Ebook: The ideological origins of the British Empire

David Armitage makes an outstanding contribution with this history of British conceptions of empire from the 1540s to the 1740s. He sheds new light on major British political thinkers, and the relationship between Protestantism and empire, theories of property, liberty and political economy, and the emergence of the British identity. Winner of the History Today Book of the Year prize for 2000.;Introduction: state and empire in British history -- The empire of Great Britain: England, Scotland and Ireland c. 1542-1612 -- Protestantism and empire: Hakluyt, Purchas and property -- The empire of the seas, 1576-1689 -- Liberty and empire -- The political economy of empire -- Empire and ideology in the Walpolean era.