This is a useful book that gathers together many of Dane Kennedy's stimulating essays on imperial British history published between 1996 and 2016. Most are still readily accessible, including the essay that gives the collection its title, “The Imperial History Wars,” (Journal of British Studies 54, no. 1 [2015]: 5–22). There are two new essays and an introduction, which add value and ensure that the whole is greater than its parts.

There is much in this collection to admire and emulate. The Imperial History Wars is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students and teachers of British imperial history, and it will be well mined for lectures, essays, and reading lists. Here are sharply argued and stylish historiographical essays on imperial history and postcolonial theory (chapter 1); the five-volume Oxford History of the British Empire, which appeared in 1998–99 (chapter 2); imperial history and postcolonial studies (chapter 3); exploration and, particularly, geography (chapter 4—this is also the subject of Kennedy's 2013 The Last Blank Spaces, on exploration of Africa and Australia); the white man's world (chapter 5), a critique of British world studies; decolonization (chapter 6), which neatly summarizes the work of the International Decolonization Seminar, held under the auspices of the National History Center of the American Historical Association; the American empire and its British roots (chapter 7); comparisons with other empires (chapter 8), originally a review essay on Julian Go's Patterns of Empire (2011); the imperial history wars (chapter 9); and a new essay that forms the epilogue.

Selecting titbits from such a rich array is challenging, but I start at the end. In the epilogue, “Does British History Matter Anymore? Reflections on the Age of Brexit and Trump,” Kennedy affirms the centrality of British history and the history of its empire for three key stakeholders: Americans of the right who see themselves as the heirs to Churchill; Britons on the right who see Brexit as an opportunity to revive a lost empire; and specialist British historians, whose role is to “get that history right” (154) to keep the politicians honest. This neatly summarizes both the allure and the challenge of British Empire studies.

Kennedy is thus disarmingly frank about the appeal of a certain kind of imperial history (the sort covered in all but one of the chapters of this book), to an older political mainstream. While historians would obviously like to think we have the power to influence elites, the opposite is more likely to be the case. In a field of rapidly moving political allegiances, there is no fixed point from which to survey the lessons of the past and offer sage advice on the future, though we can try. Younger historians nevertheless are more engaged with writing the histories of rising postcolonial nations, transnational identities, and the new environmental and spatial histories than they are older empires. The British world appears to have had its moment, and as Rachel Bright and Andrew Dilley argue, more pertinent perspectives on postcolonialism and the encounter with indigenous peoples are offered by whiteness studies, settler colonialism, or a newly configured imperial history (Rachel K. Bright and Andrew R. Dilley, “After the British World,” Historical Journal 60, no. 2 [2017]: 547–68). An imperial history concerned with the archaeology of the special relationship is challenged on every British campus for its relevance.

Kennedy's vantage point is that of leader of the profession and the current director of the National History Center. His introduction to The Imperial History Wars came in the aftermath of what he calls “two political earthquakes that shook Britain and the United States” (149)—namely the outcome of the British referendum on leaving the European Union in 2016 and the victory of Donald Trump five months later.

From the vantage point of this reviewer in February 2020, things have changed; the British retreat from empire has become a rout. The United Kingdom began the process of leaving the European Union after an election that hinged on the need to implement the referendum. The US Senate acquitted President Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors, perhaps (if I might hold out a hostage to fortune) paving the way for his second term. The lesson for imperial historians is the old one that history holds a mirror to power and at the moment American power continues to rise while British power declines. One consequence is a decline in the status and popularity of British imperial studies on both sides of the Atlantic. For the older debates, Kennedy provides an informed, engaged, and eloquent guide.

On the other hand, it is worth asking what the future holds for post-Brexit imperial British history in the age of Trump. For that we await more essays from this insightful and energetic historian of the Anglo-American embrace.