Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but flawed.
Review: This was the first history of the British Empire I have read and I felt that I learned quite a bit. I was certainly never bored while reading it. But as the narrative reached the 20th century, and I became more knowledgeable about the topics the author was describing, I began to find that I disagreed with many of his conclusions, or that his arguments were shallow. In particular I took issue with some of his opinions of World War I. Ferguson makes the statement that it was surprising that it took so long for the British to beat the Germans, and that with the resources of the Empire they should have done it far sooner. In fact, Paris was nearly captured in 1914 and this would have had a far different outcome that what occurred in 1940. The Allied lines almost cracked again in 1917 when the Germans were able to bring troops from the Eastern Front. Ultimately the Germans were defeated by a combination of several factors. The effects of blockade certainly had an impact. The arrival of large numbers of fresh troops from the U.S. also was very demoralizing. But Ferguson doesn't seem to believe that the U.S. contribution was very important. I think that one could make an argument that it wasn't the Empire that helped Britain win in WWI, rather than an active Eastern Front which kept Germany (which I believe had a larger army than France and England combined) from deploying an overwhelming number of troops from the Western Front until it was too late.
Ferguson also seems to take offense at FDR's attitude towards Churchill. There have been many books lately about FDR and Churchill and their relationship so there is no need to rehash it here. And while it is true that FDR put far too much faith in Stalin's promises, Ferguson seems to feel that FDR put too much faith in the Chinese. In fact, Ferguson seems to forget/ignore that the U.S. emphasized the European theatre over the Pacific theatre at Churchill's insistence, which was a politically unpopular move for FDR since the Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor. FDR had to romance the Chinese to keep them in the war to tie up the Japanese army based in Manchuria. This was an army of nearly one million men and could have been redeployed into the Pacific or used in an attack of the Soviet Union.
Finally, Ferguson's conclusion draws far too many flawed parallels between incidents in the 19th century that brought about British military action and expansion of Empire and recent incidents involving the U.S. and Al-Qaeda. Ferguson seems to imply that it might be beneficial for the U.S. to build an empire in those Middle Eastern regions which are the breeding ground of religious ferver. I believe that recent events in Iraq (which occured after publication) should give pause to anyone promoting that argument.
Rating: 
Summary: Empire...Informative yet Not Always Accurate!
Review: I found the book overrall to be well written and informative; however, my opinion of the author changed drastically with the cruel smear against T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia). Ferguson describes Lawrence as, "..a masochistic homosexual". Where did he get his information? According to his biographer Jeremy Wilson, no one who knew Lawrence well believed him to be homosexual. No friends or contemporaries supported the accusation; and the two people who made the accusation were only slight aquaintances who had "strong personal reasons to wish to discredit him".
I was appalled at the caption next to the photo of T.E. Lawrence which said, "Queer hero: T.E.Lawrence, 1917". Mr. Ferguson truly lowered himself in my estimation by printing such a personal smear against one of the greatest and most influential men the British Empire has ever produced. Shame on Mr.Ferguson! Lawrence is one of the very few about whom he made sexuality an issue. Why does the issue of sexuality need to be
brought up at all? What relevance does it have to the subject of the British world order?
