Legacy of Violence

A History of the British Empire

De: Caroline Elkins

Narrado por: Adam Barr

The Baillie Gifford Prize, Short-listed, 2022

From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian: a searing study of the British Empire that probes the country's pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century and traces how these practices were exported, modified, and institutionalized in colonies around the globe

Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain's twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation's cultural superiority. But what legacy did the island nation deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals an evolutionary and racialized doctrine that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve the nation's imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in the Victorian era calls for punishing recalcitrant "natives," and how over time, its forms became increasingly systematized. And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.

Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of Violence implicates all sides of Britain's political divide in the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting Britain's empire and the nation's imperial identity at home, Elkins upends long-held myths and sheds new light on empire's role in shaping the world today.

©2022 Caroline Elkins (P)2022 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

Winner of the 2024 NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize

“Sweeping and detailed . . . With its enormous breadth and ambition, [Legacy of Violence] amounts to something approaching a one-volume history of imperial Britain’s use of force, torture, and deceit around the world. . . . Assembling so many examples spread widely across space and time allows Elkins to build an impressively damning account of the British Empire.”—Howard W. French, The Nation

“In this sweeping, ambitious chronicle, [Elkins] extends her commanding investigative and interpretive powers around the globe to include India, South Africa and Palestine. Elkins convincingly makes the case that the British Empire, with its principles cloaked in uplifting paternalism, was built on violence.”—The National Book Review

“Elkins’s intricate but immersive account is a feat of scholarship that elucidates the bureaucratic and legal machinery of oppression, dissects the intellectual justifications for it, and explores in gripping, sometimes grisly detail the suffering that resulted. The result is a forceful challenge to recent historiographical and political defenses of British exceptionalism that punctures myths of paternalism and progress.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Other side of the story

Professor Elkins has the receipts. A devastating and long overdue accounting of centuries of violence perpetrated in the name of empire. Brilliant.

Appalling behaviors.

When will we learn.
When will we see each other as humans and nothing more.

Incredibly Informative and Thoughtful

This book is an outstanding reference of the systems and policies that underpin the British control of their colonies from the use of violent methods, control of media, use of all sort of manipulation and corruption. The direct connection to today’s foreign and domestic policy and practices are clearly laid out. Outstanding work.

Solid but repetitive

The research and construction is great, but I find that in the attempt to move back and forth in the timeline to tell the various stories of the empire, the author too often repeated elements, not trusting the reader to remember. Still, worth l listening to.

At last! A factual account of the real British history

An excellent and wonderfully detailed counterweight to the numerous books written by apologists for the utterly despicable and shameful imperial past actions of the British Empire, especially at a time when it’s still-burning embers seem to be re-igniting in certain parts of the U.K.‘s political and social consciousness.

Great and authentic!

I’m half way through this book and I just needed to say how I’m glad I found it. Great insights into the real atrocities that occurred. I appreciate the transparency and well research events. I’m not even finished but I know I’m going to be listening a second time!

Finally the Untold Narrrative

The many many human rights abuses perpetrated by Britain are finally being examined. Perhaps by learning lessons of the past instead of an idealized propaganda we can collectively make a brighter future.

An Essential Read

An excellent review of the historical foundations of our (the Western World's) current institutions: political, legal, and cultural--our comfort in the camouflage of "The Rule of Law." The relentless focus on the gruesome foundations of Colonialism clarifies our acceptance of western exceptionalism vis a vis the rest of the world. It is hard to read but ultimately cleansing as you reflect on our path ahead.

Thoroughly researched and referenced.

Informative, ingaging, well delivered, a must read

Excellent narrator. Will read again. Highly recommend. Excellent book. An eye opener. Very involving.

Best read of 2022

If you grew up in a former British colony you might not realize the scope, length and depth to which the empire went to retain control and dominance, further you may not see how your current laws were born out of that repression.