"Brilliant and original. . . . Colley offers a challenge to the traditional tale of Imperial Britain's rise." --
Los Angeles Times Book Review "Brilliantly corrective. . . . a book of wise topicality." --Julian Barnes,
Times Literary Supplement "Illuminating. . . . Colley shows how the stories of British captives helped shape the literature, politics and public opinion of the time." --
The Washington Post Book World
"This is a scholarly book that deserves a popular success, and what it amounts to is a revisionist history of the British empire itself. . . . provocative and indeed brilliant." --
The Boston Globe "This is the kind of history book that could not have been written a generation ago . . . Linda Colley . . . is a completely original intelligence." --
Financial Times "Engaging, gracefully written. . . . Sharp-eyed. . . . There is marvelous detail on every page." --
The New York Times Book Review "
Captives is another important and beautifully written book by this first-rank British historian."
--Irish Times "A sort of
White Teeth version of imperial history. . . . A completely original intelligence."--
The Financial Times "A brilliantly illuminating study by one of Britain's most distinguished historians."--
New Statesman "Consistently enlightening. . . . An insightful and stimulating book that presents history with a fresh perspective." --
BookPage "Innovative.... Colley brings a contemporary edge to her writing... [She is] one of the most interesting historians at work today." --
Wilson Quarterly "Colley's fascinating book links captivity with imperial expansion and underscores the Britons' ultimate dependence on loyal 'natives.'" --
The New York Review of Books "
Captives is an invitation to think again about an old story too often told in the same old way... It is a book which should alter the way in which the history not only of the British, but of all the European empires is written." --
London Review of Books "Superb... coruscating." --
Independent on Sunday (London) "Abounds in fascinating human stories and constantly requires the reader to reconsider accepted dogma." --
Daily Telegraph (London) "Sublimely well written: cunningly paced, beguilingly fluent, deftly allusive, vividly evocative. It is a major contribution to understanding the paradox of the British: the weak who wangled the earth." --
Literary Review "Linda Colley is a great storyteller and she breathes life into the manuscripts she has discovered by captives in the early days of the Empire." --
The Observer (London) "Dexterous, wonderfully subtle." --
The Sunday Times "This fine, thought-provoking book - at once readable and educative - is crammed full of telling insights." --
Sunday Telegraph "Stunningly revisionist... Almost every page of
Captives challenges a settled orthodoxy or opens up a fertile new field for research." --
History Today
Re-examines the history of the British empire from the unusual perspective of the British men and women held captive--literally and figuratively--by those they were sent to conquer, exploring the complex dynamics between invader and invaded, the character of cross-cultural conflicts and collusions, and the meaning of empire, both in the past and present. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.