Books like Outsourcing Empire

I turn to this book to remind myself how good economic history should be written: by foregrounding the political stakes and by angling for compelling prose. In Tooze’s telling, when Nazi ideological rage met the grim realities of a global Depression, the result was the lethal gamble to conquer Germany’s way out of isolation.

It’s so instructive to watch Tooze adroitly move between narrative registers—absorbing, emphatic, mordant, even humorous—as he tackles this hair-raising topic. The thorniest subjects—foreign exchange controls and machine tools, forced labor, and racial war—come to life to awesome and awful effect.

Folks familiar with the term “neoliberalism” usually describe it as the economic system that tries to unleash the market by getting the government out of the way. I like Globalists because it shows how unleashing the market demands that government gets in the way—of workers’ rights, movements for equality, and, most ominously, democracy itself. Since it’s impossible to understand fascism without tackling capitalism, a book explaining how we got to today’s market principles is vital.

I see this book as a history of the neoliberal economists who encouraged political leaders to use state violence and repression to unleash free trade and shape the global economy. Globalists tell the story of how modern capitalism developed into today’s vast landscape of inequality that makes a fertile ground for fascism and violent extremism to develop.

I appreciate books that challenge my preconceptions. Grimmer-Solem does that by insisting that we understand German Weltpolitik before WWI not as an aberrant or markedly aggressive outlook, but as a normal response to the pressures and opportunities of turn-of-the-century world politics. The German search for colonies, spheres of influence, and a large navy were comparable to other nations—notably the United States. Such policies are unsurprising in a world where globalization has made developed nations dependent on intercontinental trade but where possibilities for future commerce and investment seemed to be closed off by the imperial scrambles of the late nineteenth century, notably Britain’s vast acquisitions in Africa, and by muscular US assertions of the Monroe doctrine.

Books that blur the boundaries between political theory and international history are seldom accessible, of pressing contemporary relevance, and beautifully written—but I found this book to be all three.

Reading this outstanding exposé, the book vividly reminded me of the importance of understanding the decades of decolonization in the Black Atlantic as more than a quest for sovereign statehood and recentering the ways in which the likes of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere imagined new geographies and, indeed, new worlds. I admire the work in many ways—for its geographical sweep, exemplary pace, and conceptual clarity.

A mere 172 pages, this book examines the brutality of European colonialism in the 19th century, uncovering genocides I had never heard of that were perpetrated by so-called “civilized people” on so-called “primitive people.” 

The justification for this barbarism was that they for the benefit of the people annihilated because they could not live in the modern world. 

That justification is the same one often used on this side of the ocean for the genocide or “removal” of Indigenous people from their ancient lands and for the enslavement of African people who were “improved” by being around white people. 

Part travelogue, part history, part literary analysis – Lindqvist focuses on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness – the book cannot be easily categorized and when reading it I often wondered what he was doing. 

But my understanding of both colonialism and what the Europeans did when they came to… show more.

The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the African Continent from 1876 to 1912 is a comprehensive history of the colonization of African territory by European powers between 1876 to 1912 known as the Scramble for Africa.

I am an African. I was born and raised in Africa. When I read about the horrors of the colonization of the continent I live on, I simply could not believe what I was reading. It took a lot more reading and research before I fully understood the implications and impact of this colonization. This led me to understand the place of wildlife in the early history of colonization and the evolution of a wildlife ethic.

Colonial powers viewed Africa as their sole domain for domination of its people and exploitation of its resources for the benefit of the colonial power and no benefit at all to the colony. Humans and… show more.

Why do people harm each other and the planet? Why do the rich continue to accumulate more and more wealth, when they already have all they need? When is enough, enough?

Those questions can be answered by social psychologists, environmental economists, historians, and other academics. But Jack D. Forbes’ book is perhaps the best explanation I have ever read. Drawing on the history of the colonization of North America, Forbes (Renape/Lenape) argues that modern civilization is based around “a spiritual sickness with a physical vector.” He calls it the wetiko disease: the desire to consume other beings, with no possibility of satiation. Forbes’ exploration from his indigenous perspective is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

Collingham has written multiple books on food and the British Empire, and this one is my favorite. Stretching from 1545 to 1996, each of the twenty chapters selects a historical meal, dissecting its ingredients and manner of preparation in order to explore the imperial forces and experiences that created it. Painstakingly research, each chapter is a standalone history.

The Whole Picture is a very recent book, that needs little introduction: that’s always the sign of a great book.

It does something very well: it explains what all those talks about looted art and artefacts and colonialism, and repatriation, are all about, without patronizing anyone, but without letting museums get away with their narratives either.

I remember reading it and thinking that it was about time I picked up my little idea and write my own book: I stand on the shoulders of fierce writers and thinkers and game-changers.

This book will make you ask questions, and it will make you avoid one Parisian museum in particular; and I very much concur this. You’ll have to read the book to find out which one.

This is an absolutely stonker of a book. Elegant and erudite, and yet tackling one of the hottest and most debated questions surrounding history right now.

It doesn’t only consider how we remember the British Empire (this issue is a bit of a political hot potato right now), but also reflects more broadly on the role of the historian. I am still digesting it!