On BBC Radio 3's "Night Waves", Richard Gott, author of the forthcoming book, Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt again met with Kwasi Kwarteng, author of Ghost of Empire. They examined their conflicting views on the character of the British Empire, in a discussion chaired by presenter Philip Dodd.
In his book Gott surveyed the resistance to British rule from mid-18th century to mid-19th century, across the world from the Caribbean to Ireland. On the show, Gott explained that he had endeavoured to write a global history of the subject peoples from their point of view, resulting in a survey of resistance on a scale never attempted before. Kwarteng questioned the novelty of such as perspective by highlighting the parallels with subaltern studies and Marxist historiography but agreed that the book is very comprehensive and that its "originality comes in the scale of the rebellions at which it looks".
Richard Gott was on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday to discuss his forthcoming book, Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt with Kwasi Kwarteng, Conservative MP and author of Ghosts of Empire.
Kwarteng's book argues that the operation of the British empire was not systematic or centrally run, but haphazard, random and guided much more by local conditions and individual administrators idiosyncrasies than by Whitehall.