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Questions for Thought and Discussion

• Can you think of examples of recent media coverage of the British Empire and its legacies?
• What was the British Empire?
• Where was the British Empire?
• What were the main defining features of the British Empire (beyond its territorial extent)?
• Is there any point debating whether the British Empire was ‘good’ or bad’?
• What were the major causes of British imperial expansion?
• How did the character of the British Empire change across the centuries?
• What role did migration play in the history of the British Empire?
• Who benefitted from the British Empire?
• How was the British Empire run?
• In what ways did empire affect Britain and the British people?
• What were the main causes of the British Empire’s demise?
• How have people written about the British Empire?
• What are the major legacies of the British Empire?
• How does one explain widely differing interpretations of the role of the British Empire?
• What is imperialism? Does it still exist?
• What is Britain’s role in the world today?
• Is America an imperial power?

Other books by Ashley Jackson

• Ashley Jackson and David Tomkins Illustrating Empire: A Visual History of British Imperialism, (The Bodleian Library, 2011)
• Ashley Jackson Buildings of Empire (forthcoming – Oxford University Press, 2013)

Further Reading

• John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
• Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (Vintage, 2008)
• Jan Morris, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (Faber and Faber, 2003)
• William Roger Louis (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 1998)