Rating: 
Summary: Empire: the British Version
Review: About a decade ago Niall Ferguson wrote an economic history of early 20th century Hamburg. This got him the respect of his fellow historians, but not lots of money. In 1998 he published "The Pity of War" which, while less thoroughly researched, earned him considerable public notice. Ferguson became one of the most prominent historians in Britain, and he has now published "Empire". This book purports to show that the British Empire was an ultimately beneficial endeavour that benefited the world by showering it with the benefits of globalization and free trade in labor and capital. As such, it is a model the United States should consider as it faces the threat of Al-Qaidya.Empire is not a vulgar apology for imperialism. Indeed, it is not much of an apology for anything, since argument doesn't play that much of a part in it. This is a book for a television series, and, ultimately, is not much more than a coffee table book. [It seems] More care has been taken to choose the illustrations than provide a coherent narrative. What we have basically is a narrative that starts with Sir Francis Drake and then hits the high points up until the Suez crisis. It is very much a "great man" history. We learn a lot about Dr. Livingstone and his missionary efforts. We learn little about the people he converted, or for that matter the vast majority he didn't convert. We are told that there were racists, but we learn little about racism or nationalist ideologies. Nor does Ferguson mention the many colonial subjects who immigrated to Britain, and their effect on the country. Come to think of it, various parts of the empire flit in and out of the narrative for half-centuries at a time, whether it is the Caribbean, South Africa, Canada or Burma. (And did Ferguson ever actually mention Nigeria, a country whose 130 million people is that of Britain's?) With its focus on battles and spectacles, this might make an interesting television series, but it adds nothing to our knowledge of the empire. For a historian known for his enthusiasm for neoclassical economics, Ferguson does not really draw up a balance sheet for empire. To be fair, it's not that he ignores the dark side. Weren't the Pequots and Tasmanians massacred? Pretty much, he says. Weren't the Caribbean colonies founded on the vicious exploitation of hundreds of thousands of slaves? You can't deny that. What about the Irish Potato famine and the Boer concentration camps? Pretty bad. Once emancipated, weren't the Caribbean slaves denied political liberty and forced into new unjust economic arrangements? Yeah, that's not pretty. What about the Indian famines in the late 19th century that killed anywhere from 12 to 30 million people? Yeah, that wasn't nice. What about Imperialist opposition to Home Rule for Ireland? Ok, that was wrong. Didn't Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, systematically starve the native population of Mafeking so that the white settlers could live out the Boer siege in comfort? Now that you mention it, that's kind of embarrassing. There are some interesting details, such as the 6,000 servants for the Viceroy's Palace in India, of whom 50 were employed solely to shew birds away. We aren't told how many people were killed when the British suppressed the Sepoy rebellion in 1857, but Ferguson tells us that they hanged 150 people from one very large tree in Cawnpore alone. We listen to Anthony Trollope say with pseudo-stoic Tory humbug of the Australian aborigines that "it was their fate to be abolished." We learn Hitler's view that if he ran the British Empire he would have Gandhi summarily shot. Ferguson actually suggests that much of the notorious "Thugee" murders were not caused by the infamous Kali cult but by demobilized soldiers engaging in humdrum highway robbery. Ferguson tries to make an argument that British rule was good for India. Irrigation boomed, there were new coal and jute industries. But he also admits that India basically stagnated for two centuries, at a time when British living standards more than quadrupled. The truth is even worse. In 1750 India had a quarter of the world's GDP. By 1900 it had only 1.7%. And its industrial production collapsed. Rather feebly, Ferguson points out that independence didn't help China, although elsewhere he notes British aggression and interference in that country. (The most outrageous being the Opium wars, in which a Liberal Britain forced China to import narcotics.) More important he ignores the counter-example of Japan, which is clearly better off for avoiding imperialist rule altogether. He manages to ignore a whole host of historians of India, such as Parthasarathi, Guha, Sarkar and Hardiman, while the late Christopher Thorne is also missing from his shallow bibliography. The most Ferguson can say is to suggest that "things might conceivably have been worse" under native rule. The same problems occur in his conclusion when he suggests that immigration would have been less without a British empire, though in the 19th century immigrants overwhelmingly went to the United States. We are told that capital exports and free trade are unalloyed benefits, though whether Latin America has ever benefited from Britain and the United States' financial arrangements is very much open to question. He writes that Britain sacrificed their empire to defeat Hitler and asks rhetorically "Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?" Leaving aside the fact that Churchill did not know he was making this sacrifice in 1940, I can't help but notice that the Soviet Union sacrificed even more. Where the British lots hundreds of thousands, they lost tens of millions. What atonement will Ferguson give them? So if the British received absolution for their conquests, aggressions, famines and genocides they got it at an excellent bargain. And it is a bargain that, like so much in the history of the "good" empire, the British paid with other people's lives. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title
Rating:
Summary: Lessons indeed!
