ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces readers to the field of British imperial history, and to some of the key questions historians currently ask about the British Empire. It presents a brief sketch of the British Empire between 1820 and 1914. The most significant new aspect of the British Empire after 1870 was the rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements. After World War Two, anti-colonial nationalist movements, along with the weakened state of Britain, led to the demise of the British Empire. In their use of nationalist rhetoric they reworked European nationalist ideology, which had helped to create the nations of Italy and Germany in the 1860s and 1870s, in various local contexts. Postcolonial theory emerged out of literature departments and literary criticism; its most important scholar is Edward Said, author of Orientalism. Public intellectual and political conservative Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, has coined the term "Anglobalization".
