Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire

The Wm. Roger Louis Lecture

Sprawling across a quarter of the world’s landmass and claiming nearly seven hundred million subjects, Britain’s twentieth-century empire was the largest in history. For many Britons, it was a testament to their nation’s cultural superiority, but what legacy did the island nation’s empire deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Legacy of Violence places coercion at the center of its narratives and challenges recent political defenses of British exceptionalism, puncturing the myths of paternalism and progress, and demonstrating liberalism’s perfidiousness across the empire and at home.

Caroline Elkins is a Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Law School, and the founding director of Harvard’s Center for African Studies. She earned her AB, summa cum laude, from Princeton University and her MA and PhD from Harvard. Among her many awards, Elkins won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.