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Understanding the British Empire. By ronald hyam. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 576 pp. $116.00 (cloth); $40.97 (paper).
This volume brings together essays drawn from throughout the career of Cambridge University historian of the British Empire Ronald Hyam. The book's title, Understanding the British Empire, suggests two meanings. As an intended capstone on almost sixty years of study in varied themes related to imperial history, the book admirably serves as an overview of the history of the British Empire. But these essays also offer readers glimpses of how Hyam has understood the field of British imperial history writing through its many methodological twists and turns over the past half century.
The volume includes eighteen essays, many of which were published previously as book chapters or as journal articles. Nearly all show the author's preference for political history. Some are from the realm of high politics, as with chapters on Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts in which Hyam offers somewhat sympathetic views of the controversial statesmen. Other chapters find angles of vision on the imperial state from much further down, from the vantage point of minor officials. A great share of the research represented here comes from deep excavations of government documents that over Hyam's career have yielded valuable clues into the dreams and perceived duties of empire builders and forgotten colonial servants alike.
There is more to this volume than political history. The essays range widely to offer insights on the history of British Christian missions abroad, to the question of...