Amazon.com description: Product Description: The first edition of this book represented a pioneering attempt to provide a new synthesis and a full-scale revision of the history of the British empire between 1815 and 1914 in its heyday and the period of the beginnings of its decline. In this new and substantially revised edition Ronald Hyam draws deeply on the accumulated specialized studies and the latest work, as well as on his own research, to present a comprehensive and up-to-date chronological narrative, together with a more theoretical and reflective concluding chapter, thus giving an overview of British policy and action, and covering both the areas of formal control (India and Africa) and those of informal influence (China and America). The British empire is seen in a wider perspective as part of the history of global expansion and of face relations. Strategy, diplomacy, religion, economics and racial attitudes are all considered in depth, but the imperial significance of a wide range of less obvious topics is also considered, including relations with the USA, sport, sex and freemasonry.