New edition of a trail-blazing history of imperial warfare

European Empires from Conquest to Collapse is a vivid anticolonial reckoning with the history of imperial warfare. Global in scope, it deftly surveys the fighting forces and military engagements of the Great Powers, from the British in India to the scramble for Africa. Victor Kiernan lays bare the doctrines and realities of colonial fighting, dispelling official legends. Europe often boasted that coloni- alism was 'civilised', but the facts show it could be barbaric. Kiernan traces how guerrilla insurgency against colonial oppression developed into one of the most sophisticated branches of the art of war.

With a foreword by Tariq Ali, author of Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes.

"A much-needed survey of European colonial campaigns, brilliant in the choice of examples from an extraordinarily wide reading." - London Review of Books

"One of Britain's foremost historians working in the Marxist tradition. His time in India, which remained closer to heart than any other country, significantly influenced how he came to view European imperialism." - The Times