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The Empire Never Blamed: How We Got Here
Paperback
Series: How We Got Here, Book 10
Religion General General Political ScienceBritish History
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 31 2026
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.29
Height: 0.27 Width: 5.06 Depth: 7.81
Language: English
If Britain shaped so much of the modern world... why is it almost never blamed for it?
The Israel-Palestine conflict traces back to promises Britain made and never reconciled.
The US-Iran relationship began with an oil dispute and a coup Britain initiated before America became involved.
The borders of Iraq, the partition of India and Pakistan, the Century of Humiliation in China, the division of Ireland, and much of Africa's political geography all bear the fingerprints of the largest empire in history.
Yet when these conflicts dominate today's headlines, Britain is rarely part of the conversation.
Why?
In this tenth book in the How We Got Here series, Lisa Pohovich follows that question wherever the evidence leads. Rather than retelling familiar history, she steps back to examine the decisions that came first - the promises, borders, institutions, and ideas that still shape today's geopolitical crises long after the British Empire officially disappeared.
Along the way, she explores:
- Why Britain is often present at the beginning of history's biggest conflicts, but absent from the blame.
- How colonial borders and political decisions continue to shape the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, and beyond.
- The 1953 coup in Iran, the Balfour Declaration, the partition of India, the Opium Wars, and other pivotal events that remain surprisingly absent from public memory.
- The medieval permission structure that helped justify empire, why the Vatican formally repudiated it in 2023, and why Britain has never issued a comparable acknowledgment.
- How empire evolved rather than simply ended - leaving behind legal systems, financial institutions, political structures, and international relationships that continue to influence the modern world.
This is not a book about assigning every problem to Britain, nor is it an attempt to excuse the actions of nations that came afterward. It is about historical memory, accountability, and understanding the earlier chapters that so often disappear from the story.
Because you cannot understand today's conflicts if you only begin reading halfway through the book.
If you've enjoyed the How We Got Here series, The Empire Never Blamed continues that same journey - peeling back another layer of history to explain why the modern world looks the way it does.
Sometimes the most important actor in history isn't the one everyone is looking at.
It's the one everyone forgot.
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