Review: As an ex-British colonial subject (and a citizen of another British ex-colony), living next to the United States, I find Ferguson's "lessons" personally and painfully interesting. On the one hand, he argues that America is already an empire conducting an "imperial" policy. (It's only an empire "in denial.") On the other hand, he thinks America is failing to behave properly like an empire. For instance, America is irritatingly reluctant to put lots of troops in the Middle East and to commit them there for a long time, by which he means not months but decades - centuries if necessary (like the Romans in Egypt). President Bush's repeated claim not to stay in Iraq "one day longer than necessary" is simply maddening! Well, IF America is an empire - and in a sense it is - it ceased to expand when the frontier reached its continental limits - after Alaska and Hawaii were added to its territory. American colonies, like the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Virgins and some islands in the Pacific (like Midway) are evidence of imperialism, to be sure. But these are small potatoes (some already given up) compared the British Empire: India, Pakistan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, most of the Middle East (including Iraq, Egypt, Mecca and Medina, and control of the desert regions) - and a swath of African colonies running straight down from Sudan to South Africa - plus strategic locales like Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bermuda, and numerous Pacifc islands. The Middle East was particularly important not because of oil - not yet discovered - but because of Egypt's importance to the British Empire due to the Suez Canal, which was Britain's lifeline to India and the Far East. (All these "glorious" exploits are superbly recounted in this book.) Is America's foreign policy today "imperial" already? But, wait, isn't President Bush willing to take the fight against terrorists everywhere in the globe, and if that's not "imperial," what is? So Ferguson gleefully argues. But the fight against terrorism is a form of self-defense, just as containment of communism used to be. If that's "imperial," so be it. I'm all for it (with one caveat below). By stretching his definitions of "empire" and "imperial" so much, Ferguson may be putting too much water into his wine. Yet America's foreign policy is not imperial enough to his taste. (It sounds so confusing because it is. Ferguson doesn't think he's being self-contradictory or schizoid: can America be an "empire" with an "imperial" policy without acting the way he thinks America is NOT acting? But America is NOT acting the way he thinks America should be - and yet he insists America IS an "empire"?) But to be "imperial" in the British (or for that matter, Roman or Mongol) sense required, and requires, much more than self-defense, as readers can find out in this book. To acquire Hong Kong they forced the Chinese to become addicted to opium. To get India they had to put down a Mutiny with brutal violence. To get Africa they had to mow down natives by the millions with Maxim guns. And so on. If that's "imperial," then I doubt most Americans have this in mind (not because they think all this is not "imperial" - it is - but because they believe all this is IMMORAL, and rightly so.) When I see mass demonstrations against the US in the Middle East - for whatever reasons - as well as the tearful partings and joyful family reunions of American servicemen and women on CNN - broadcast live frequently enough - I'm pretty sure that Ferguson's prayer for a large-scale, decades-long occupation of Iraq will never be answered. And the rest of the Middle East? To me, fighting terrorism doesn't necessarily mean HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of American boys and girls living PERMANENTLY under the hot desert sun in a predominantly HOSTILE Muslim world. But for Ferguson, it does, at the very least. (Two or three million troops stationed all over the oil-rich Arab lands and Iran for the next six to eight decades should please Ferguson's fantasy. In the name of fighting terrorism!) My answer is to this is negative, not because it is hard work, but because it is foolish and self-defeating. Let's not give the likes of Bin Laden another excuse. If my American friends start behaving like the murderous bully that the British were when building their Empire, I'd be the first to declare myself wrong and Ferguson right. But I doubt that day will come. Read this book by all means. Skip the last chapter. Forget about his "lessons".......they won't do you, or your country, any good. (As for Ferguson's claim that British Empire brought much of the world democracy, free market and the rule of law, I have some doubts. India had little interest in free market capitalism after decolonization; instead it plunged itself into a quasi-socialist system. Africans had neither democracy nor free market nor the rule of law, before or after the British left. To this day they still don't, many would argue. Hong Kong - my hometown - never had the taste of democracy under the British. It does now - but only a taste. As for free market, Hong Kong did get it (perhaps too much of it). And the rule of law? Hong Kong was governed well under British rule of law. But there were two rules of law - one for the Chinese, another for the British expatriates. On the whole, Ferguson's claim is dubious because the record is mixed. Moreover, it can never be proved that former British colonies would have got none of these things had the British not been there in the first place. I'd rather live in South Korea today than any part of former British Africa - or India for that matter - and South Korea is no ex-colony of anyone, except for the Japanese........a long time ago.)
