A splendid history...If Americans want to be convinced of the benefits of empire, as well as apprised of its costs, they need merely pick up Ferguson´s dazzling book.- . The British Empire was the largest in all history: the nearest thing to world domination ever achieved. By the eve of World War II, around a quarter of the world´s land surface was under some form of British rule. Yet for today´s generation, the British Empire seems a Victorian irrelevance. The time is ripe for a reappraisal, and in , Niall Ferguson boldly recasts the British Empire as one of the world´s greatest modernizing forces.An important new work of synthesis and revision, argues that the world we know today is in large measure the product of Britain´s Age of Empire. The spread of capitalism, the communications revolution, the notion of humanitarianism, and the institutions of parliamentary democracy-all these can be traced back to the extraordinary expansion of Britain´s economy, population, and culture from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth. On a vast and vividly colored canvas, shows how the British Empire acted as midwife to modernity.Displaying the originality and rigor that have made