The British Empire wrote Adam Smith has hitherto been not an empire but the project of an empire & John Darwin offers a magisterial global history of the rise & fall of that great imperial project. The British Empire he argues was much more than a group of colonies ruled over by a scattering of British expatriates until eventual independence. It was above all a global phenomenon. Its power derived rather less from the assertion of imperial authority than from the fusing together of three different kinds of empire: the settler empire of the white dominions; the commercial empire of the City of London; & Greater India which contributed markets manpower & military muscle. This unprecedented history charts how this intricate imperial web was first strengthened then weakened & finally severed on the rollercoaster of global economic political & geostrategic upheaval on which it rode from beginning to end.