A History of Britain by Simon Schama: The Empire of Good Intentions

Simon Schama investigates how the noble ideals behind the British Empire failed to match the reality. While British society believed it was delivering the benefits of modern Western civilisation, in truth the inhabitants of India and Ireland suffered privation due to a laissez-faire economic policy. Mutiny, famine and lack of religious sensitivity drove a wedge between Britons and Indians, while the great potato famines of the 1840s caused mass migration from Ireland to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand