Shahid Khan Quotes

Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.

When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.

I was born too late and missed the dream of empire. Its shadow, the Commonwealth, coincides with my life but rarely connected with it.

'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

The main purpose of stationing a large body of troops in America will be to secure the dependence of the colonies on Great Britain

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony.

The British especially have no excuse for forgetting that empire is a most complex and persistent beast. And it has claws.

Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.

The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.

'Captives' was a deliberate bridging exercise, an attempt to use detailed knowledge of what Britain was like on the inside, to reach a deeper, more variegated understanding of how its peoples experienced external adventures and aggression over a quarter of a millennium in four continents.

There seems to be no end of books about the British empire, and the fascination it holds for historians of all descriptions is inexhaustible.

How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international con�icts of today.

The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of the Greeks among the Romans.

The reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.

In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763.

In the span of a human lifetime, and well within the collective memory, Britain went from a stable imperial power ruling an appreciable fraction of the Earth's surface to being a tumultuous patchwork which was at least superficially in decline.

How is the Empire?

Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.

American audiences tend to underappreciate the British, but 240 years ago they were us: They were the most powerful nation on Earth. Their mercantile empire spanned the planet. They had the most potent and experienced army and navy the world had ever seen.

We have got over our imperial past, and the withdrawal symptoms.

The jury is still out, and may always be out over whether the Britain benefited from the Empire or not.

British Empire