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  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529919165
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

Empire Without End

A New History of Britain and the Caribbean

  • Imaobong Umoren




A powerful and important reckoning with Britain's imperial legacy and contemporary systemic racism

From the 1500s to the mid-twentieth century, the events that took place in the Caribbean – from conquest, colonisation and capitalism to racial slavery, revolution and migration – and the people who forged them played a seminal role in creating modern Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean. By the 1960s, Western global empires had begun to crumble. Yet the British Empire in the Caribbean did not end. Instead, colonialism was replaced with a new type of power whose impact can still be felt: neo-colonialism.

Empire Without End offers a new interpretation of the British Empire, its enduring entanglement with the Anglophone Caribbean and the longevity of systemic racism. Taking a longer historical perspective starting in the period of European contact with the Caribbean and ending today, Imaobong Umoren looks at the impact and legacies of racial slavery to explore how later linked histories relating to capitalism, class, labour, war, political economy, poverty, gender and culture are crucial to telling the full story. In doing so, she sets out a compelling strategy to define our roles and responsibilities in challenging the legacy of colonialism and hierarchy – a legacy that continues to blight our society and our politics.

  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529919165
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:

Praise for Empire Without End

A very powerful account of the entanglements between Britain and the Caribbean, from the moment that planters first appreciated the profits they could make from sugar and slavery to Black Lives Matter and the backlash against it

Alan Lester

A very powerful account of the entanglements between Britain and the Caribbean, from the moment that planters first appreciated the profits they could make from sugar and slavery to Black Lives Matter and the backlash against it

Alan Lester

Gracefully and insightfully, Empire Without End demonstrates the profound interconnectedness of the contemporary world: the ways in which Britain was made, and the Caribbean unmade, and how politics and culture were profoundly shaped in very different societies. Anyone seeking to understand the upsurge of racial imperialism in our own time cannot afford to miss it

Pankaj Mishra

Gracefully and insightfully, Empire Without End demonstrates the profound interconnectedness of the contemporary world: the ways in which Britain was made, and the Caribbean unmade, and how politics and culture were profoundly shaped in very different societies. Anyone seeking to understand the upsurge of racial imperialism in our own time cannot afford to miss it

Pankaj Mishra

This book carefully places today’s racial injustice where it belongs – in the context of a richly told, unending history of Empire from which we cannot turn away

Afua Hirsch

This book carefully places today’s racial injustice where it belongs – in the context of a richly told, unending history of Empire from which we cannot turn away

Afua Hirsch

Rewardingly readable . . . Empire Without End is a valuable and accessible compendium with Umoren skilfully distilling complicated histories . . . With forensic analysis, Umoren skewers British mendacity perfected over centuries

Colin Grant, Observer

Rewardingly readable . . . Empire Without End is a valuable and accessible compendium with Umoren skilfully distilling complicated histories . . . With forensic analysis, Umoren skewers British mendacity perfected over centuries

Colin Grant, Observer
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