The British Empire as a World Power: Ten Studies

These ten studies of decisions and decision-makers analyze the steps of the formation dance the British danced in the Middle Eastern international system from the late 18th century to the outbreak of the Cold War. Everything they did, they had done before; all the decisions they took, they had already taken. When they were not running harder in order to stand still, they turned in ever faster circles to avoid becoming dizzy. The essays redefine Great Britain as a world power and reinterpret the tensions that underpinned its grand strategy during its imperial heyday: between sea power and land power, Continental and imperial commitment, core and periphery and centre and wing, and between ballicism and equilibrium. They show how the empire became a world of its own, apart from the places that made it, and inhabited by service gentry with idiosyncratic codes of behaviour, who hoped that empire-builidng would reward them with social position as well as political influence. And they show how travellingsettles the mind. The British, forever certain that everyone they met would do as they asked, went to their destruction in the Second World War seemingly unaware that Americans treated them as they themselves had treated Indians, Persians and Ottomans 150 years before.

Edward Ingram is the founder and editor of the International History Review and Honorary Research Fellow in History at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.