Rating: 
Summary: A different look at empire
Review: First, prospective buyers should understand that this is NOT a history of the British Empire, but rather reflections on the empire, and its implications for the modern world, particularly the United States. It is more like a graduate school History seminar in book form, largely set out in fascinating and apt anecdotes, and generously, but never obtrusively, illustrated with a wonderful selection of maps, photos and paintings. Thus, it presumes a fair amount of knowledge of world, and especially British, history. And although I consider myself quite knowledgeable in these matters, I was surprised and delighted with facts and stories I had never come across before, or, perhaps better stated, had never viewed from Ferguson's particular angle. Don't for a minute believe the book is merely the excuse for the TV series: it stands on its own as a refreshing and perceptive treatment of an age that is gone, but on the grand wheel of history, may come again. Ferguson rolls out a parade of small stories and forces the reader, in a most gentle and enjoyable way, to think big. If that single attribute doesn't denote a worthwhile history book, I don't know what does. You won't regret the read.
Rating: 
Summary: Let's play pretend.
Review: Forget about all those boring academic fields of study, you know, those archaic subjects like History, Mathematics, Economics; Physics . . . for Ferguson has come up with a brand new subject matter, Histortainment. What is that you ask? Well simply put, take a large portion of the child's game "let's pretend", add a sprinkle of historical events, mostly inaccurate and from second hand sources, mix thoroughly, and you've got Histortainment. And Histortainment is what we have in this book. Never mind the fact that Ferguson's evidence is vacuous, scanty, and unreliable; never mind that Ferguson distorts documents by means of selective citation and dismisses those he dislikes by claiming they did not count; never mind that his logic is faulty to the point of being delusional; never mind that Ferguson contradicts himself repeatedly and draws conclusions at variance with his own evidence - examples are far too numerous to cite here. What is truly amazing is that Ferguson doesn't seem to grasp any of those most basic tenets of events and of human nature. Tenets like events, and their consequences, may depend on luck . . . chance . . . fate; tenets like man can be, and often is, irrational, greedy, incompetent, uninformed in his zealotry, and void of volition. I guess that's why we must play the game "let's pretend". There is nothing wrong with reinterpreting history, nor in asking "what if?" But what we have here is a gross distortion of the obvious, calling what is white, black, and what is black, white. So, if you want to be amused and histortained, read Ferguson.
Rating:
Summary: Empirically Rigorous
Review: I almost didn't purchase this book, because some professional reviewers denigrated it as an "apology" for the British Empire. I'm glad I didn't listen to those reviewers and, after reading the book, I'm puzzled that anyone could come to that conclusion. Professor Ferguson spends a good portion of the book detailing many of the negative aspects of the Empire- the condescending and racist attitudes, frequently, that were displayed by the British towards subject peoples; the excessive use of force (literally, overkill) in places such as Omdurman (where the British, and their Egyptian and Sudanese auxilliaries, used Maxim machine guns to mow down their Islamic fundamentalist opponents, who were generally armed with rifles and swords. The fundamentalist forces had about 35,000 men killed, while the British lost about 400.) and Amritsar, India (where, in 1919, the British forces broke up a peaceful demonstration by firing on unarmed civilians and killing 379 and injuring 1,500 of them). Professor Ferguson also does not sweep British behavior during the Boer War under the historical carpet. He discusses the concentration camps the British set up to detain the wives and children of Boer soldiers. Conditions, especially in the beginning, were horrendous and many of the women and children died from hunger and disease. (When Sir Nevile Henderson complained to Goering about the Nazi concentration camps, Goering leapt at the chance to take out a German encyclopaedia which, under the entry for concentration camp, said this: "First used by the British in the South African War"). This being said, Professor Ferguson doesn't fail to point out some of the positive accomplishments of the Empire- the introduction of free trade to areas that otherwise would have engaged in protectionism; improvement in the living standards in many of the colonial areas, due to the above and also due to British investment in underdeveloped areas; the creation of infrastructure and the introduction of democracy and Western legal principles, etc. The thing that disturbs me about some of the professional reviews of this book is the tendency to see things in black and white. Empire is bad, and that's all there is to say. Well, most things in life are not black and white. Professor Ferguson spends the majority of the book outlining the bad aspects of the Empire, and he uses maybe 25% of the book to discuss the good things. This book is analytical, well-written (Professor Ferguson has an easy, breezy, informal style and, which is always a bonus in a book written by an academic, a refreshing sense of humor), and thought-provoking. There are also many wonderful color and black-and-white photographs which complement the text nicely. The only reason I didn't give the book 5 stars is that the ending is a bit weak. The book's subtitle is "The Rise And Demise Of The British World Order And The