Britain's Oceanic Empire focuses on the Indian and Atlantic Ocean regions. It raises the following question: Should historians treat these two regions as distinct or as interconnected parts of a broader British colonial world? Such a question is a challenge to historians who interpret the British Empire as a global phenomena constituted by discrete regions. Historians who support this interpretation maintain that Great Britain's settler-based colonies in the Atlantic were fundamentally different from its trade-based ones in the Indian Ocean. In contrast, Britain's Oceanic Empire examines how early modern British colonialism intertwined the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

The editors of Britain's Oceanic Empire use four themes to compare and contrast British colonialism in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Steven Hornsby and H. V. Bowen address trade and navigation patterns. Ken MacMillan, Robert Travers, Philip Stern, and Jerry Bannister focus on imperial sovereignty, governance, and regulation. Wayne Lee, Eric Hinderaker, Michael Fisher, and Douglas Peers write about British military and diplomatic relationships with indigenous groups. Lakshmi Subramanian, Rajat Datta, Paul Grant-Costa, Elizabeth Mancke, and Trevor Burnard describe the sociocommercial impact of the British Empire in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

A variety of contributors to Britain's Oceanic Empire address early modern British colonialism in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans insightfully. Bowen states that imperial historians devote inadequate attention to the South Atlantic. He writes that Rio de Janeiro and St. Helena were “key points in the maritime system of the East India Company” (48). Bowen critiques histories that confine the company to the Indian Ocean. He draws historical attention to ports in the South Atlantic. This attention leads to a fascinating discussion about illicit trade networks. He argues that these networks illustrate how the South Atlantic was more linked to the Indian Ocean than the North Atlantic. Stern is also critical of bifurcating the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. He notes that Britain established its colonies at St. Helena and Bombay through royal rather than indigenous forms of sovereignty. Such sovereignty was “almost identical in form to corporate and proprietary charters in the western Atlantic” (141). This similarity enables Stern to persuasively extend the idea of the plantation colony from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. He presents important insights into how the plantation model relates to law and sovereignty in Bombay.

Bannister's chapter is similarly noteworthy. It extends Edward Said's ideas about orientalism from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. He argues that the British Empire's centralized and coercive character was just as despotic in the Atlantic as its vision of Indian Ocean monarchs. Bannister builds on his argument to make a strong case for transoceanic history. He writes that such histories will allow people to “see the attempted subjugation of diverse peoples . . . not as discrete histories but rather as parts of a larger [British] imperial pattern” (156). Burnard also favors transoceanic history. He discusses North American resentment toward South Asia and Africa owing to “false” commonalities among imperial subjects in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Burnard uses Benjamin Franklin's writings to illustrate how ethnicity was a perceived key commonality between Great Britain and its thirteen colonies. Through British imperial discourses about South Asia and Africa, he discusses how tropical climates in the Indian Ocean negatively transformed this commonality. He also addresses how insensitivity toward this transformation by the British informed sociocultural bitterness in North America.

Bowen, Stern, Bannister, and Burnard sustain their discussion about the Indian and Atlantic Oceans throughout their chapters. However, other chapters do not. Lee's fascinating contribution (on Ireland, Native Americans, and the British military), Hinderaker's interesting chapter (concerning war and failed diplomacy in North America), Peers's insightful work (about bureaucratization and tensions within the company's army), and Datta's robust research (regarding the British failure to curtail indigenous merchant influence) make few—if any—sustained connections between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The chapters by Hornsby (on British settlement types and commercial circuits), MacMillan (concerning royal protections for British subjects), Travers (about overseas British legal regimes), Subramanian (regarding insurance disputes in Bombay's British courts), and Grant-Costa and Mancke (on the British elimination of Native American definitions of territory) are all extremely informative but, largely, restrict their comparative comments to conclusions. This fact is unfortunate because many comparisons within these conclusions would make excellent chapter topics.

Despite a conclusion that analyzes the book's chapters as a whole, Britain's Oceanic Empire inconsistently compares the Indian and Atlantic Ocean regions. This inconsistency raises methodological issues. Some chapters appear to promote what Bowen calls “Atlanto-mytopia” (i.e., a narrow focus on the North Atlantic). Similarly, other chapters restrict the Indian Ocean region to South Asia. Because the East India Company was from Britain, multiple chapters treat it as a simple conduit and/or proxy for the Atlantic region. This assumption is less obvious in chapters that sustain rather than restrict comparisons (e.g., Fisher's insightful contribution on the company, indigenous sovereigns, and Indo-Persian diplomatic protocols in South Asia). Such methodological issues serve to highlight Burnard's statement that historical enthusiasm for connecting the Indian and Atlantic Oceans comes more easily than undertaking “real comparisons between such disparate areas” (409).

Britain's Oceanic Empire is an informative and engaging book. While the book is not likely the definitive text on how British colonialism intertwined the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, it does pose many interesting and important questions. Undoubtedly, such questions will promote further discussions and research about whether the Indian and Atlantic Oceans are two historical worlds or one.