Ten Cities that Made an Empire

The final embers of the British Empire are dying, but its legacy remains in the lives and structures of the cities which it shaped. Here Tristram Hunt examines the stories and defining ideas of ten of the most important - Boston, Bridgetown, Dublin, Cape Town, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Bombay, Melbourne, New Delhi and twentieth-century Liverpool.

Rejecting standard binary views of the British Empire as 'very good' or 'very bad', Hunt describes the complex processes of exchange and adaptation that collectively shaped the colonial experience - and transformed the culture, economy and identity of the British Isles.