Authors: Jan Morris
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Political Science, #Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, #Modern, #General
T
HE faults of this book are patently my own. It has been saved from many more by a number of colleagues, friends and generous acquaintances who applied their specialist knowledge to early drafts of the manuscript. Particular chapters and passages were read by Sir Thomas Armstrong, Miss Pamela Hinkson, Dr Brian Inglis, Father A. Jesse, Major-General James Lunt, Professor Arthur Marder, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, Sir James Penny, Mr J. I. M. Stewart and Mr Clough Williams-Ellis. Finally Mr D. K. Field-house, Beit Lecturer in the History of the Commonwealth at Oxford, most kindly read the whole manuscript. I owe my warm thanks to all these people, hope they will like the finished product, and apologize for mistakes and misjudgements I have slipped in when their backs were turned.
The Kipling quotations in the book are used by permission of Mrs George Bambridge, Methuen and Co Ltd, Macmillan and Co Ltd, the Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd and Doubleday and Co, Inc., New York. The quotations from C. J. Dennis and Henry Lawson are used by permission of Messrs Angus and Robertson. Mr Hugh Noyes has allowed me to use an extract from a poem by his father, Alfred Noyes. The quotation from Sir Arnold Wilson comes from his book
South
West
Persia,
by permission of the Oxford University Press. The quotation from Winston Churchill’s
The
River
War
is used by courtesy of Eyre and Spottiswood (Publishers) Ltd and The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. The two quotations from A. E. Housman are used in England by permission of the Society of Authors as the literary representatives of Housman’s estate, and Messrs Jonathan Cape, London publishers of Housman’s
Collected
Poems.
In the United States they are reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: the first quotation comes from
1887
, in
A
Shropshire
had
—Authorized Edition—from
The
Collected
Poems
of
A.
E.
Housman
, copyright 1939, 1940, © 1959 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., copyright © 1967, 1968 by Robert E. Symons: the second quotation is from
The
Collected
Poems
of
A.
E.
Housman,
copyright 1936 by Barclays Bank Ltd, copyright © 1964 by Robert E. Symons.
I apologize to any copyright holders whose rights I have unwittingly ignored.
I could not have written the book without the Bodleian Library and its subsidiaries in Oxford, and the London Library. I am also indebted to the Colonial Records Project in Oxford, which introduced me to several passages of reminiscence, to the National Archives in Ottawa and Salisbury, Rhodesia, to the Colonial Office and India Office Libraries in London, the National Library in Dublin, the Connemara Library in Madras, the Simla Library and the St Lucia Historical Society. Much of the necessary travel was made possible by the skill of my New York agent, Julian Bach.
Pax
Britannica
is intended to be the centrepiece of three books, the first describing the rise of the Victorian Empire to the climax it describes, the third tracing the imperial decline to that condition of uncertain emancipation in which the British nation now finds itself.
and n.,
1