It’s very easy to study the history of the British Empire from the perspective of, well, the British–and to extend the early 20th century version of the empire as a world-spanning entity backwards through history.
David Veevers, in his new book The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire, studies the English, and later British, empires from a different perspective: not the British, but rather the Irish, Native Americans, Southeast Asians, and Indians they met, traded—and often fought—with. And he shows that, for much of its history, the British Empire’s position was far more precarious than its later dominance implies.
In this interview, David and I talk about how the English Empire got its start, and how other groups pushed back.
Dr David Veevers is an award-winning historian and Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bangor, and was formerly a Leverhulme Fellow in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London. He is also the author of the acclaimed academic book, The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600-1750.