TTC VIDEO - Rise and Fall of the British Empire (2009)

At its peak in the early 20th century, Britain's empire was the largest in the history of the world, greater even than that of ancient Rome. It embraced more than a fourth of the world's population and affected the course of Western civilization in ways almost too numerous to imagine. Even today, with the advantages of historical perspective and hindsight, it is still nearly impossible to overstate the scope and importance of its stunning legacy. This teaching course will give you a refreshing new understanding of what made the British Empire both great in its achievements and vulnerable to its eventual downfall.

Consider:
* British colonists brought to the New World ideas of liberty, justice, and political stability—ideas that formed the foundation of our own revolution and Constitution and are still reflected in the aspirations of emerging democracies the world over.
* British exploration, mapping, and colonization of remote areas of the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries accelerated our scientific knowledge.
* Britain was the first nation to undertake large-scale industrialization, and it contributed to a host of technological advances that revolutionized manufacturing, navigation, international communications, travel on land and sea, and more.
* Britain was the first major world power to make the moral choices to end its own extremely profitable slave trade and then to work toward the abolition of slavery worldwide.
That is only a bare sampling of a legacy that also encompassed language, literature, the invention of sophisticated modern banking and insurance systems, and the foundations of modern capitalism.
In the 36 lectures of The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, award-winning Professor Patrick N. Allitt of Emory University leads you through four centuries of British power, innovation, influence, and, ultimately, diminishment—four profound centuries that literally remade the world and bequeathed the complex global legacy that continues to shape your everyday life.
Indeed, it seems fair to say that one cannot truly understand the most important aspects of world history without a firm grasp of the history of the British Empire.
Meet Some of History's Most Riveting Personalities
Unlike them, however, trapped in their own specific moment in time, you get to take the entire fascinating journey, encountering as you do some of history's most important, forceful, and interesting personalities, often from a totally new vantage point:
* Winston Churchill, the very personification of the British Lion, who, after inspiring his nation to unexpected survival during the darkest days of World War II, was rewarded with defeat at the polls.
* Robert Clive, who rose from his beginnings as a teenaged clerk for the British East India Company to avenge the brutality of the infamous "Black Hole of Calcutta," achieve British hegemony in India along with great personal power and ill-gotten wealth, and ultimately die at his own hand, imprisoned by both depression and his addiction to opium.
* Orde Wingate, the British general whose achievements in the Ethiopian campaign and in the Zionist guerrilla war against the Arab revolt in Palestine could never obscure his personal eccentricities. One of those was a proclivity to wander about naked, often with a raw onion suspended around his neck, from which he would take hearty bites while inspecting his troops.
* William Wilberforce, the Christian evangelical and Member of Parliament who provided the political leadership and moral lifeblood for Britain's antislavery crusade, and who lived long enough to see his nearly half-century struggle culminate in the 1833 abolition of slavery throughout most of the British Empire.
Understand How Britain's History Helped Define the Shape of Its Future—and the World's
Just as important, he never allows himself to settle into an Anglocentric view of Britain's empire. He discusses not only the experiences of Britain's colonists, but also those of the native peoples of those colonies, whose own lives—as well as the destinies of their countries—were irrevocably shaped by British imperialism.
Compelling, comprehensive, and astonishing in the force of its narrative power, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire will give you a refreshing new understanding of what made the British Empire both great in its achievements and vulnerable to its eventual downfall.
About Your Professor
Dr. Patrick N. Allitt is Goodrich C. White Professor of History at Emory University. He is also Director of Emory College's Center for Teaching and Curriculum. He earned his B.A. in British and European History from Oxford University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Allitt has served as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Divinity School and at the Princeton University Center for the Study of American Religion. He won Emory's Excellence in Teaching Award and held the NEH/Arthur Blank Professorship of Teaching in the Humanities.

professor : Patrick N. Allitt
production land: usa
Run time: ~36 x 30 min

1. The Sun Never Set
2. The Challenge to Spain in the New World
3. African Slavery and the West Indies
4. Imperial Beginnings in India
5. Clive and the Conquest of India
6. Wolfe and the Conquest of Canada
7. The Loss of the American Colonies
8. Exploring the Planet
9. Napoleon Challenges the Empire
10. The Other Side of the World
11. Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery
12. Early African Colonies
13. China and the Opium Wars
14. Britain—The Imperial Center
15. Ireland—The Tragic Relationship
16. India and the "Great Game"
17. Rebellion and Mutiny in India
18. How Canada Became a Nation
19. The Exploration and Settlement of Africa
20. Gold, Greed, and Geopolitics in Africa
21. The Empire in Literature
22. Economics and Theories of Empire
23. The British Empire Fights Imperial Germany
24. Versailles and Disillusionment
25. Ireland Divided
26. Cricket and the British Empire
27. British India between the World Wars
28. World War II—England Alone
29. World War II—The Pyrrhic Victory
30. Twilight of the Raj
31. Israel, Egypt, and the Suez Canal
32. The Decolonization of Africa
33. The White Dominions
34. Britain after the Empire
35. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
36. Epitaph and Legacy

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