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Bernard Porter
Bernard Porter’s books include the recently reissued Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge.
From the London Review dated 3 March 2005
- Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire by David Anderson
- Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya by Caroline Elkins Buy this book
“In March 1953 a British policeman wrote a letter to his buddies back at Streatham police station bragging about the ‘Gestapo stuff’ that was going on in his new posting in Nyeri. All this happened a few years after the war, so such analogies came quickly to mind. The critics – many of whom had fought against Nazi Germany – knew what they were talking about too. One relatively liberal police chief in Kenya claimed that conditions in the detention camps were far worse than those he had suffered as a Japanese POW. Comparisons were also made with the Soviet gulags, and, later on, by a former defence lawyer for the Mau Mau, with ‘ethnic cleansing’. The accepted view of Britain’s decolonisation hitherto has been that it was done in a more dignified, enlightened and consensual way than by other countries – meaning, of course, France. It will be difficult now to argue this so glibly. Kenya was Britain’s Algeria.” [ read more . . . ]
Selected bibliography
- Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge (reissue, 2007)
- Empire and Superempire: Britain, America and the World (2006)
- The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (2004)
- The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-1995 (1996)
- Britannia’s Burden: Political Evolution of Modern Britain, 1851-1990 (1994)
- The Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch Before the First World War (1987)
- Britain, Europe and the World, 1850-1982: Delusions of Grandeur (1983)
- The Refugee Question in mid-Victorian Politics (1979)
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In the LRB archive
Friendly Fire · 21 February 2008
- Fusiliers: Eight Years with the Redcoats in America by Mark Urban
- 1812: War with America by Jon Latimer Buy this book
Nobbled or Not · 25 May 2006
- British Documents on the End of Empire Series B Volume 9: Central Africa: Part I: Closer Association 1945-58 by Philip Murphy
- British Documents on the End of Empire Series B Volume 9: Central Africa: Part II: Crisis and Dissolution 1959-65 by Philip Murphy
Palmerstonian · 20 October 2005
- The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Vol. I: The Origins of the Falklands War by Lawrence Freedman Buy this book
- The Official History of the Falklands Campaign: Vol. II: War and Diplomacy by Lawrence Freedman Buy this book
How did they get away with it? · 3 March 2005
- Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire by David Anderson
- Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya by Caroline Elkins Buy this book
Not currently in the LRB archive
Boarder or Day Boy? · 15 July 1999
- The Culture of Secrecy in Britain 1832-1998 by David Vincent
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