Churchill and Empire
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
One of our finest narrative historians, Lawrence James has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, one focusing solely on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late nineteenth century serving in conflicts in India, South Africa, and the Sudan, his attitude toward the Empire was the Victorian paternalistic approach—at once responsible and superior. Conscious even then of his political career ahead, Churchill found himself reluctantly supporting British atrocities and held what many would regard today as prejudiced views, in that he felt that some nationalities were superior to others, his (some might say obsequious) relationship with America reflected that view. This outmoded attitude was one of the reasons the British voters rejected him after a Second World War in which he had led the country brilliantly. His attitude remained decidedly old-fashioned in a world that was shaping up very differently. This ground-breaking volume reveals the many facets of Churchill’s personality: a visionary leader with a truly Victorian attitude toward the British Empire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
James (The Rise and Fall of the British Empire) offers a fresh, welcome perspective on the exhaustively-analyzed Churchill by focusing narrowly here on his "ardent and unswerving faith in the British Empire." Throughout his long life, Churchill paternalistically and blindly believed that white Anglo-Saxon Britain was preordained to humanely rule an empire consisting predominantly of backward peoples who could not rule themselves. For him Britain was a civilizing force, war was an unavoidable outcome of imperialism, and the subjugation of India and maritime supremacy made Britain a global superpower. As a young officer at the Battle of Omdurman, Churchill reveled in the romance of a cavalry charge but was dismayed by Britain's slaughter of wounded Dervishes. As James points out, Churchill's passion for empire fostered interventionist impulses. Similarly, his unyielding support of WWI's disastrous Gallipoli campaign was rooted in his belief that the Turks' proclamation of jihad irreparably threatened Britain's prestige in South Asia and the Arab world. The WWII surrender of Singapore dealt a death blow to Churchill's empire; and ironically, the supremacy of America Britain's partner in the "special relationship" nurtured by Churchill eclipsed the British Empire as Nazi imperialism never did. James's complex, engrossing, and multifaceted portrait sheds new light on a flawed but brilliant man. Photos.
