Notes on contributorsIntroductionPart I: Liberal historiesKaren O’Brien, ‘Empire, history and emigration: From enlightenment to liberalism’Theodore Koditschek, ‘Narrative time and racial/evolutionary time in nineteenth century British Liberal imperial history’Marilyn Lake, ‘“Essentially Teutonic”: E A Freeman, Liberal race historian. A transnational perspective’C. A. Bayly, ‘Empires and Indian Liberals’Part II: Twentieth-century historiesSaul Dubow, ‘Keith Hancock, race, and empire’Bill Schwarz, ‘“Englishry”: The histories of G. M. Trevelyan’John MacKenzie, ‘Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English worlds? The historiography of a four nations approach to the history of the British empire’Sonya O. Rose, ‘Who are we now? Writing the postwar “nation”, 1948–2001’Part III: The time of the presentKathleen Wilson, ‘The nation without: Practices of sex and state in the early modern British empire’Antoinette Burton, ‘Getting outside of the global: Re-positioning British imperialism in world history’Geoff Eley, ‘Imperial imaginary, colonial effect: Writing the colony and the metropole together’Index

The essays in this collection show how histories written in the past, in different political times, dealt with, considered, or avoided and disavowed Britain’s imperial role and issues of difference.Ranging from enlightenment historians to the present, these essays consider both individual historians, including such key figures as E. A. Freeman, G. M. Trevelyan and Keith Hancock, and also broader themes such as the relationship between liberalism, race and historiography and how we might re-think British history in the light of trans-national, trans-imperial and cross-cultural analysis. ‘Britishness’ and what ‘British’ history is have become major cultural and political issues in our time. But as these essays demonstrate, there is no single national story: race, empire and difference have pulsed through the writing of British history.The contributors include some of the most distinguished historians writing today: C. A. Bayly, Antoinette Burton, Saul Dubow, Geoff Eley, Theodore Koditschek, Marilyn Lake, John M. MacKenzie, Karen O’Brien, Sonya O. Rose, Bill Schwarz, Kathleen Wilson.