Volume 54, Number 5 · March 29, 2007
Disaster: From Suez to Iraq
By Brian Urquhart
Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization
by Wm. Roger Louis
I.B. Tauris, 1,065 pp., $35.00
The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005
by David M. Malone
Oxford University Press, 398 pp., $45.00
Only seventy years ago, Great Britain ruled over more than one quarter of the land surface of the planet. It policed, as far as anyone did, the oceans and seas, and it was the most important force in world finance, trade, and economy. All this was a source of national pride and a sense of mission that, for most people, conveniently evaded moral questions about the right of one race or nation to dominate another. Lord Curzon, the ultimate British proconsul, wrote that the British Empire was the greatest instrument for good that the world had ever seen.
Review, 4426 words
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