Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [531]-550) and index.

Challenge to imperial power : native Americans, Caribbean slaves, Indian princes and Irish peasants, 1755-72 -- White settler revolt in America, and fresh resistance in Canada, India and the Caribbean, 1770-89 -- Loss of America creates a need for new prisons abroad and a place to settle black 'empire loyalists'. 1786-1802 -- Britain expands its counter-revolutionary empire during the war against revolutionary France, 1793-1802 -- Resistance to imperial expansion during the wars against Napoleon, 1803-15 -- Slave revolts, white settlement, indigenous extermination, and the advance into Burma and Assam, 1816-30 -- An end to colonial slavery and resistance to fresh settlement, 1830-38 -- Imperial humiliation and further expansion, 1839-47 -- Prelude to mutiny, 1848-53 -- Gathering storm, 1854-58.

This revelatory new history punctures the widely held belief that the British Empire was an imaginative and civilizing enterprise. Instead, Britain?s Empire reveals a history of systemic repression and almost perpetual violence, showing how British rule was imposed as a military operation and maintained as a military dictatorship.