‘Historians were key architects of empire’, writes Priya Satia, in her meditative, intensive and sweeping critique of the discipline of history. Questions of agency and intention have long been at the heart of historical explanation and critique, but Satia wishes to expose the historian’s inner voice and conscience. She foregrounds a long lineage of British historians, from Adam Smith to E.P. Thompson at the two ends of this book. Between them, she tracks how debates about good and bad, war and peace, sin and redemption, self-control and violent intervention have recurred. In excavatin...