A History of Britain: Fate of Empire 1776-2001 v. 3: The Fate of Empire 1776-2000

London: Bodley Head, 2009. Soft cover. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Feels unread but has some minor foxing to the first page. While Britain was losing an empire, it was finding itself... The compelling opening words to The Fate of the Empire, set the tone and agenda for the final stage of Simon Schama s epic voyage around Britain, her people and her past. Spanning two centuries, crossing the breadth of the empire and covering a vast expanse of topics from the birth of feminism to the fate of freedom he explores the forces that shaped British culture and character from 1776 to 2000. he story opens on the eve of a bloody revolution, but not a British one. The French Revolution never quite crossed the Channel, though its spirit of fiery defiance and Romantic idealism did, sparking off a round of radical revolts and reforms that gathered momentum over the coming century from the Irish Rebellion to the Chartist Petition. The great question of the Victorian century was how the world s first industrial society could come through its growing pains without falling apart in social and political conflict. Would the machine age destroy or strengthen the institutions that held Britain together, from the family to the farm? And if the British Empire helped to make Britain stable and rich, did it live up to it