The Falklands War: An Imperial History is a superbly researched book that convincingly demonstrates how Falklanders and British constituencies sympathetic to the increasingly fragile ideal of a “Greater Britain” helped motivate and shape British military and cultural responses before, during, and after the 1982 Falklands War. Ezequiel Mercau has researched and interviewed key groups ordinarily ignored in existing, predominant “great men” Falklands War historiography, including the home nations (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), the Falklanders themselves, and Argentina's Anglo-Argentine community. The Falklands War is not without its issues: its title arguably is misleading; it makes several sweeping claims concerning Britain's postwar international influence that ignores recent scholarly debates; and it generally discusses the Falklands issue and conceptions of Britishness in isolation from contemporaneous debates in France and the Netherlands concerning the future of their similarly small, sometimes contested, but broadly loyal island colonial territories that fell afoul of the United Nations List of Non-Self-Governing States. But these relatively minor criticisms should not detract from what should be essential reading for any Falklands War scholar or, indeed, historian of Cold War Britain.

Mercau sets out to provide substantive and nuanced historical rigor to ongoing, emotionally charged debates concerning the degree to which imperial longing and idealized conceptions of a “Greater Britain”—itself a contested and ill-defined concept—influenced British government and popular responses to Argentina's invasion, Britain's military response, and the War's subsequent narrativization into British popular culture (5–7). To accomplish this sizable task, Mercau researched and interviewed multiple key communities who played essential roles in the Falklands conflict yet had been sidelined in Lawrence Freedman, D. George Boyce, and Lowell Gustafson's respective elite, male-dominated diplomatic, and military studies: Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish constituencies, many of whom were beginning to question their role in a “Greater Britain” as well; the Falklanders themselves, a constituency that, oddly, is often forgotten in otherwise rigorous scholarly research on the conflict; and the similarly neglected Anglo-Argentine community who were forced to contend with armed conflict between their two traditionally closely held cultural identities.

Mercau adroitly argues how, from 1968 onward, the so-called Falklands lobby increasingly pressured a succession of British government and commercial officials not to abandon the islands as an impoverished, strategically irrelevant imperial backwater (38–43). The lobby, which until recently scholars had rarely acknowledged, proved remarkably adept at strategically targeting key officials and emotional heartstrings during the 1970s, when the British government was actively considering transferring the islands to Argentina, potentially through what Neville French (governor 1975–77) privately termed as “euthanasia by generous compensation” (47). Echoing John Darwin's scholarship among others, Mercau's research highlights the critical role of a diverse range of interlocutors, middle-level bureaucrats, and other, often self-interested go-betweens in steering British international (especially imperial and Commonwealth) policy.

Similarly, Mercau is one of the first Falklands scholars to directly address the still-contentious 1981 British Nationality Act, which classified British citizenship into three hierarchical tiers effectively based on “an inheritance of race”: those “with UK-born parents and grandparents” with the “right of abode in the UK”; “British Dependent Territories Citizens”—including the Falklanders—without automatic right of abode or work in the United Kingdom; and all others, collectively lumped together as “Overseas Citizens” (61–64). In so doing, the British government signaled its recognition of the Falklands as a second-class constituency only peripherally part of “Greater Britain” (and thereby signaling to Argentina its increasing disinterest in keeping the Falklands). It would take the Falklands War for Britain to begin amending the 1981 Act, first specifically concerning the Falklands in 1983, and then Hong Kong through the 1980s and 1990s, before finally largely replacing the Act in 2002.

Along with the discussion of the Falklands lobby, Mercau's investigation of Falklanders’ deliberate, increasingly desperate efforts to distinguish themselves as steadfast and loyal “Greater Britons” more in tune with London politics and culture than many domestic Britons stands out for its originality and scholarly importance. In so doing, the Falklanders actively sought to distance themselves from supposedly non-loyal, moral baggage-ridden “Greater Britons” as the White Rhodesians whom “many in Britain” had “disavow[ed]” (80–82). If “Greater Britain” was rapidly shrinking to the realities of the postwar British world, the Falklanders (along with the Gibraltarians) wanted to ensure that they were not left permanently stranded on the outside.

Mercau tackles the issue of the Falklands “Britishness” relative to that of the home nations and their own growing identity debates with aplomb. Mercau's careful exploration of how the Falklands War began stirring up latent existential questions concerning who exactly was British and what that actually meant, is prescient given charged contemporary debates over Britain and Britishness in the age of Brexit. This is a minefield to navigate, and Mercau should be commended for tackling it with scholarly care and qualification. In particular, Mercau acknowledges the complex debates between the four nations concerning who qualified as British, especially a vocal minority of English officials and journalists, including Andrew Faulds, who equated their “Englishness” as the highest form of Britishness, and all others, including the Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Falklanders, as both somehow different and lower on the British cultural hierarchy (88–89).

All books are imperfect. Despite its title, The Falklands War: An Imperial History is not actually an imperial history. It would be better titled “The Falklands War and the Idea of Greater Britain.” There is little discussion of Commonwealth involvement and discourses in the conflict, despite recent scholarship examining Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander responses (for example, Timothy C. Winegard, “Canadian Diplomacy and the 1982 Falklands War,” International History Review 35, no. 1 [2012]: 162–83). Mercau also makes generalized claims concerning “Britain's decreasing global influence” (2). Recent global historical scholarship by Odd Westad and others increasingly distinguish between the inarguable collapse of Britain's formal territorial empire and its shrinking military capabilities (despite maintaining a nuclear deterrent) with its continued global influence through broadcasting, finance, and intelligence. Finally, Mercau isolates his book from contemporaneous debates concerning France, the Netherlands, and their remaining, generally loyal, island colonies. A comparative discussion would have helped readers better contextualize the Falklands debate within broader decolonization discussions.