An award-winning intellectual reconsiders the role of historians in political debate and the legacy of the British Empire.
Priya Satia is the award-winning author of Spies in Arabia and Empire of Guns. The Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of British History at Stanford University, she has written for the Financial Times, The Nation, Washington Post, and other outlets.
Much of the best scholarship today is distinguished by a vigorous
and sustained challenge to old imperialist verities. Priya Satia's
Time's Monster, which comes out of a long, if
little-noticed, intellectual counter-tradition in Asia and Europe,
bracingly describes how our moral and political imagination
became so constrained and how it could be liberated -- Pankaj
Mishra * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
Vital. . . a coruscating and important reworking of
the relationship between history, historians and empire -- Kenan
Malik * Observer *
Phenomenal . . . in asking how British men felt able to
justify running an empire rooted in violence and systemic
inequality, Satia's discussion of this ethical conundrum runs
into wonderfully imaginative, even astronomical and spiritual
spaces -- Priya Atwal * BBC History Magazine *
Priya Satia's book dazzles by its brilliance but also points
to other enigmas and mysteries that historians have to confront and
unravel * The Wire *
Turns the lens on history as a subject, asking how we have told the
story of empire in the past. Satia offers a scholarly and
analytical interpretation of how historians themselves have framed
the ways that empire is understood in British history writing -
from John Stuart Mill to EP Thompson -- Yasmin Khan * BBC History
Magazine, Books of the Year *
A meditative, intensive and sweeping critique of the discipline
of history . . . an important book * History Today *
Not only a sweeping account of the British Empire over the past
three centuries, but also an ambitious intellectual history,
touching on everything from the Mahabharata to Marx, and from
Shakespeare to Said. . . This urgent and compelling book
encourages us to listen to different voices, to tell different
stories, and ultimately to rethink what it means to be a
historian and to engage critically and imaginatively with the past
-- Kim Wagner, author of Amritsar 1919
In this searing book, Priya Satia demonstrates, yet again,
that she is one of our most brilliant and original
historians. Time's Monster casts new light on the
British Empire by homing in on a fundamental question --how did
'good' men, acutely concerned with their consciences, preside over
systematic exploitation and repeated atrocities? Satia shows that
only if we grapple with the complicity of historians in assuaging
their moral qualms can we confront empire's darkest legacies in our
troubled world -- Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
Deeply thought-provoking and incisively argued, Time's
Monster is sure to become a classic for anyone
interested in European empires and the role of history in shaping
human behaviour. In this extraordinary book, Priya Satia weaves
wide-ranging evidence into a lively narrative, proving
incontrovertibly why she is one of the most important historians
of our time. -- Caroline Elkins, author of Imperial
Reckoning
A pathbreaking study of the historical imagination's
founding in colonialism. Moving from historical counternarratives
to anti-historical thinking and poetry, Priya Satia guides us
through important new ways of understanding the imperial past and
its effects on our shared future. -- Faisal Devji, author of The
Impossible Indian
A deeply insightful account of the way historical thinking
informs the exercise of power. If historians are to play a positive
role in the struggle to bend the arc of human history away from
tyranny and toward justice, the lessons of this book should weigh
heavily on our collective conscience. But more than that, this work
is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how the way
we know the past shapes our future possibilities -- Vincent
Brown, author of Tacky's Revolt
A magisterial account of the role of history in the making of
the British Empire. At a moment of chronic hand-wringing over
the decline of the historical profession and the crisis of the
humanities, Time's Monster is an especially welcome addition
for understanding how history can be used and misused. -- Dinyar
Patel, author of Naoroji
History writing once burnished the monument of imperial progress,
and continues to do so for many audiences today. In her
brilliant and coruscating account of the uses of history in
the making and unmaking of the British empire, Priya Satia offers a
striking new way of confronting the problems that continue to
plague contemporary societies. This is a bravura performance
-- Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough
As people around the globe struggle against a world order that owes
its existence to rampant resource exploitation and dehumanizing
beliefs about racial hierarchies, Priya Satia has given us a
timely and powerful reminder about the complicity of
history, as a discipline, in the making of that order. -- Jacob
Dlamini, author of The Terrorist Album
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