Please feel free to browse through this library section. The library is split into distinct sections:
First of all is the review section. These are reviews about books on British, Imperial and Colonial themes arranged by title and also by author. I am always seeking to add more reviews, so please feel free to suggest or send books for review. Just email me your recommendation.
There is then a section on the historiography of the British Empire. Over time, I hope to add historiographies on a whole series of smaller topics within the colonial experience and timeframe. Again, if you would like to suggest historians or authors to add to this list then just email me and make your suggestion.
Below those, you will find a selection of historical magazines and journals with plenty of articles about the British Empire. Some of them are out of print, but some are still going and often represent the cutting edge of recent research and debate on imperial and colonial topics. just email me if there are any journals you would like to see added to the list.
There is a small section on audio products with an imperial theme - I don't have so many of these - so please email me if you can think of some others.
And finally, there is a selection of out of print and out of copyright books with an imperial theme. These are all available as pdf downloads - so that you can read in your own time. If you know of any others that you would like to see added then please email me your suggestions or better yet, the pdf files of the books to upload.
Historiography of The First British Empire Authors who argue that the First Empire of the 16th to 18th Century was distinctive from the Second Empire of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Ian Anderson The writer of the Scarlet Riders series with the Mounties in Canada.
John Buchan The early twentieth century writer of adventure and thriller stories - many set in an imperial context.
Alan Caillou aka Alex Webb aka Alan Lyle-Smythe This screenwriter, actor and prolific writer had been an intelligence officer and an Imperial Police Commissioner in the 1940s. He drew heavily on these experiences for his fiction and autobiographical writing.
Robert Carter From the Spanish Armada to Eighteenth Century India to the Taiping Rebellion - an eclectic collection of imperial related books.
James Clavell A writer who specialised in Asia, with novels set in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Stuart Cloete An author who writes about Africa in general and Southern Africa in particular.
James Fenimore Cooper Famous for his 'Last of the Mohicans' Cooper wrote four more books concerning the character from this novel and wrote many other colonial related books too.
Bernard Cornwell Sharpe is better known as a Napoleonic era hero, but in the early days of this character, he saw extensive action in early imperial India!
Alan Dean Foster Better known as a Science-Fiction author, Dean Foster turns his attention to New Zealand and the Maori in particular.
James L Haley Usually a writer of Texan history, he has also written a remarkable book on the Lions of Tsavo.
Maurice Hennessy An author interested in the Irish diaspora within the Empire.
M M Kaye Romance and suspense in Indian and other Imperial settings.
Rudyard Kipling Regarded as the bard of India and the Soldier's Friend
Garry Douglas Kilworth 'Fancy' Jack Crossman is a British soldier who does most of his fighting in the Crimean War. However, after that war he heads towards India on the eve of the Mutiny...
James Leasor aka Andrew MacAllan An ex-soldier and journalist who has written on a wide variety of Imperial related fiction and non-fiction books. They are usually but not exclusively set in Asia or the Pacific Rim.
Allan Mallinson Allan Mallinson was a Brigadier in the Light Dragoons, as an author he created the Matthew Hervey character of a cavalry officer who serves around the empire just after the end of the Napoleonic War.
George MacDonald Fraser This author has taken the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays and allowed him to mature into a cad and bounder who has adventures all over the Victorian Empire and beyond.
Philip McCutchan aka Duncan MacNeil This author has written to sets of books with Imperial themes. One concerns a British soldier (Ogilvie) on the North West Frontier from 1880 to 1900. The other concerns an officer (Halfhyde) in the Royal Navy in the 1890s.
John Masters The writer of novels following his semi-fictional Savage family in India.
Timeri Murari An author who has resurrected Kipling's famous character Kim and had him grow up in the Imperial Raj.
Elizabeth Peters The nineteenth and the early twentieth centurey provides the backdrop for this Anglo-American Archaeologist her family. Murder and mystery abound in the desert and digs under the sun.
Simon Raven An ex- and an unconventional soldier who was fascinated by the decline of the upper and officer class at the tail end of empire.
Douglas Reeman Known as a nautical writer, he has an interesting series tracking a family of Royal Marines from 1850 to 1982.
Wilbur Smith This prolific African writer has set many of his novels in the African continent.
Paul Scott A writer who concentrated on the last days of British India.
