Legacy of Violence

Paperback, 717 pages

Published Jan. 25, 2022 by Random House Large Print.

ISBN:: 978-0-593-46037-5

(2 reviews)

Sprawling across a quarter of the world’s land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain’s twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation’s cultural superiority, but what legacy did the island nation deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals an evolutionary and racialized doctrine that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve the nation’s imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in the Victorian era calls for punishing recalcitrant “natives,” and how over time, its forms became increasingly systematized. And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.

Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of …

Sprawling across a quarter of the world’s land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain’s twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation’s cultural superiority, but what legacy did the island nation deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals an evolutionary and racialized doctrine that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve the nation’s imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in the Victorian era calls for punishing recalcitrant “natives,” and how over time, its forms became increasingly systematized. And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.

Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of Violence implicates all sides of Britain’s political divide in the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting Britain’s empire and the nation’s imperial identity at home, Elkins upends long-held myths and sheds new light on empire’s role in shaping the world today.

6 editions

Pam Phillips reviewed Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins

An important, but hard read

4 stars

Content warning The book, though not this review, contains graphic descriptons of torture

Definitely a slog to read. A sense of its importance carried me on. I kind of knew that the British said noble things to the home audience about the Empire and did beastly things to the people in their colonies. It's another thing to be immersed in year after year of horrible detail. There's an awful fascination in the way methods of torture and oppression travelled from place to place, such as Ireland, Kenya, and Palestine. I did not know that the Americans pressured the British to make good on the claim that they were teaching their colonies to be self-governing. Nor did I know how badly the handover of power to nearly independent countries was bollixed in most places.

Well, it's not like we thought empires were nice to everyone.

Lucas reviewed Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins

Damning, thorough, and relevant

4 stars

A well-researched, well-presented investigation of the use of violence throughout the history and geography of the British Empire. It brings a great amount of evidence to not only demonstrate the severity and frequency of violence, but also of the legal and ideological work that enabled Britain's "legalized lawlessness," that eradicated evidence and sympathy for its victims, all while bragging of a deeply racialized mission to "bring civilization," justifying—where it could not hide—the dealing of death and suffering as necessary to establish a liberal economic and civil order. Thorough, insightful, heartbreaking and well worth the time and effort to read and bring back to bear on your understanding of history and the current and future state of the world.