One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink—September 29, 1923

Historian Parker (Panama Fever) offers a panoramic view of the British Empire on September 29, 1923—the day Britain began administering the territories of Palestine and Transjordan and the empire reached its “maximum territorial extent”—in this portrait of a world on the cusp of sweeping change. Surveying critical colonial outposts ranging across half the globe, from the small, phosphate-rich Ocean Island, located “a short distance from the international dateline” in the Pacific, to Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea, Parker vividly demonstrates the empire’s vast reach and the “impossibly conflicting interests between government [and] the governed.” He juxtaposes colonial narratives told from positions of cultural authority within the empire, such as those of novelists E.M. Forester and George Orwell, with the work of anticolonial leaders, including India’s Jawaharlal Nehru and Herbert Macaulay, the “Gandhi of Nigeria.” The inherent brutality of colonialism is evident in each region that Parker spotlights, providing a stark reminder that the goal of imperialism is to exploit faraway populations for the enrichment of the homeland. Accessible and sturdy, this expansive account provides solid ground for understanding the decline of the British Empire. It’s an eye-opening and a unique vantage point from which to study 20th-century history. (Sept.)