As 2020 is coming to an end, you can either read a dozen Quilette articles or letters in The Times - or even throw in a PragerU video for good measure - insisting the British Empire was 'Overwhelmingly a force for good' and that 'wokery' is erasing history...

Or you can avail yourself of the critical and deeply researched work of actual scholars. Here are my recommendations for Christmas gifts this year - for anyone seriously interested in the history of the British Empire and its legacies:

@PriyaSatia 'Time's Monster'
-@profdanhicks 'The Brutish Museum'
-@PriyamvadaGopal 'Insurgent Empire'
-@DalrympleWill 'The Anarchy'
-Stuart Ward and @astrid_rasch 'Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain'
-@RobertGildea 'Empires of the Mind'
-@aaprocter
And some forthcoming ones:

@Sathnam 'Empireland'
and of course @pdkmitchell 'Imperial Nostalgia'
Apologies if I have forgotten any others - there is obviously a vast literature out there, so these are just some initial recommendations and a good starting-point if you are interested - genuinely interested - in the British Empire...
So I did forget a few:

@mbarcia24 'The Yellow Demon of Fever'
-@lottelydia 'The Free Speech Wars'
And, as some people have kindly pointed out, I should perhaps include some of my own books, if nothing else than to please my publishers...
Honourable mentions:

@jonewilson 'India Conquered'
And I'm going beyond the Anglo-centric focus of the list to include this brilliant historical comic which cannot be recommended enough:

@MichaelGVann 'The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt'
And taking us into global comparative imperialism:

@olaferr

More from Book

People have wondered why I have spent 3 days mostly pushing back on this idea that "defund the police" is bad marketing.

The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.

It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.


There are a lot of people who think "defund the police" is a bad slogan.

But it's a directional intention. A compass statement.

The real effect of calling it a bad slogan, whether or not intentional (but usually intentional), is to reduce a compass statement down to a slogan.

Whenever there is a real problem and a clear solution, there will be people who benefit from the problem and therefore oppose the solution in a variety of ways.

And this is true of any real problem, not just the problem of lawless militarized white supremacist police.

There are people who oppose it directly using a wide variety of tactics, one of which is misconstruing anything—quite literally anything—said by those who propose solutions—any solutions.

They'd appreciate it if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion.

The reason they'd appreciate if if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion is, it wastes time that could have been spend on the solution trying to persuade them, with different arguments and metaphors or solutions.

Which they intend to misconstrue.

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Before I begin, it might be worth explaining the Malay conception of the spirit world. At its deepest level, Malay religious belief is animist. All living beings and even certain objects are said to have a soul. Natural phenomena are either controlled by or personified as spirits

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