British - Historian | September 13, 1949 -
Once conscription was introduced during the First World War, and once Britain's wars ceased being confined to the empire or to continental Europe and began seriously threatening our own shores and safety, it became much easier to denounce any anti-war agitation and argument as inherently irresponsible and unpatriotic.
Linda Colley
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Margaret Thatcher's decision to use Scotland as a testing ground for the poll tax was arguably the most disastrous attempt at fiscal engineering since London slapped the stamp tax on the American colonies in the 1760s.
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In both British and American history, fervent imperialism has always coexisted with bouts of fierce isolationism.
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The American revolution not only cost Britain the 13 colonies but also forced it to rethink the slave trade and slavery, and influenced its power relations in Asia and the Pacific.
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Men and women do not live by bread alone. They also need sustaining ideas.
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High-level political wives are by no means new. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when patricians dominated British political life, it was common for politicians' spouses to play an active political role.
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Transatlantic flights are unflattering. Hairstyles flop. Makeup melts away. Faces shrivel or swell from dehydration, and contact lenses give way to spectacles.
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If you believe you are the city on the hill, the world's best hope, it is tempting also to believe that outside your boundaries are barbarians.
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Never fly to the U.S. the day before Thanksgiving or the weekend after because every airport is guaranteed to be crammed to bursting with people in transit to, or from, their home town.
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From the American Revolution right up to the Second World War, the U.S. was more likely to provoke suspicion among members of the British establishment than deferential approval. It was seen - with good cause - not just as a potential rival for empire, but also as dangerously egalitarian, worryingly innovatory, and excessively democratic.
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I'm struck by how impressively John Elliott assimilated new work on early modern England and colonial America, as well as keeping abreast with his own Hispanic studies, so as to write his recent 'Empires of the Atlantic World.'
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From the very beginning, Americans have exhibited a taste for expansion, an appetite for empire. One of the fundamental reasons for this is very clear. Like every other western empire that has ever existed, Americans may claim to have inherited the mantle of ancient Rome.
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