Few historical subjects have generated such intense and sustained interest in recent decades as the history of empires. While historians have approached this subject in very different ways, their shared preoccupation with the British imperial experience-its institutions, ideas and impact on peoples around the world-has endured and given rise to a rich, varied, and influential body of historical scholarship. What accounts for this preoccupation? Why has it gained such purchase on the historical imagination? How has it endured as an active area of inquiry even as the empire it studies slips...

Few historical subjects have generated such intense and sustained interest in recent decades as the history of empires. While historians have approached this subject in very different ways, their shared preoccupation with the British imperial experience-its institutions, ideas and impact on peoples around the world-has endured and given rise to a rich, varied, and influential body of historical scholarship. What accounts for this preoccupation? Why has it gained such purchase on the historical imagination? How has it endured as an active area of inquiry even as the empire it studies slips...