina Press, 1994).
* Chaudhuri, Nupur. "Imperialism and Gender." in Encyclopedia of European Social History, edited by Peter N. Stearns, (vol. 1, 2001), pp. 515-521. online
* Clayton, Martin. and Bennett Zon. Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s-1940s (2007) excerpt and text search
* 
* 
* Hall, Catherine, and Sonya O. Rose. At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (2007)
* Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (2002)
* Hardwick, Joseph. Prayer, Providence and Empire: Special Worship in the British World, 1783–1919 (Manchester UP, 2021)
* Hodgkins, Christopher. Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature (U of Missouri Press, 2002) 
* Hyam, Ronald. Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (1990).
* Karatani, Rieko. Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth, and Modern Britain (2003) 
* Kuczynski, Robert R. Demographic survey of the British Colonial Empire (1 vol 1948) vol 1 West Africa online; also vol 2 East Africa online
* Lassner, Phyllis. Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire (2004)
* Lazarus, Neil, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (2004)
* Levine, Philippa, ed. Gender and Empire. Oxford History of the British Empire (2004).
* McDevitt, Patrick F. May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880-1935 (2004).
* Midgley, Clare. Feminism and Empire: women activists in imperial Britain, 1790–1865 (Routledge, 2007)
* Morgan, Philip D. and Hawkins, Sean, ed. Black Experience and the Empire (2004).
* Morris, Jan. The Spectacle of Empire: Style, Effect and Pax Britannica (1982).
* Naithani, Sadhana. The Story-Time of the British Empire: Colonial and Postcolonial Folkloristics (2010)
* Newton, Arthur Percival. The Universities And Educational Systems Of The British Empire (1924) online
* Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (2004)
* Potter, Simon J. News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System. Clarendon, 2003
* Price, Richard. "One Big Thing: Britain, its Empire, and Their Imperial Culture." Journal of British Studies 2006 45(3): 602-627. Fulltext: Ebsco
* Price, Richard. Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa 2008.
* Richards, Eric. Britannia's children: emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (A&C Black, 2004) online.
* Rubinstein, W. D. Capitalism, Culture, and Decline in Britain, 1750-1990 (1993),
* Rüger, Jan. "Nation, Empire and Navy: Identity Politics in the United Kingdom 1887-1914" Past & Present 2004 (185): 159-187. online
* Sauerberg, Lars Ole. Intercultural Voices in Contemporary British Literature: The Implosion of Empire (2001) 
* Sinha, Mrinalini, "Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century" (1995)
* Smith, Michelle J., Clare Bradford, et al. From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literature, 1840-1940 (2018) excerpt
* Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (1993).
* Trollope, Joanna. Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire (1983).
* Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part I: India." History of Education 34#3 (2005): 315-329.
** Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire." History of Education 34#4 (2005): 441-454.
* Wilson, Kathleen. The Island Race: Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (2003).
* Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (2004)
* 
* Xypolia, Ilia. British Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, 1923-1939:Divide, Define and Rule. Routledge, 2017
=== Regional studies ===
* Bailyn, Bernard. Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (1991) excerpt and text search
* Bruckner, Phillip. Canada and the British Empire (The Oxford History of the British Empire) (2010) excerpt and text search online
* Elliott, J.H., Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (2006), a major interpretation excerpt and text search
* Gerits, Frank. The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order (1945–1966) (Cornell University Press, 2023). ISBN13: 9781501767913. Major scholarly coverage of British, French and Portuguese colonies. see online reviews and reply by author
* Kenny, Kevin, ed. Ireland and the British Empire (2004).
* Landsman, Ned. Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America (2010) excerpt and text search
* Lees, Lynn Hollen. Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1786-1941 (2017).
* Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (2001).
* Louis, William Roger. The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (1984)
* Marshall, Peter, and Glyn Williams, eds. The British Atlantic Empire before the American Revolution (1980)
* Taylor, Alan. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (2010), on War of 1812
* Veevers, David. The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600–1750 (2020) excerpt.
=== Historiography and memory ===
* 
* 
* 
* 
* Barone, Charles A. Marxist Thought on Imperialism: Survey and Critique (1985)
* 
* Black, Jeremy. Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around the World (Encounter Books, 2019) excerpt.
* Buckner, Phillip. "Presidential Address: Whatever happened to the British Empire?" Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (1993) 4#1 pp. 3–32. online
* 
* Burton, Antoinette and Isabel Hofmeyr, eds. Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons (2014) excerpt
* Cannadine, David, "'Big Tent' Historiography: Transatlantic Obstacles and Opportunities in Writing the History of Empire", Common Knowledge (2005) 11#3 pp. 375–392 at Project MUSE
* Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2002)
* Cannadine, David. "The Empire Strikes Back", Past & Present No. 147 (May, 1995), pp. 180–194 
* Cannadine, David. Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (2018)
* Colley, Linda. "What Is Imperial History Now?" in David Cannadine, ed. What Is History Now? (2002), 132–147.
