Why are Remainers so obsessed with the British Empire? This may not be the question that naturally springs to mind when contemplating current debates about Brexit. Surely, one might think—and this is a key premise of Robert Gildea's book—it is Leavers who persistently engage in imperial fantasies, conjuring up dreams of a return to a glorious Global Britain. Without a doubt there is a significant strand of opinion that does explicitly want to “get back to being a British Empire again,” to quote one voter interviewed by Sky News in 2018. Yet there are also many Leavers who are baffled and annoyed at pro-European Union commentators’ persistent efforts to tar them with the brush of colonial atavism. These people may well think that the empire has had a rough time at the hands of politically correct historians, but they are well aware, they say, that it is dead and that it is not coming back. Rather, they want to turn the United Kingdom away from its supposedly narrow, parochially European disposition of the last forty years and instead turn outward toward the more dynamic prospects offered by the wider world. According to this argument, Remainers have bees in their bonnets about empire because it is they, not Leavers, who are stuck in the past.

Gildea's critique of the presence of colonial history in the politics of today does not attempt to answer this charge. Instead, it is (in part) a passionate and learned elucidation of the argument that Brexiters are guilty of “arrogance” and “magical thinking” (242) and suffer from a colonialist mindset. “The anguish of losing an empire and the fantasy of rediscovering it came to a head with the referendum of 2016,” he suggests (260). There is much to agree with in what he says, but it seems doubtful that he will win over many who are not already convinced of his basic position. His critique of the Leave side would be more persuasive if it were accompanied by an account of the Remain perspective that was equally clear-sighted and challenging.

But if Gildea is to a great degree preaching to the converted, his book can nonetheless be profitably read for its extensive comparative account of the British and French empires and their afterlives. It is based in part on his Wiles Lectures, delivered at Queen's University Belfast in 2013, and is highly accessible reading. Gildea begins with a brisk summary of the creation and development of the two empires and devotes a chapter to the impact upon them of the world wars before turning to their unwinding and afterlives. There are some fascinating details: for example, the discussion of French attempts to suppress an indigenous nationalist movement in New Caledonia in the 1980s. Gildea labels this “Chirac's Falklands” although he notes that it “did not pay off in the same way” politically (117). It would have been helpful, though, to include more systematic analysis of why France and Britain have taken divergent paths with respect to the European Economic Community, European Community, and European Union. Gildea writes that “while France still managed to reconcile Europe and empire, Britain snubbed Europe in 1957 because it preferred the Empire” (96). He also suggests that, for the French, the message of 1940 “was that France could only survive in a united Europe” (155), whereas in the United Kingdom it fostered the myth of “alone.” However, these are only partial explanations, and one wonders, in fact, how different the two countries really are. In some ways, the Front National (now Rassemblement National) has formed a more sustained challenge to the French political system than UK Independence Party and the Brexit Party have to the British one. After all, in both 2002 and 2017, the Front National broke through to the second round of the presidential election. As Gildea notes, Marine Le Pen (who was the candidate on the second occasion) regards the results of the Brexit referendum as an inspiration (247).

Rather surprisingly, Gildea sees President Emmanuel Macron as the person who is going to divert France from the path down which Le Pen would lead it. “Not beholden to any of the old parties,” he writes of Macron's victory, “he had a free hand to remake France's destiny” (248). Although he acknowledges that it is difficult to gauge if Macron's rejection of colonialism is merely rhetorical, his overall assessment is positive. He contrasts the British government's approach with that of the new French administration: “One was trapped in its own past, the other was inspired by its best examples but had its eyes resolutely on the future” (254). Yet while Macron is undoubtedly clever, he has delusions of grandeur of his own. Let us not dispense with the follies of Empire 2.0 only to repose all our confidence in the ability of a Great Man to change the course of history.