Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, a revelatory, fearless history of the British Empire that lays bare its pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century.

In this groundbreaking work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Caroline Elkins uncovers the systematic brutality at the heart of the British Empire. Drawing on more than a decade of research across four continents and newly declassified archives, she exposes the global network of detention camps, torture, and cover-ups that underpinned the imperial project - from Kenya to Malaya and beyond.

Far from isolated incidents, Elkins reveals a pattern of violence, used to secure and maintain Britain's interests across the globe. Legacy of Violence is meticulously researched, passionately argued, and deeply relevant to today's debates about empire, accountability and historical memory.

A NEW YORK TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, HISTORY TODAY AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Masterly... This book is dynamite' Robert Gildea

'Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance' BBC History Magazine

'Crucial... as unflinching as it is gripping' Jill Lepore

Caroline Elkins

'This book is dynamite' - ROBERT GILDEA, author of Empires of the Mind

A searing, landmark study of the British Empire that lays bare its pervasive use of violence throughout the twentieth century.

Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain's empire was the largest in human history. For many, it epitomized the nation's cultural superiority, but what legacy have we delivered to the world?

Spanning 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 British imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in Victorian calls for punishing indigenous peoples who resisted subjugation, and how over time this treatment became increasingly systematised. And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, Britain retreated from its 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 the political divide regarding the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting both the empire and British imperial identity, Elkins explodes long-held myths and sheds a disturbing new light on empire's role in shaping the world today.