The Great Defiance: How the world took on the British Empire

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Powerfully argues...how a colonial narrative of "they came, they saw, they conquered" erases centuries of indigenous (and enslaved) agency...This wide-ranging book will hopefully shift Britain's toxic public debate about empire Irish Times The “success” of early resistance to English imperialism, he argues, was in large part due to the weakness of the English state and its colonial entities. With “the Glorious Revolution” and the act of union with Scotland, Britain gained the “political and religious stability, and fiscal and commercial effectiveness” to more effectively project its strength globally.

However, the author writes with the single formula: "Natives good, Europe bad". The book could have told a stunning narrative that humanity, no matter which continent it was birthed, is neither good nor bad. They all fought for conquest, they all tried to build empires (however they might have looked or been called) and all engaged in acts that could be considered immoral. Veevers' writing style is a delight to behold. Each sentence is carefully crafted, effortlessly blending eloquence with accessibility. The prose carries a certain cadence, drawing readers deeper into the narrative and allowing them to visualize the grandeur and significance of historical events. Whether describing decisive battles or intimate interactions, Veevers' words evoke emotions and create a powerful connection between the reader and the subject matter. Veevers starts with a bang, claiming that the British Empire, once hailed as the epitome of global domination, was actually a series of epic fails. According to Veevers, the British were like a bunch of kids playing a game of conqueror, constantly tripping over their own shoelaces and stumbling into defeat. It's hard to believe that the same British Empire that once spanned continents and boasted "the sun never sets" was actually a comedy of errors led by the Keystone Cops of colonialism, but Veevers insists on this farcical narrative with a straight face. In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with esteemed historian David Veevers to discuss his latest work, "The Great Defiance." Beyond the usual tales of empire-building and domination, Veevers sheds light on the often overlooked stories of those who stood up, resisted, and defied the might of English and later British colonizers throughout the early modern period. Together, we delve deep into the rich tapestry of histories that highlight the resilience, courage, and tenacity of communities across the globe. Through "Defiant Empire," Veevers challenges traditional narratives, pushing listeners to reconsider what they thought they knew about colonization. Join us as we embark on a journey that re-centers the experiences and voices of the defiant, and offers a fresh perspective on a chapter of history too crucial to be forgotten.

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The ‘indigenous and non-European peoples’ (Veevers’ preferred formulation, allowing him to include the Irish), meanwhile, are his heroes. Their societies were more equitable, even ‘classless’; their cultures more vibrant; their purses heftier and their castles grander; even their empires less ‘amateur’ than those of the English. That they ‘proved remarkably resilient when challenged’ by these English upstarts was, says Veevers, a ‘good thing, too’.

Maratha soldiers fighting the British at Fort Talneir during the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1819). The Maratha empire had developed a sophisticated military culture that fiercely resisted British imperialism. Image: Wikimedia Commons Works of history are sometimes criticised for being insufficiently forthcoming in their arguments. No such criticism will be levelled against David Veevers’ The Great Defiance: How the World Took On the British Empire. His second book is as provocative as it is wide-ranging. Bouncing from Ireland to India, from the Caribbean Sea to the Sea of Japan, it tells the story of how the English, later the British, were resisted and evaded, outflanked and outplayed, by the peoples, kingdoms, and empires which they encountered between 1500 and 1800.

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Published "Inhabitants of the Universe": Global Families, Kinship Networks and the Formation of the Early Modern Colonial State in Asia The Great Defiance is a great read. It is well researched, engagingly written and gives a great insight of the empire from an external angle. The Irish never stopped resisting the English,” Veevers writes of the 17th and 18th centuries, but it is hard to fit O’Neill’s dynastic absolutism, the Catholic gentry’s royalist loyalism in the English civil war, and Henry Grattan’s sectarian ascendancy parliament into one narrative of national resistance (never mind the Irish soldiers and officials who helped spread the emerging British empire across the world). The vast and shifting conflicts of the 1640s in particular – the focus of recent decades of research in early modern Irish history – are almost entirely absent. Lively, engaging...the breadth of his scope, spanning four continents over three centuries and drawing on a dazzling range of scholarship and primary sources, is novel...this is history for the real world now BBC History Magazine

That distinction between states and people is important. Dahomey’s “independence” from European powers, after all, was built through the brutal conquest of its neighbours, and by “seizing control of the trade in enslaved people for [its] own benefit”. Grouping a huge range of “indigenous and non-European power” together perhaps reinforces British imperial perspectives rather than undermining them: the common thread between the displaced Kalinago and the mighty Mughals is that they encountered the English. Brexit Britain is in the grip of a “history war” in which right-wing media, politicians and commentators are intent on defending the empire’s “legacy” from an academic and cultural shift towards “decolonisation”. Victorian myths about the “civilising” power of empire have been hamfistedly resurrected. While some historians prefer to ignore such politicised “debate”, Veevers is determined to take it on. It is quite surprising, then, to discover that the book relies so heavily on the very ‘colonial authors’ whom it derides. Whether for want of linguistic competence or paucity of source material, we hear much more in Veevers’ book from the European colonisers than from their victims (if ‘victims’ is indeed the appropriate word: this of course gets to the heart of one of the book’s tensions).

Veevers, D.& Pettigrew, W., 2018, The Corporation as a Protagonist in Global History, c.1550 - 1750. Veevers, D. & Pettigrew, W. (eds.). Brill, Vol. 16. p. 1-42 42 p. A deft weaving of global trade and local imperatives that is at once compelling, thought-provoking, and occasionally harrowing, The Great Defiance skillfully reorients our perspective on the received history of the earliest days of English trade and colonial ambitions and the emergent British Empire. Professor Nandini Das