Time's Monster

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 *
Fearless … A book that puts the historian’s craft to brilliant use in examining the philosophical and conceptual foundations of the discipline of History – Amitav Ghosh
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

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.

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