Lessons For Global Power." The conclusion is supposed to provide the lessons, but doesn't. Professor Ferguson makes the mistake of trying to make the book "relevant" to today. He should have left well-enough alone and stuck to just talking about the Empire. He makes the obvious point that the United States is the only nation capable today of having a position of global power equivalent to the position Britain used to hold. Fair enough. But what should the U.S. do with this power? Aye, there's the rub! Professor Ferguson doesn't really know, so he tosses in some vague generalities. He questions whether "...the dissemination of Western 'civilization'...can safely be entrusted to Messrs Disney and McDonald." He goes on to say, "But it (America) is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security." Well, maybe we should ask some of the people in those "backward" places what THEY want. They probably would like the capital...I'm not so sure about wanting our people and our culture. This whole subject needs a book of its own (probably many books) for a proper discussion. My key point is that Professor Ferguson does himself a disservice by tossing off comments like this, which come across as afterthoughts...especially after the clockwork, smooth analysis which flows through the rest of the book. Still, overall, this is an excellent book for anyone who wants a well-balanced and comprehensive account of the rise and fall of the British Empire.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but flawed and opinionated view of the issues
Review: I enjoyed reading this book and read through it quicker than usual with the subjects he addresses. The author skips over the subjects just as quickly and adds little "meat" to his opinions. One thing that irked me was how he flitted back and forth between eras as if the events described had happened contemporaneously. He conveniently leaves out the motivations for British about-faces and leaves out the half-century or longer gaps of these changes in policy. One thing he does not address is how haughty and self-important the British believed themselves to be in the 19th century and how this hubris contributed to the negative relations between America and Britain as he describes in the chapter on the 20th century "Empire for sale". Nowhere does he mention the disdain British PMs (with the notable exception of Churchill) showed toward the USA (from the beginning - but particularly from 1890 onward) and how that contributed to the US attitude toward Britain which survives to this day. Nor does he seem to "get the point" on America's anti-imperialism and how the USA is fundamentally averse to it. He attributes the USA attitude solely to it's roots as rebellious English colonies and therefore anti-imperialist when the matter goes much deeper than that simple explanation in my opinion. Hence his statements regarding US policies in WWII such as: "This [the end of imperialism], then, was the spirit in which American war aims were formulated: they were in many ways more overtly hostile to the British Empire than anything Hitler had ever said." His claim that Britain sacrificed its empire for the benefit of the world against more "evil" empires is pretty specious reasoning. While it is true that Hitler repeatedly publicly proclaimed his respect for the British empire and a desire to keep it intact, anyone with any forethought at all at that time knew darned well that pan-germanism spelt the end of the British empire. And Hitler's words on matters such as these were known to be empty BS by this time - particularly given the outcome in Czechoslovakia. It was evident that sooner or later Germany and Britain were to be at war; and given Germany's edge in war productivity (and morale), the sooner the better for Britain. The author's introduction of ruthless Japanese atrocities in the "rape of Nanking" has been repeatedly debunked but he presents these falsities as facts to prove how evil the Japanese empire was. While the western powers have many examples to show the "evilness" of the axis powers he chose to use this Chinese propaganda as the main fact of how uncommonly evil the Japanese were. The author doesn't distinguish between the perception of the allied fighting troops on this matter and the reality that has been amply revealed in this particular case. While it's easy to believe that the macabre stories of the rape of Nanking would send shivers down one's spine when meeting an enemy as barbarous as these stories told, the fact is that the stories are fiction and for some reason have to be continually proven to be fiction. He presents it as fact and not a fear that might have been current to the soldiers in the pacific theater; thus furthuring his claim of the outrageous cruelty of Britain's competing empires. There are many examples of cruelty he could have used that are known to be true but he chose this contentious one as his keystone example because it is so obviously differenct from British cruelties. Unfortunately, it is mostly fiction. While my comments above have been mostly critical to the book, all in all, I would recommend this book to people interested in the subject. But its 372 pages is hardly comprehensive and should not be viewed as authoritative (or even typical) on the issues discussed. But it is an enjoyable read (even witty at times) for people like myself who have formed opinions on most of the subjects and gives some insight into what a hybrid English/American academic can feel on these subjects. Reading this book with an uncritical scrutiny of its opinions (which are just that - opinions of one man) would give a very misleading picture of the issues presented. But it is enjoyable in the manner of an afternoon discussion one might have with a fellow history buff.
