The history of the world has been the history of peoples on the move as they occupy new lands & establish their claims over them. Almost invariably this has meant the violent dispossession of the previous inhabitants. Whether it is the Normans in England the Chinese in Tibet the Germans in Poland the Indonesians in West Papua or the British & Americans in North America the claiming of other people's lands & the supplanting of one people by another has shaped the history of societies from the ancient past to the present day. David Day tells the story of how this happened
- the ways in which invaders have triumphed & justified conquest which as he shows is a bloody & often prolonged process that can last centuries. & while each individual conquest is ultimately unique nevertheless they often share a number of qualities from the re-naming of the conquered land & the invention of myth to justify what has taken place to the exploitation of the conquered resources & people & even to the outright slaughter of the original inhabitants. Above all as Day shows in this hugely bold & ambitious book conquest can have deep & long-lasting consequences
- for the conquered the conquerors & for the wider course of world history.