Time's Monster: How History Makes History

A New Statesman Best Book of the Year
"Powerful and radically important."
—Robert Gildea, Times Literary Supplement
"Bracingly describes the ways imperialist historiography has shaped visions of the future as much as the past."
—Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books
"An account of how the discipline of history has itself enabled the process of colonization...A coruscating and important reworking of the relationship between history, historians, and empire."
—Kenan Malik, The Guardian
For generations, the history of the British Empire was written by its victors, whose accounts of conquest guided the consolidation of imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. British historians' narratives of the development of imperial governance licensed the brutal suppression of colonial rebellion. Their reimagining of empire during the two world wars compromised decolonization. In this...