Download Free How Did Britain Come To This Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online How Did Britain Come To This and write the review.

If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain’s entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee’s postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher’s governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee’s planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world.
Prize-winning historian Robert Gildea dissects the legacy of empire for the former colonial powers and their subjects.
A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. "Empireland is brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It’ll stay in your head for years.” —John Oliver, Emmy Award-winning host of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" With a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Booker Prize-winner Marlon James A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. Empire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do. From common thought to our daily routines; from the foundations of social safety nets to the realities of racism; and from the distrust of public intellectuals to the exceptionalism that permeates immigration debates, the Brexit campaign and the global reckonings with controversial memorials, Empireland shows how the pernicious legacy of Western imperialism undergirds our everyday lives, yet remains shockingly obscured from view. In accessible, witty prose, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Sathnam Sanghera traces this legacy back to its source, exposing how—in both profound and innocuous ways—imperial domination has shaped the United Kingdom we know today. Sanghera connects the historical dots across continents and seas to show how the shadows of a colonial past still linger over modern-day Britain and how the world, in turn, was shaped by Britain’s looming hand. The implications, of course, extend to Britain’s most notorious former colony turned imperial power: the United States of America, which prides itself for its maverick soul and yet seems to have inherited all the ambition, brutality and exceptional thinking of its parent. With a foreword by Booker Prize–winner Marlon James, Empireland is a revelatory and lucid work of political history that offers a sobering appraisal of the past so we may move toward a more just future.
Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.
How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that marked Britain’s contemporaneous subjugation of the island of Sri Lanka. In Islanded, Sujit Sivasundaram reconsiders the arrival of British rule in South Asia as a dynamic and unfinished process of territorialization and state building, revealing that the British colonial project was framed by the island’s traditions and maritime placement and built in part on the model they provided. Using palm-leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka to read the official colonial archive, Sivasundaram tells the story of two sets of islanders in combat and collaboration. He explores how the British organized the process of “islanding”: they aimed to create a separable unit of colonial governance and trade in keeping with conceptions of ethnology, culture, and geography. But rather than serving as a radical rupture, he reveals, islanding recycled traditions the British learned from Kandy, a kingdom in the Sri Lankan highlands whose customs—from strategies of war to views of nature—fascinated the British. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, Islanded is an engaging retelling of the advent of British rule.
Macroeconomic policy is one of the most important policy domains, and the tools of macroeconomics are among the most valuable for policy makers. Yet there has been, up to now, a wide gulf between the level at which macroeconomics is taught at the undergraduate level and the level at which it is practiced. At the same time, doctoral-level textbooks are usually not targeted at a policy audience, making advanced macroeconomics less accessible to current and aspiring practitioners. This book, born out of the Masters course the authors taught for many years at the Harvard Kennedy School, fills this gap. It introduces the tools of dynamic optimization in the context of economic growth, and then applies them to a wide range of policy questions – ranging from pensions, consumption, investment and finance, to the most recent developments in fiscal and monetary policy. It does so with the requisite rigor, but also with a light touch, and an unyielding focus on their application to policy-making, as befits the authors’ own practical experience. Advanced Macroeconomics: An Easy Guide is bound to become a great resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and practitioners alike.
'An eloquent, forensic examination of resurgent English nationalism as the force that has driven Brexit and may now break up the United Kingdom' Jonathan Coe 'A fascinating book that draws on poetry, literature and on-the-ground reporting' The Times 'A wonderful book which will be quoted in years to come' New European In the past, it was possible to live with delightful confusion: one could be English or British, Scottish or Irish, and a citizen/subject of the United Kingdom (or Great Britain). Now this archaic state is coming under terrible strain. The English revolt against Europe is also a revolt against the Scottish and Irish, and the pressures to declare Scottish independence and to push for a border poll that would unite Ireland may become irresistible. Can England and Wales find a way of dealing with the state's new place in the world? What constitutional, federal arrangements might prevent the disintegration of the British state? How Britain Ends is a book about history, but also about the strange, complicated identity of Britishness.
To Rule the Waves tells the extraordinary story of how the British Royal Navy allowed one nation to rise to a level of power unprecedented in history. From the navy's beginnings under Henry VIII to the age of computer warfare and special ops, historian Arthur Herman tells the spellbinding tale of great battles at sea, heroic sailors, violent conflict, and personal tragedy -- of the way one mighty institution forged a nation, an empire, and a new world. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
The history of Britain's complex relationship with Europe, untangled Is Britain a part of Europe? The British have been ambivalent on this question since the Second World War, when the Western European nations sought to prevent the return of fascism by creating strong international ties throughout the Continent. Britain reluctantly joined the Common Market, the European Community, and ultimately the European Union, but its decades of membership never quite led it to accept a European orientation. In the view of the distinguished political scientist Vernon Bogdanor, the question of Britain’s relationship to Europe is rooted in “the prime conflict of our time,” the dispute between the competing faiths of liberalism and nationalism. This concise, expertly guided tour provides the essential background to the struggle over Brexit.
A history of the relationship between Great Britain and the United States ranges from the establishment of the first English colony in the New World to the present day, examining both nations in terms of what connected them and what drove them apart.