edwebbempireseminar

"Other countries could write similar books – but they would be much shorter. I don't think anyone could match this, although the Americans had a later start and have been working hard on it in the twentieth century."

The only other nation which has achieved anything approaching the British total, Mr Laycock said, is France – which also holds the unfortunate record for having endured the most British invasions.

Mr Laycock added: "One one level, for the British, it is quite amazing and quite humbling, that this is all part of our history, but clearly there are parts of our history that we are less proud of. The book is not intended as any kind of moral judgment on our history or our empire. It is meant as a light-hearted bit of fun." The countries never invaded by the British: Andorra Belarus Bolivia Burundi Central African Republic Chad Congo, Republic of Guatemala Ivory Coast Kyrgyzstan Liechtenstein Luxembourg Mali Marshall Islands Monaco Mongolia Paraguay Sao Tome and Principe Sweden Tajikistan Uzbekistan Vatican City

In January, almost four years after Moscow's second annexation of Crimea, pro-Russian authorities started restoring the oldest and holiest part of the complex - the Big Khan Mosque built in 1532. They also announced plans to restore the entire palace. But experts, community leaders and Ukrainian officials have lambasted the restoration as the destruction of the complex's authenticity. They call it part of Kremlin's drive to reshape, ban and erase the cultural identity of Crimean Tatars, a Muslim ethnicity of 250,000 that largely resisted Crimea's return to Russia. "This is a blueprint for the restoration of the entire palace," Edem Dudakov, a construction engineer and former official in Crimea's pre-annexation government, told Al Jazeera. "The palace will be lost; what they're building is a sham."

The palace's gradual destruction and "remodelling" exemplifies Russia's fraught relationship with Crimean Tatars. The Turkic-speaking ethnic group once controlled the Great Silk Road's westernmost branch and warred with Moscow for centuries. Crimean Tatars consider the palace the most significant symbol of their lost statehood.

Shortly after the annexation, Moscow banned ATR and several other media outlets. It made Tatar-language kindergartens bilingual and reduced Tatar classes in public schools to two voluntary hours a week

For Sykes, the Allies’ victory in World War One and Zionist ambitions were interlinked. His intent was to secure a strategic base for Britain in the Middle East in the aftermath of the war, thus revealing yet another debate as to whether Sykes was pro-Zionist or cynically using Zionism to secure British and his own interests. The author leans towards the latter. However, it is clear that whatever philosophy Sykes harboured, the Palestinians were merely a pawn in the game and forced into subjugation for a simple reason. If the British had consulted Palestinians over the colonisation of their land, a revolt would have been a natural result. Berdine describes such a reaction as “an inconvenient fact” for Sykes, had his plans been revealed to the indigenous population

Edwin Montagu, British Secretary of State for India and an opponent of the Balfour Declaration. Montagu — the only Jew in the Cabinet when the infamous declaration was written — warned against the British government’s willingness to accommodate more than “liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs.”