About the Author

Dr David Veevers is an award-winning historian and Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bangor, and was formerly a Leverhulme Fellow in the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London. His PhD is from the University of Kent, with work specialising in the British Empire and its role internationally. His acclaimed academic book, The Origins of the British Empire in Asia, 1600 - 1750, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

Reviews

Veevers brilliantly retells the story we thought we knew...Important and thrilling
*Dan Snow*

Underpinned by a breathtaking amount of research...a rollicking read.
*Suzannah Lipscomb*

An important book from an exciting voice
*Sathnam Sanghera*

A provocative book which will ruffle feathers...well argued, thoroughly researched, and engagingly written
*Military History Matters*

Powerfully argues...how a colonial narrative of "they came, they saw, they conquered" erases centuries of indigenous (and enslaved) agency...This wide-ranging book will hopefully shift Britain's toxic public debate about empire
*Irish Times*

Lively, engaging...the breadth of his scope, spanning four continents over three centuries and drawing on a dazzling range of scholarship and primary sources, is novel...this is history for the real world now
*BBC History Magazine*

A deft weaving of global trade and local imperatives that is at once compelling, thought-provoking, and occasionally harrowing, The Great Defiance skillfully reorients our perspective on the received history of the earliest days of English trade and colonial ambitions and the emergent British Empire.
*Professor Nandini Das*