Violet Vivian F Stuart Mann aka William Stuart Long aka V A Stuart A writer of three series of Imperial era books: Series 1 is about Philip Hazard; a seaman in Crimea and beyond. Series 2 is about Alexander Sheridan; a soldier who gets caught up in the Indian Mutiny. Series 3 is entitled the Austrlians and tracks the history of the colony from the 18th to 20th Centuries.
John Wilcox A writer who sets his stories of a fictional British officer in the middle to late Victorian period - 1870s to 1880s. He finds himself in many of the crucial battles at the apex of British Imperial ambition.
Magazines, Journal and Periodicals on Imperial History
British Empire Magazine Orbis printed 96 weekly editions on the British Empire in the late 1970s. This was itself a reprint of a Time-Life / BBC series from the early 1970s. It was an extremely detailed and wide-ranging series of magazines and well worth trying to locate. You should be able to find them on Ebay. For a detailed list of the contents of each issue click here
Australian Historical Studies Published since 1940, this journal looks at the entire stretch of Australian History. Naturally it focusses on the European experience, but the aboriginal experience is also well represented. It used to be known as Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand up until 1967. You can read the abstracts and see a free sample at the website.
Journal of Australian Colonial History Published since 1999, this journal focuses on the colonial period of Australian History. It is published by the University of New England. You can read the abstracts and full length book reviews at the website.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Routledge has been publishing this heavyweight academic journal since 1973. It will keep you abreast of all the most recent developments in imperial studies and history. You can sometimes find them on . You can download a sample copy and see abstracts for all the magazines here
New Zealand Journal of History Published since 1967, This journal inevitably looks at the imperial experience in New Zealand but also can look at the experience in the Southern Pacific in general. You can read the abstracts on the University of Auckland website. They can occasionally be found on
Rhodesiana From 1956 until 1979 the Rhodesian Historical Society published this remarkably well written journal. It doesn't just cover the old Southern Rhodesia but really the entire Central African region. Primacy is certainly accorded to the European experience but there is still much to be gleaned from these pages. What is most remarkable is that they are all being made available to download by Richard Allport online for free in pdf form here. The can occasionally be found in their original form on
South African Historical Journal Published since 1969, this journal looks at the imperial period - although quite a few articles are post 1948. You can read the abstracts and see a free sample at the website.
Durbar Durbar is the Journal of the Indian Military Historical Society and covers the period of the British Indian Army to a considerable depth. It is published four times a year and is sent to members of the Indian Military Historical Society. You can join online at the IMHS Website
Books for Children
The Girls' Empire: An Annual for English-speaking Girls All Over the World Written in 1903, this book was written to try and enthuse girls to become more active and helpful in building up a worthwhile empire. It is full of interesting bits of advice and activities for adventurous girls to undertake.
Bleak Expectations This is a wonderful series broadcast by the Imperial Broadcasting Service (aka the BBC). It makes fun of all the nineteenth century literary genres in a very witty manner. Suitably imperial in tone, they are laugh out loud funny!
Series 1:
Series 2:
Series 3:
Series 4:
British and Colonial PDF Books available for Download
The British Empire This was a tract written by T. A. Jackson of the British Communist Party in 1921. This Marxist interpretation is obviously hostile to the idea of Imperialism and looks forward to the day that the various imperial working classes unite as one. Notwithstanding class solidarity, it still sounds very condenscending to what the book refers to as 'coloured peoples of the Empire'.
The British Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century This was a textbook issued in the inter-war years to students in Britain and around the Empire. It is obviously hagiographic about the Empire with an almost 'manifest destiny' idea of Imperialism. It ranges from the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the Great War.
The British Empire: Its origins and Destiny A 1922 book from Canada. A pro-imperial tract originally taken from the Toronto Sentinel. This book is surprisingly religious in tone as it sought to find a biblican precedent for a Christian Empire - perhaps somewhat apposite given the Canadian experiences just a few years earlier during the Great War.
British Empire Series: Volume 1 This is an 1899 pro-imperial overview of the British Empire on a colony by colony basis. Many of the contributors were administrators or eminent pro-imperialists themselves. It was taken from a series of lectures given at the apogee of Imperial ambition - between Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897 and the setbacks of the Boer War. It was divided into five volumes. This volume discusses India, the Straits Settlements (Malaya), British North Borneo and Hong Kong. Read a contemporary book review
British Empire Series: Volume 4 This is the fourth of the above British Empire Series (not sure where volumes 2 and 3 have got to?). This volume discusses Australasia including the Australian states, New Zealand, New Guinea and various Pacific Islands. Interestingly, it was written just before the Federation of Australia in 1901.
