''The Oxford History of the British Empire'' is a five-volume history of the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

published by the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

in 1998 and 1999. According to the publisher, the series "deals with the interaction of British and non-western societies from the

Elizabethan era The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

to the late twentieth century, aiming to provide a balanced treatment of the ruled as well as the rulers, and to take into account the significance of the Empire for the peoples of the British Isles". The editor-in-chief for the main series was

Wm. Roger Louis William Roger Louis Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (born May 8, 1936), commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the ...

. In addition to the principal five volumes, the ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' also includes a spin-off "Companion Series" which "pursue themes that could not be covered adequately in the main series". 16 volumes have been published in the series since 2004.

Volumes

The Main Series

The ''Oxford History of the British Empire'' comprises five

edited volume An edited volume or edited collection is a collection of scholarly or scientific chapters written by different authors. The chapters in an edited volume are original works (not republished works). Alternative terms for edited volume are ''contribut ...

s, tracing the

history of the British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

in a chronological manner: *Volume I: ''The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century''. 1998. Editor:

Nicholas Canny Nicholas Patrick Canny (born 1944) is an Irish historian and academic specializing in early modern Irish history. He has been a lecturer in Irish history at the University of Galway since 1972 and professor there from 1979 to 2011. He is Emeritu ...

. *Volume II: ''The Eighteenth Century''. 1998. Editor: P.J. Marshall. *Volume III: ''The Nineteenth Century''. 1999. Editor: Andrew Porter. *Volume IV: ''The Twentieth Century''. 1999. Editors:

Judith M. Brown Judith Margaret Brown (born 9 July 1944) is a British historian, academic and Anglican priest, who specialises in the study of modern South Asia. From 1990 to 2011, she was the Beit Professor of Commonwealth History and a Fellow of Balliol Col ...

and Wm. Roger Louis. *Volume V: ''Historiography''. 1999. Editor:

Robin W. Winks Robin W. Winks (December 5, 1930 in Indiana – April 7, 2003 in New Haven, Connecticut) was an American academic, historian, diplomat, writer on the subject of fiction, especially detective novels, and advocate for the National Parks. After j ...

The "Companion Series"

Besides the main series, the ''Oxford History of the British Empire (Companion Series)'' addresses a range of specific thematic or regional issues which fell outside the scope of the general volumes. They are mixed between monographs and edited volumes. Published from 2004, the series includes: *''Ireland and the British Empire''. 2004. Editor:

Kevin Kenny Kevin Kenny (born 3 April 1961) is an English former professional darts player who played for England and Merseyside. Career Kenny received 12 caps for England, winning 11 times, and 116 caps for Merseyside, winning 92. He was also a two tim ...

. *''Black Experience and the Empire''. 2004. Editors:

Philip D. Morgan Philip D. Morgan (born 1949) is a British historian. He has specialized in Early Modern colonial British America and slavery in the Americas. In 1999, he won both the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for his book ''Slave Counterpoin ...

and Sean Hawkins. *''Gender and Empire''. 2004. Editor:

Philippa Levine Philippa Judith Amanda Levine, FRAI, FRHistS, is a historian of the British Empire, gender, race, science and technology. She has spent most of her career in the United States and has been Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humaniti ...

. *''Missions and Empire''. 2005. Editor: Norman Etherington. *''Environment and Empire''. 2007. Authors: William Beinart and

Lotte Hughes Lotte may refer to: Businesses * Lotte Corporation Lotte Corporation (or Lotte Group) is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation, and the fifth-largest chaebol in South Korea. Lotte began its history on June 28, 1948, by ...

. *''Australia's Empire''. 2008. Editors: Deryck Schreuder and Stuart Ward. *''Canada and the British Empire''. 2010. Editor: Phillip Buckner. *''Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas''. 2010. Editor:

Robert Bickers Robert A. Bickers (born 1964) is a British historian of modern China and colonialism. He is currently a professor of history at the University of Bristol. Bickers is the author of six books and editor or co-editor of three more. Biography Born ...

