Insurgent Empire

Praise

“Gopal has calmly and authoritatively produced this impressive study of resistance against Empire, in the face of the kind of constant hostility that only serves to reminds us why her work is so urgent in the first place. We all owe her a debt.”
—Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)

“an astonishing writer and thinker, one who is fearless in how she uses history to explain where we are now. Her work is essential to showing how empire and colonialism pervades every nook and cranny of the British establishment today and why we should all continue to speak truth to power, like she does every damn day.”
—Nikesh Shukla, editor of The Good Immigrant

“A superb study of anticolonial resistance”
—Guardian

“This impressive book challenges the assumptions that underpin many academic and journalistic understandings of the British empire; it restores the idea of resistance and dissent, placing anti-colonial struggle from the 1857 uprising in India, to Mau Mau in Kenya, at the heart of historical change. It argues convincingly that, when it did occur, British anti-colonialism in the metropole was forged through exposure to imperial insurgency. By doing so, it tackles the whole premise of British liberal imperial progress and benevolence which remains so pervasive to this day. It’s also a hopeful book, indicating ways out of mythological cul-de-sacs. Erudite, but highly readable, this book will be definitely be on my reading lists for students.”
—Yasmin Khan, Associate Professor of History at Kellogg College, Oxford

“An outstanding contribution to our understanding of the struggles against the British empire”
—Andrew Murray, Morning Star

“sets out to celebrate the political agency of colonised peoples, its importance in bringing an end to empire and the impact it had on metropolitan liberal and radical thinking.”
—Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education

“A tremendous book that deserves the widest possible readership … one of the most important books on the British Empire of the last Decade.”
—Race & Class

“Punchy”
—Prospect

“Impressive in its scope and rigour…Insurgent Empire is an important challenge to those that would rather uncritically accept the myth of a benevolent imperial power than work to celebrate radicalism and resistance as part of a national history.”
—Hong Kong Review of Books

“[Gopal] mounts a powerful challenge to the notion that anticolonial resistance was born of an education in British notions of liberty.”
—Adom Getachew, London Review of Books

“Gopal’s meticulously researched study is a major contribution to the historiography of the British Empire, as notable for its research as it is for its lucid, forceful prose.”
—Chandak Sengoopta, Journal of British Studies

“Incisive … Insurgent Empire demonstrates how often critics have hacked at the pedestals of imperial pieties, and how consistently voices outside Britain have inspired them.”
—Maya Jasanoff, New Yorker

“A compelling account of how anti-colonial ideas were repeatedly re-litigated in the face of fierce opposition and shows the tireless work of these groups and individuals in slowly constructing and deconstructing concepts of liberty and equality.”
—Michael Taster, LSE Review of Books: Best Books of 2020

“Excellent … Gopal’s exploration of the interplaybetween anti-colonial resistance in India, the West Indies and Britain deploys biography, history and cultural studies to support her persuasive argument that the colonies were not just the passive recipient of Britain’s “civilising mission” but also the sources of a more refined understanding of key principles like equality and freedom.”
—Ferdinand Dennis, Big Issue

“Few academics are doing so much, and so boldly, to expose how the legacy of empire continues to warp our thinking and institutions.”
—Prospect: The world’s top 50 thinkers 2021

“Wonderful … turn[s] upside down the cliched and self-serving argument that British imperialism brought ‘western’ ideas of democracy and freedom to their poor benighted black and brown subjects in the colonies”
—Neil Rogall, rs21