British Empire Series: Volume 5 This is the fifth of the above British Empire Series (not sure where volumes 2 and 3 have got to?). This volume fills in the odds'n'sods. It is an eclectic collection of the various island colonies scattered across the Atlantic and Mediterranean. It also has variety of articles on the communication systems, commodoties and political systems in operation across the Empire, plus much more besides.
The British Empire: Six Lectures Published in 1915 (at the height of the World War), this is a patriotic book designed to show why it was worth fighting for Britain and its illustrious Empire. It was something of a riposte to German criticisms and justification for the war in itself. The lectures cover the creation of the Empire and its development up to 1915.
Democracy and the British Empire Written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, this book attempted to justify the enormous expansion of the Empire and justify its place as a possible Bulwark to the newly realised threat of Bolshevik Communism. In this cause it intellectually tried to tie the United States to British ideas of democracy before the US would withdraw into its period of isolationism.
Empire on the Seven Seas This was a book written in 1940 and published in America. It was designed to demonstrate to an American audience that the USA had far more in common with the British Empire than with the Fascist states of Germany and Italy currently engaged in war with Britain or even with Communist USSR who were still technically signatories of the Nazi-Soviet pact at this time. The book was designed to nudge US support towards the British.
Stories of the British Empire This book by Agnes Machar was compiled in 1914. It is really a collection of the important nation-building stages in British history and would have served as a text book to many. It has as many stories about Britain as it does the Empire, but it was all part of the glorification process to inspire young readers to service in the wider Empire and beyond. It would also be used to teach those growing up within the Empire, the history of the 'mother country' and her imperial expansion.
The British Empire This is an interesting book from the 1880s that gives an overview of the forms of government of each of the colonies around the world. It is an analysis to provide some justification for more informal, federated style of Imperial government rather than an extension of British imposed government from the centre. The author, Sir George Campbell, was the MP for Kirkcaldy in Scotland but he was very widely travelled and even served as the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in the 1870s.
The Oxford Survey of the British Empire: Volume 3 - Africa This is an overview of the continent of Africa written in 1914 - before the outbreak of the World War. It deliberately does not delve into the history of the various colonies, rather it examines their geography, peoples and economic overview and ambitions for the then future. It includes some interesting maps and plenty of facts and figures.
The Oxford Survey of the British Empire: Volume 4 - America As its predecessor above, this book concentrates on the geography and economy of Canada (with the separate colony of Newfoundland), the various West Indies colonies and a small section on the Falkland Islands.
The Oxford Survey of the British Empire: Volume 6 - General Survey This volume of the series discusses various administrative, practical and legal issues surrounding governing such a vast empire. It includes such sections as education, defence, health, communications etc... It is quite a practical overview of issues of governance and coordination over such vast distances.
The British Empire Written in 1899, Charles Dilke was a radical imperialist who thought that the British Empire was a force for good per se, but that within that empire, it should be a progressive agent of change to benefit the subject peoples.
Progress of the British Empire Written during the Boer War, this book by J. Stanley Little, was a remarkably prescient book that anticipated that the Great Power rivalry and jealousy of the British Empire might lead to the outbreak of a general conflagration. It is a little more sceptical of the benefits of imperialism compared to most of his contemporaries, but is still generally convinced of the civilising nature of the Empire.
The Foundation and Growth of the British Empire This was a text book written and published during the baptism of the First World War. It was written by James Williamson, it spans from the Tudor age to the outbreak of the war. Interestingly, it has some very nice maps to illustrate the growth of the empire over the years.
A New Government for the British Empire This 1912 pamphlett by F.W.Bussell was an interesting attempt to give a rationale (and mechanisms) for a new Imperial government. It is interesting that the author was something of an authority on the Roman Empire - parallels that all good imperialists would have been keen to emulate and learn from. It basically wanted to recreate the House of Lords as an 'Imperial Senate' whilst devolving many powers to the individual colonies. It was a far different model from that one enacted at Westminster in 1931.
Round the British Empire Written by Alex Hill, this was something of an educational travelogue to illuminate the scope and scale of the British Empire. It is supposed to teach some geography and history and introduce the reader to the positive aspects of the Imperial adventure.
