Empireworld

Author: Sathnam Sanghera

Format: Paperback

How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe

The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

In his ground-breaking new book, Sathnam Sanghera traces the legacies of British empire around the world.

'A wonderful book' — Rory Stewart
'Nuanced and deeply researched' — Financial Times
'Not just a welcome corrective but a book for our times' — Peter Frankopan

The British empire was built on slavery, but it also pioneered abolition.
It spread democracy, but it also seeded geopolitical instability.
It devastated nature but it also gave birth to modern notions of environmentalism.

In this urgent sequel to Empireland, award-winning author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera extends his examination of British imperial legacies beyond Britain to the wider world.

Travelling across outposts of the former empire from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond, Sanghera puts to bed the conventional balance-sheet view of imperial history where the good is merely weighed up against the bad. In Empireworld, Sanghera instead seeks out nuance to reveal how contradictory forces of the British empire have shaped our world and what they mean for our place within it today.

'An absolute masterpiece' James O' — Brien

'Puts Sanghera in the firmament of great imperial historians' — Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, i

'Profoundly moving' — Elizabeth Day

About the Author

Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi immigrant parents in Wolverhampton in 1976. He entered the education system unable to speak English but went on to graduate from Christ's College, Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature. He has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards twice, for his memoir The Boy With The Topknot and his novel Marriage Material. Empireland has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, was named a Book of the Year at the National Book Awards of 2022, and inspired both the Channel 4 series Empire State of Mind and Sanghera's children's book about the British empire Stolen History. He lives in London.

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