The British Empire was built and sustained on coercion and systematic violence. It's time to be honest about that fact.

One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink. By Matthew Parker. PublicAffairs; 624 pages; $35. Abacus; £25 Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain. By Charlotte Lydia Riley. Bodley Head ...

NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Matthew J. Smith, director of the Center for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London, about the commonwealth's complicated history. The ...

Those of us who went to school before our past was rewritten as a catalog of the White Man’s crimes were taught that empire—with all its vices and virtues—was built by monarchs and statesmen. In ...

Some see Queen Elizabeth II's death as an opportunity to acknowledge the struggles of those who were affected by British ...

Histories of imperialism, especially the European imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries, were long dominated by purportedly neutral accounts that sanitized the often bloody practice. More ...

For anti-colonial thinkers of the last century, decolonization was not a mere transfer of power. It was about reparation, including repair of the self. “Decolonization is the veritable creation of new ...

For many residents of the United Kingdom, the death of Queen Elizabeth II has prompted questions about how the country is transitioning—substantively and symbolically—into a new era. Elizabeth ...

Seeing the late queen only as a benevolent force contributes to the whitewashing of the history of the British Empire. On Thursday, Queen Elizabeth II died at 96. An outpouring of sympathy from world ...

While some in Africa paid tribute to the deceased monarch, others stressed Britain’s violent colonial history on the continent. By Abdi Latif Dahir Lynsey Chutel and Elian Peltier NAIROBI, Kenya — ...