* Drayton, Richard. "Where does the world historian write from? Objectivity, moral conscience and the past and present of imperialism". Journal of Contemporary History 2011; 46#3 pp. 671–685. online
* Dumett, Raymond E. ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (1999) online
* Elton, G. R. Modern Historians on British History 1485–1945: A Critical Bibliography 1945–1969 (1969), annotated guide to 1000 history books on every major topic, plus book reviews and major scholarly articles. online
* 
* Fieldhouse, David K. "'Imperialism': An Historiographical Revision". Economic History Review 14#2 (1961): 187–209. 
* Ghosh, Durba. "Another set of imperial turns?". American Historical Review 2012; 117#3 pp: 772–793. online 
* Griffin, Patrick. "In Retrospect: Lawrence Henry Gipson's The British Empire before the American Revolution" Reviews in American History, 31#2 (2003), pp. 171–183 in JSTOR
* 
* Hyam, Ronald. Understanding the British Empire (2010), 576pp; essays by Hyam.
* Johnson David, and Prem Poddar, eds. A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Thought in English (Columbia UP, 2005).
* Kennedy, Dane. The Imperial History Wars: Debating the British Empire (2018) excerpt
* 
* Lester, Alan, Kate Boehme, and Peter Mitchell, eds. Ruling the World: Freedom, Civilisation and Liberalism in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge UP, 2021).
* Lieven, Dominic. Empire: The Russian empire and its rivals (Yale UP, 2002), comparisons with Russian, Habsburg & Ottoman empires. excerpt
* 
* Morris, Richard B. "The Spacious Empire of Lawrence Henry Gipson," William and Mary Quarterly, (1967) 24#2 pp. 170–189 at JSTOR; covers the "Imperial School" of Americanscholars, 1900–1940s
* Nelson, Paul David. "British Conduct of the American Revolutionary War: A Review of Interpretations." Journal of American History 65.3 (1978): 623-653. online
* 
* 
* 
* Philips, Cyril H. ed. Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (1961), reviews the older scholarship
* Rasor, Eugene L. Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography (2000) 712pp; online 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* Webster, Anthony. The Debate on the Rise of British Imperialism (Issues in Historiography) (2006)
* Wilson, Kathleen, ed. A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (2004). excerpt and text search
* Winks, Robin, ed. Historiography (1999) vol. 5 in William Roger Louis, eds. The Oxford History of the British Empire
* Winks, Robin W. The Historiography of the British Empire-Commonwealth: Trends, Interpretations and Resources (1966); this book is by a different set of authors from the previous 1999 entry 
* Winks, Robin W. "Problem Child of British History: The British Empire-Commonwealth", in Richard Schlatter, ed., Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966 (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp. 451–492
* Winks, Robin W., ed. British Imperialism: Gold, God, Glory (1963) excerpts from 15 historians from early 20th century, plus commentary and bibliography.
=== Bibliography ===
* Gabriel Glickman, "Britain and Empire, 1685-1730" Oxford Bibliographies, annotated books
=== Primary sources ===
* Board of Education. Educational Systems of the Chief Crown Colonies and Possessions of the British Empire (1905). 340pp online edition
* Boehmer, Elleke ed. Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870–1918 (1998) 
* Brooks, Chris. and Peter Faulkner (eds.), The White Man's Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (Exeter UP, 1996).
* Hall, Catherine. ed. Cultures of Empire: A Reader: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2000)
* Herbertson, A. J. and O. J. R. Howarth. eds. The Oxford Survey Of The British Empire (6 vol 1914) online vol 2 on Asia and India 555pp; on Africa; vole 1 America; vp; 6 General topics
* Madden, Frederick, ed. The End of Empire: Dependencies since 1948: Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth: The West Indies, British Honduras, Hong Kong, Fiji, Cyprus, Gibraltar, and the Falklands (2000) 596pp
* Madden, Frederick, and John Darwin, ed. The Dependent Empire: 1900–1948: Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandates (1963) 908pp 
* Mansergh, Nicholas, ed. Documents and Speeches on Commonwealth Affairs, 1952–1962 (1963) 804pp 
* Wiener, Joel H. ed. Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, 1689-1971: A Documentary History (4 vol 1972) 3400pp; Mostly statements by British leaders
== External links ==
* British Empire Gateway
* Primary sources and older secondary sources
* "The British Empire at War Research Group", Comprehensive coverage of the Empire during Second World War.
* "The British Empire"
 
British Empire
Category:Historiography of the United Kingdom
Category:History of the British Empire