英国 20 世纪的帝国横跨世界陆地面积的四分之一，拥有近七亿人口，是人类历史上的大帝国。对许多英国人来说，它是他们国家文化优越性的缩影。但是，这个岛国给世界留下了什么遗产呢？卡罗琳-埃尔金斯（Caroline Elkins）通过对两百多年历史的梳理，揭示了一种进化的、种族化的理论，这种理论信奉无情地使用暴力来确保和维护国家的帝国利益。她概述了暴力的意识形态基础如何植根于维多利亚时代惩罚顽抗 "土著 "的号召，以及随着时间的推移，暴力的形式如何日益系统化。她明确指出，当英国无法继续控制其挑起和实施的暴力时，它就从帝国中撤退，销毁和隐藏其政策和做法的罪证。
《暴力的遗产》利用十多年来在四大洲进行的研究，将英国政治分裂的各方都卷入了帝国暴力的制造、执行和掩盖之中。通过展示暴力如何以及为何成为支撑英国帝国和英国国内帝国身份的突出因素，埃尔金斯颠覆了长期以来的神话，为帝国在塑造当今世界中的作用提供了新的启示。
Sprawling across a quarter of the world's land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain's twentieth-century empire was large empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation's cultural superiority. But what legacy did the island nation deliver to the world? Covering more than two hundred years of history, Caroline Elkins reveals an evolutionary and racialized doctrine that espoused an unrelenting deployment of violence to secure and preserve the nation's imperial interests. She outlines how ideological foundations of violence were rooted in the Victorian era calls for punishing recalcitrant "natives," and how over time, its forms became increasingly systematized. And she makes clear that when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policies and practices.
Drawing on more than a decade of research on four continents, Legacy of Violence implicates all sides of Britain's political divide in the creation, execution, and cover-up of imperial violence. By demonstrating how and why violence was the most salient factor underwriting Britain's empire and the nation's imperial identity at home, Elkins upends long-held myths and sheds new light on empire's role in shaping the world today.
还没人写过短评呢