The text below the map explains: "This picture helps us to understand the wonderful way in which the British Empire is established throughout the world." In fact, by displaying oversized flags of ...

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Matthew J. Smith, director of the Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London, about the commonwealth's complicated history. The ...

One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink. By Matthew Parker. PublicAffairs; 624 pages; $35. Abacus; £25 Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain. By Charlotte Lydia Riley. Bodley Head ...

At the height of the British Empire, just after the First World War, an island smaller than Kansas controlled roughly a quarter of the world’s population and landmass. To the architects of this ...

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, an author and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Raised in London, Bergen has a ...

Since Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1952, dozens of nations colonized by the British Empire have gained independence and continue to rebuild their societies. Some critics of the royal family see ...

Ms. Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard, is the author of three books about the British Empire and its subjects. “The end of an era” will become a refrain as commentators assess the ...