Rating:
Summary: Good read, albeit with contradictions
Review: I enjoyed reading this book. The overview of the British Empire in a digestible volume of pages was very welcome for a non-professional historian like myself. That said, I think it deserves neither the "must read" nor the "appalling" labels some have given it. The depiction of the good and the bad of empire was treated reasonably fairly even if not in depth (350 pages to cover 400 years of empire--what do you expect?). The issues I had with it was the internal contradiction of one of it's main conclusions; that the empire's fall was a result of financial stress caused by fighting WW's 1 and 2. While I'm no historical scholar, Ferguson's own words suggest a more compelling arguement (and one we in the US have been able to relate to for the past 35 years). At one point Ferguson argues that the British were more successful than past would-be empires because they learned to thrive on opportunistic partnerships and credit. With this background, a pure economic floundering seems unrealistic. Even if the conditions existed as described, it doesn't seem to be an insurmountable hurdle to continued empire. A more palatable conclusion to the end of the empire might be a simple lack of will--ethical, moral, and political--to maintain the human burden of empire. Ferguson seems to finger the Boer War as concurrent rise of self-doubt in the "white man's burden" and warfare media coverage. What's left completely unsaid, is that the politicians did not appear to adapt their brutal pursuit of empire to the rising anti-imperialism among the increasingly better-educated masses on the home front. Had the economic burden of the WWs been "managed", would the British voting public have even permitted empire using 19th-century (and earlier) methods? Ferguson doesn't deal with this, but his own words imply the answer is 'no'. Did increasing press coverage of imperial tactics leave the politicians backing away from maintaining their empire using the methods they knew? This raises doubts on Ferguson's lessons for America. I'd argue that America's de facto empire has grown up with the media speculation, and has taken empire down a new road more successful for the world we live in today. Ferguson's suggestion is to be more prescriptive in empire building (revisiting 19th century tactics?). History will show whether GW Bush's militarily active imperial activities produce better results than his Presidential predecessors' economic ties that bind. Finally, what prompted me to write today, was an op-ed in the NYTimes... "Take the Rape of Nanjing in 1937, which was so brutal that there's no need to exaggerate it. One appalled witness in the thick of the killing, John Rabe, put the death toll at 50,000 to 60,000...Yet China proclaims, based on accounts that stand little scrutiny, that 300,000 or more were killed. Such hyperbole abuses history as much as the denial by Japanese rightists that there was any Rape of Nanjing at all." Ironically, Ferguson uses the 300,000 figure in his account of Japanese activity in Nanking. I don't know yet what this does to my opinion of some of Ferguson's other historical facts.
Rating:
Summary: Well-worth reading - a refreshing perspective
Review: I find it remarkably interesting that so many of the other reviews for this book discuss the US perspective with regard to this book. Although admittedly something that Niall Ferguson talks about when he's promoting his book on C-Span, there's precious little reference in the book to the US and their position as the world's preeminent power at the moment. Just a few pages at the end. It seems clear to me that my fellow Americans do have a bit of a chip on their collective shoulder with regard to this issue. However when it comes to the US sending its army around the world to reinforce its own national interests, that's a different matter. Hmmm. I would agree that this is not the heaviest, most detailed book on such an immense topic but all-in-all I think the author does a most creditable job. I liked the way he drops in the occasional promotion of his birthplace, Scotland, although not always entirely relevant to the overall story. Also the book is beautifully illustrated and I didn't realize until perusing the acknowledgements that there was a TV series made from the book (or maybe the other way round). Basically the book confirmed my opinion, that like it or not, the British Empire had many very positive aspects to it rather than pure negatives (which seems the fashionable (hypocritical) opinion these days). And although some people like to think that Great Britain was rejected in rebellions throughout the world in a blaze of civil rights uprisings, the truth is that envy paid a much greater part. That is certainly something the US needs to be aware of for the future.
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