Nigel Biggar’s whitewashing of empire
The historian is right that Britain’s colonial legacy is morally complex. So why is his defence of it so simplistic?
ByDiscover all the New Statesman’s latest articles and reviews of history books. Here you can find expert opinion on the best reads for 2022.
The historian is right that Britain’s colonial legacy is morally complex. So why is his defence of it so simplistic?
ByA new history of the 17th century reminds us how bitter ideological conflicts have shaped our democracy.
ByThey were once considered far more lascivious than men – so how did women become the meeker sex?
ByAnatoly Kuznetsov’s classic account of the 1941 massacre of Ukrainians is republished as Kyiv suffers the ravages of war again.
ByAlso featuring Tomorrow Perhaps the Future by Sarah Watling and Away From Beloved Lover by Dee Peyok.
ByTania Branigan’s Red Memory shows how Xi Jinping’s China is erasing the violence and tyranny of Mao’s purges from history.
ByJonathan Sperber’s The Age of Interconnection surveys the second half of the 20th century but fails to explain the ideas…
ByThe clash between Caesar and Cato offers lessons for today, but also reveals the gulf between modern and classical thought.
ByNew Statesman writers and guests choose their favourite reading of the year.
ByFrom Kosovo to Ukraine, Lawrence Freedman’s book Command explores the catastrophes that occur when state and military strategy collide.
ByA new history of The Wealth of Nations shows how the Scottish thinker’s legacy became an economic battleground.
ByA new history of the department shows that, as Liz Truss discovered to her cost, its “abacus economics” has never…
ByKeith Fisher’s A Pipeline Runs Through It charts how oil revolutionised transport and war, and continues to shape today’s geopolitics.
ByHow China’s uneven ascent has been driven by debt and the Communist Party’s obsessive pursuit of social stability.
ByFifty years ago the UK forcibly removed the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands. Will they ever be allowed to return?
ByA former diplomat’s new book reveals that, for 25 years, UK foreign policy has left mainly harm and disorder in…
ByThe New Statesman’s selection of essential recent releases.
BySarah Churchwell’s book is a 458-page indictment of the Civil War-era romance. Frankly, should we give a damn?
ByIn Femina, Janina Ramirez tells the stories of women previously written out of history books.
ByThe destruction of country houses in the Irish revolution can be seen as the last stage of a long Land…
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