CAROLINE ELKINS is professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard University and the founding director of Harvard's Center for African Studies. Her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She is a contributor to The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. She has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including NPR's All Things Considered and BBC's The World. She lives in Watertown and Marion, Massachusetts.
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize
"Sweeping and detailed . . . With its enormous breadth and
ambition, [Legacy of Violence] amounts to something
approaching a one-volume history of imperial Britain's use of
force, torture, and deceit around the world. . . . Assembling so
many examples spread widely across space and time allows Elkins to
build an impressively damning account of the British
Empire."-Howard W. French, The Nation
"A scathing indictment . . . [A] tour de force of historical
excavation . . . Offering numerous correctives to Whitewashed
history, the author mounts potent attacks against the egregious
actions of vaunted figures. . . . [Legacy of Violence is]
top-shelf history offering tremendous acknowledgement of past
systemic abuses."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[Elkins'] detailed description of British policy and actions in
Ireland, India, Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Nyasaland, Jamaica, and
Palestine makes for unsettling, yet necessary reading. . . .
Thoroughly researched and presented in scrupulous detail, this tale
of 'legalized violence,' founded on a racism not even thinly
disguised, is a must-read for serious students of
history."-David Keymer, Library Journal (starred
review)
"[Elkins] returns to a much larger canvas in her
provocative new book . . . A colorful account."-Geoffrey
Wheatcroft, The New York Times Book Review
"Deeply researched . . . Legacy of Violence does not
stint on detail. . . . Yet Elkins wears her considerable learning
lightly, and is wise enough to allow her considerable anger to
smoulder, rather than burn from the pages, making for a powerful,
compelling read. . . . The book opens up ground for a wider debate
on the factors that shaped the three centuries of British global
empire."-Rana Mitter, Financial Times
"Shocking, meticulous detail . . . Persuasive . . .
Legacy of Violence is a formidable piece of research that
sets itself the ambition of identifying the character of British
power over the course of two centuries and four continents. . . .
In many ways, of course, this long history could not be more
timely. Elkins offers an open and shut case for those who believe
that Rhodes must fall. Her book should, you hope, also find its way
into the hands of at least some of that 60% of [the United Kingdom]
who, when polled in 2014, thought the British empire was, in
general, 'something to be proud of.'"-Tim Adams, The
Guardian
"Legacy of Violence . . . brings detailed context to
individual stories. . . . Visiting archives in a dozen countries
over four continents, examining hundreds of oral histories, and
drawing on the work of social historians and political theorists,
Elkins traces the [British] Empire's arc across centuries and
theatres of crisis."-Sunil Khilnani, The New Yorker
"In this sweeping, ambitious chronicle, [Elkins] extends her
commanding investigative and interpretive powers around the globe
to include India, South Africa and Palestine. Elkins convincingly
makes the case that the British Empire, with its principles cloaked
in uplifting paternalism, was built on violence."-The National Book
Review
"'All empires are violent,' Caroline Elkins observes in this
masterful, crucial study, but Britain's only became more violent
over time, even as it touted its liberalism. Legacy of Violence is
as unflinching as it is gripping, as carefully researched as it is
urgently necessary." -Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A
History of the United States
"Caroline Elkins has written the history of the British Empire that
we desperately need today. Drawing on recently-disclosed documents,
Legacy of Violence catalogues how, time after time, in place after
place, British authorities brutally repressed dissent under the
cover of laws justifying the use of force. Sweeping, forceful, and
passionately argued, it is a definitive rejoinder to persistent
myths of liberal benevolence. A monumental achievement." -Maya
Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global
World
"Elkins's intricate but immersive account is a feat of scholarship
that elucidates the bureaucratic and legal machinery of oppression,
dissects the intellectual justifications for it, and explores in
gripping, sometimes grisly detail the suffering that resulted. The
result is a forceful challenge to recent historiographical and
political defenses of British exceptionalism that punctures myths
of paternalism and progress." -Publishers Weekly (starred
review)
"In nothing was the British Empire more successful than its
skillful concealment of the violence that it unleashed across the
globe, over centuries. Caroline Elkins' Legacy of Violence is a
laudably ambitious attempt at unearthing this hidden legacy, the
bitter fruits of which are becoming more and more visible every
day." -Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables
for a Planet in Crisis
"Legacy of Violence is a
clear, incisive account of the way in which the British maintained
public order in the colonies through 'lawful lawlessness'-in other
words, ways in which acts of repression and cruelty were shielded
from the public and Parliament by ingenious methods of apparent yet
dubious legality. Based on records in Asia and Africa as well as
documents in western archives, the research is compelling and
persuasive. This is an exceedingly valuable book on the dark side
of the British Empire." -Wm. Roger Louis, Editor-in-Chief of
Oxford History of the British Empire
"Once again, Caroline Elkins' fearless brilliance and
prodigious skill in the historical craft bring us to a point of no
return in understanding the history of the British empire.
Legacy of Violence is a gripping, richly peopled, epic
narrative of the systematic perversion of the rule of law whose
spread the empire claimed as its legitimizing purpose. In stunning
prose and drawing on staggering research, Elkins uncovers the
reality of routine and ruthlessly violent suspension of law and
militarized policing as imperial personnel and practices moved from
crisis to crisis around the globe." -Priya Satia, author of
Time's Monster: How History Makes History
"Elkins explores in this sparkling and troubling book how
the long history of ruthless violence in the British Empire was
entangled with liberal ideology. Liberal goals justified conquest
and repression, and came repeatedly to justify 'legalized
lawlessness' from India to Jamaica, Ireland, Palestine, Malaya and
Kenya. She shows, further, how this history of colonial terror was
suppressed by the destruction of archives and by the manipulation
of the historical record by those who wish the national past to be
a flattering mirror." -Richard Drayton, author of Nature's
Government
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