The history of the British Empire, a subject that had slipped into obscurity when the empire came to an end, has since made a stunning comeback, generating a series of heated debates about the causes, character, and consequences of empire. In this volume Dane Kennedy offers a wide-ranging assessment of the main schools of thought that have transformed the way we view the British Empire and the world it helped to create. Navigating a clear course through these intellectual waters requires an awareness of their shifting currents and a commitment to tracking their changing character over time. Dane Kennedy has contributed to the imperial history wars for more than thirty years, and in this volume he brings his most important writings, along with brand new material, together for the first time to provide a sweeping overview of the subject and the debates that have shaped it. The Imperial History Wars is essential reading for any student or scholar of the British Empire.

Richard Burton was one of Victorian Britain's most protean figures. A soldier, explorer, ethnographer, and polyglot of rare power, as well as a poet, travel writer, and translator of the "Tales of the Arabian Nights" and the "Kama Sutra", Burton exercised his abundant talents in a diverse array of endeavours. Though best remembered as an adventurer who entered Mecca in disguise and sought the source of the White Nile, Burton travelled so widely, wrote so prolifically, and contributed so forcefully to his generation's most contentious debates that he provides us with a singularly panoramic perspective on the world of the Victorians.