. *''Migration and Empire''. 2010. Authors:

Marjory Harper Marjory is a female given name, a variant spelling of Marjorie or Margery. It is sometimes shortened to Marj. Notable people with the name include: *Marjory Allen, Lady Allen of Hurtwood (1897–1976) * Marjery Bryce (1891–1973), British suff ...

and

Stephen Constantine Stephen Constantine (born 16 October 1962) is an English professional football coach and former player who is head coach of Indian Super League club East Bengal. Early and personal life Constantine was born on 16 October 1962 in London. He is ...

. *''Scotland and the British Empire''. 2011. Editors:

John M. MacKenzie John MacDonald MacKenzie (born 2 October 1943) is a British historian of imperialism who pioneered the study of popular and cultural imperialism, as well as aspects of environmental history. He has also written about Scottish migration and t ...

and

T. M. Devine Sir Thomas Martin Devine (born 30 July 1945) is a Scottish national identity, Scottish academic and author, who specializes in the history of Scotland. He is known for his overviews of modern Scottish history. He is an advocate of the Nouve ...

. *''Britain's Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century''. 2011. Editor: Andrew Thompson. *''India and the British Empire''. 2012. Editors: Douglas M. Peers and

Nandini Gooptu Nandini is a female given name. It is derived from the Sanskrit verbal root ''nand'', which means "to rejoice, delight". Literally, ''nandinī'' means a woman who brings joy. The name also specifically refers to a daughter, as a daughter brings ...

. *''British North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries''. 2013. Editor:

Stephen Foster Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826January 13, 1864), known also as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour music, parlour and Minstrel show, minstrel music during the Romantic music, Romantic ...

*''Winding up the British Empire in the Pacific Islands''. 2014. Author:

W. David McIntyre William David McIntyre (4 September 1932 – 11 September 2022) was a British-born New Zealand historian, known for his expertise on the military and constitutional histories of the Commonwealth of Nations and British Empire. Early life and f ...

. *''Architecture and Urbanism in the British Empire''. 2016. Editor: G. A. Bremner. *''Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail''. 2021. Editors:

Douglas Hamilton General Douglas Hamilton (8 April 1818 – 20 January 1892) was a British Indian Army officer, gazetted to the 21st Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry from 1837 to 1871. He was a well known surveyor of the early British hill stations in So ...

and John McAleer.

Reviews

Max Beloff Max Beloff, Baron Beloff, (2 July 1913 – 22 March 1999) was a British historian and Conservative peer. From 1974 to 1979 he was principal of the University College of Buckingham, now the University of Buckingham. Early life Beloff was born ...

, reviewing the first two volumes in ''

History Today ''History Today'' is an illustrated history magazine. Published monthly in London since January 1951, it presents serious and authoritative history to as wide a public as possible. The magazine covers all periods and geographical regions and pub ...

'', praised them for their readability and was pleased that his worry that they would be too anti-imperialist had not been realised.

Saul Dubow Saul H. Dubow, (born 28 October 1959) is a South African historian and academic, specialising in the history of South Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since 2016, he has been the Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the U ...

H-Net __NOTOC__ H-Net ("Humanities & Social Sciences Online") is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It is best known for hosting electronic mailing lists organized by academic disciplines; according to the o ...

noted the uneven quality of the chapters in volume III and also the difficulty of such an endeavour given the state of

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

of the British Empire and the impossibility of maintaining a triumphalist tone in the modern era. Dubow also felt that some of the authors had tended "to 'play safe', awed perhaps by the monumental nature of the enterprise". Madhavi Kale of

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

, writing in ''

Social History Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

'', also felt that the history took a traditional approach to the historiography of the empire and placed the English, and to a lesser extent the Scottish, Irish and Welsh at the centre of the account, rather than the subject peoples of the empire. Kale summed up her review of volumes III–V of the history by saying it represented "a disturbingly revisionist project that seeks to neutralize ... the massive political and military brutality and repression" of the empire.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford History of the British Empire 1998 non-fiction books 1999 non-fiction books Series of history books Historiography of the British Empire Oxford University Press books

Volumes

The Main Series

The "Companion Series"

Reviews

See also

References