The central question at the heart of Priya Satia's book is, why has the British Empire seemingly be given a free pass? Considering the still lasting effects of empire, from partition in India, to the slave trade, from famines and riots to the current mess in the Middle East, how is it that it is still a source of pride for a considerable proportion of the UK population and not considered on a par with other global wrongs like the Holocaust and Hiroshima? The answer posited is history, in particular the kinds of narrative history perused by and within Empire as events were taking part. People used history to justify their acts, to suggest the colonised were savages being saved, so suggest that the arc of history is towards progress and therefore "colonising and developing" other nations become a national duty, a moral duty. And because the history of histories is cumulative, more recent Marxist or other side historical accounts are battering against a general perception of history boiled into the general understanding of the discipline.

This is all very convincing a and well argued, and she uses her own previous scholarship to make her point. Having previously questioned for example how a devout Quaker could also be Britain's biggest arms manufacturer Satia has already acquainted herself with the moral gymnastics people commit to feel internally consistent. There is an academically even handed tone here, where she is very willing to give the benefit of the doubt to her actors motives, having been told that such things are justified by the passage of history or progress (all themselves historical theories). A chapter which comes out of her book on Spies In Arabia looks at the conflicts around "Great Man" theories particularly T.E.Lawrence and how that colours the narrative both in the UK and abroad. It can get quite exhausting in places, and I think she perhaps dives a bit too deep sometimes revisiting old stomping grounds. There is very little here for example on Africa, and whilst I think she proves her point admirably by the time the Scramble For Africa is underway, there is perhaps more to be said about how some of that late colonialism is mediated not just through history and culture. This is also true about the USA / Canada / Australia and New Zealand, all of who's colonial stories add another interesting wrinkle to the morality of Empire (granting independence to the countries which have been completely settled creating a dichotomy with India and its huge indigenous population).

This is an readably dense but accessible bit of meta history, but I think it probably doesn't quite make the leap to a more general market. This is partially by choice I fear; in its conclusion one of its bugbears is "Popular History", which is unsurprisingly about topics which tend not to trouble the consciences of its consumers (more World War II bombers, less Amritsar Massacre). I do think she also disregards popular culture in general, it feels impossible to me to talk about the effect of Lawrence Of Arabia on the British understanding of Empire, without mentioning the David Lean film, and the ossifying effect of the cinema of Empire, and the period drama industry normalising a kind of British experience. So whilst I think she is right as Churchill knew writing the hostories , and this is a great bit of historiography, if she wanted to answer her own question - particularly when looking at Brexit and that little Englander mentality - she should have not just asked what are the histories that allow Empire impunity, but where are they being told.

[NetGalley ARC]

In Time’s Monster, historian and Stanford professor Priya Satiya dismantles the ways in which historians interpreted, justified, promoted and helped consolidate the British empire over the past three centuries. How traditional history narratives of linear progress and agency of great men influenced colonial and imperial policy as well as how they continue to influence narratives behind Brexit. In this, Time’s Monster is a particularly timely book albeit likely too academic to open its arguments up to a more general reader.

While there is a lot to admire about Satiya’s book, in particular, her call for contemporary historians to engage with politics and policy in a way that Timothy Snyder has in recent years (On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom), I also found Time’s Monster a frustrating and somewhat limited read. In recent years, Satiya writes, economists and political scientists have sidelined historians but at the same time, economic historians exposed the very exploitative nature of empires. Exclusion of economic history in her argument for interdisciplinary connections between biology, geology, astronomy and history just didn’t work for me. Furthermore, Satiya mainly focuses on India and Arabia (she previously wrote about Britain’s covert empire in the Middle East in Spies in Arabia) and there isn’t enough engagement with the rest of the British empire. And, for a book that exposes flaws in writing of history as agency of great men, there are simply too many mentions of Byronic impulses and people inspired by Lawrence. I’d still recommend the book to students of history and particularly those engaging with the legacy of empire.

My thanks to Penguin, Allen Lane and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Time’s Monster.

An award-winning author reconsiders the role of historians in political debate. For generations, British thinkers told the history of an empire whose story was still very much in the making. While they wrote of how conquest, imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean was consolidated. While they described the development of imperial governance, rebellions were brutally crushed. As they reimagined empire during the two world wars, decolonization was compromised. Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed. This is an account of the British empire that focuses on the role of the modern historical imagination in its unfolding, while also recovering alternative ethical visions embraced by anti-colonial thinkers.

Satia has penned a fascinating account of how historians can be complicit in the consolidation of power and how they can warp the history books by doing so. Written in a lively and accessible manner, she explores how British imperialism has been portrayed and how those who write the history books shouldn't sugarcoat, or avoid completely, the horrors of imperialism, colonialism, the exploitation and dehumanisation of people and the struggle that comes along with those. Satia specializes in British empire history and you certainly feel as though you are in good hands throughout. A thoroughly engrossing read as well as a timely, powerful and vitally important one, I highly recommend Time Monster to those who are interested in how historians shape the way we perceive the world. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.

This book is an essay in intellectual history (from the Victorian period onwards), arguing that historians, in particular, outlined various and competing justifications for British colonialism (civilisation, good governance, geopolitical stability, laissez-faire economics, heroic primitivism, preparation for self-rule, and such like). Furthermore, these historical ideas were then picked up and consciously applied in colonial governance, always soothing the guilty conscience and usually enabling some barbarous and inhumane policies. The final chapters explore how various anti-imperial ideas were developed in India and informed the work of EP Thompson, who forged a kind of history writing that could work against the imperial project.

The author has a strong grasp of the detail and some fresh and important perspectives and insights to offer. Less happily, it is written in an 'academic' style that hinders the communication of that knowledge, particularly in the opening sections.