(New) The Crimes of British Imperialism

Looking at the state of Britain today, it can be hard to believe that it was once the metropolis of the largest empire in history. Yet it indeed was, and wherever Union Jack once flew, deep running scars of the past crimes and atrocities can be found. The task of the communists is to uncover these, not for the sake of mere cataloguing, but to deepen our understanding of the enemy – the entire capitalist system in its stage of imperialism. After all, to be effective anti-imperialists, we must first understand what it is that we’re fighting against.

The booklet, printed as part of our Books not Bombs campaign, provides a multitude of newly written articles (in addition to a few previously printed in The Communist, or by marxist.com) covering a very wide array of topics, which can easily serve as the basis for political discussions:

• Introduction – Peter Kwasiborski
• A brief history of the East India Company – Mia Foley Doyle
• The partition of India: how Britain divided the subcontinent – Ravi Mistry
• Britain’s role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade – Nye Shaw
• First among robbers: the Scramble for Africa – Keelan Kellegher
• Mau Mau Uprising – how the British mutilated Kenya – Sarah Vedrovitch
• The Middle East and the Sykes-Picot Treaty: A Poisonous Legacy – Alan Woods
• A history of British imperialism in Iran – Stan Laight
• 1956 Suez Crisis: the death of an empire – Steve Jones
• The Malayan ‘Emergency’ – Nick Oung
• Indonesia: how British spies helped destroy the Communist Party – Oliver Brotherton
• Opium Wars: when Britain was the biggest drug dealer in history – Daniel Morley
• Palace plots and a ‘constitutional coup’: how the monarchy brought down Australia’s most progressive government – Oliver Brotherton