"In this book, David Cannadine investigates the ideologies and social attitudes at the heart of the Empire. One of them was, undoubtedly, race. But even more pervasive was class - a traditional vision of hierarchy and subordination, derived from the sense the British had of their own society, which they exported and analogized to the ends of the earth and back again." "This was how the British made, ran and visualized their Empire. And this in turn helps us to understand many of its seemingly baffling oddities, such as the ostentatiously elaborated monarchy and the exceptionally complex honours system, both of which the British continue to live with, long after most other nations who were once part of the Empire have given them up."--Jacket. "David Cannadine looks at the British Empire from a new perspective -- through the eyes of those who created and ruled it -- and offers fresh insight into the driving forces behind the Empire. Arguing against the views of Edward Said and others, Cannadine suggests that the British were guided not so much by race as by class. The British wanted to domesticate the exotic world of their colonies and to reorder the societies they ruled according to an idealized image of their own class hierarchies. In reestablishing the connections between British society and colonial society, Cannadine shows that Imperialists lathed Indians and Africans no more nor less than they loathed the great majority of Englishmen, and were far more willing to work with maharajahs, kings, and chiefs of whatever race than with "sordid" white settlers. Revolted by the triumph of democracy in Britain itself, the Empire's rulers embraced a feudal vision of the colonies which successfully endured until the 1950s."--Jacket.