The title comes from Churchill's famous quote in 1943 'The empires of the future would be the empires of the mind'.
This is an amazing book exploring the colonial pasts of Britain and France. This systematically breaks the colonial idea of global peace and harmony expected out of this colonisation. There was so much to hide that all the colonial atrocities were masked under the lame excuse of liberation, and civilisation. The whole narrative of freedom and equality which was mythically created by these powers never saw the light in the their colonies. The colonies only knew the brutalities and exploitation.
I'll not go into the details which are already given in the book as how the two colonial masters kept the colonies (Africa, India, Egypt etc) under their domination by power, manipulation and lie. They not only refused to let go of the colonies but also created new devices to keep the control over them even after the transfer of autonomy.
The narrative extends to the roles of UN, world wars, new financial systems, neo-colonialism (under the garb of supporting and later keeping the national assets under direct control), and even to Brexit and the new superiority theories. This led to massive unrest when the people revolted against the puppet governments, and loss of sovereignty.
The power unfortunately remained among the larger nations who used it to serve their own vested interests. This unnatural distribution of power gave birth to the aggression in the suppressed societies and its population, which in turn generated the sense of exclusion and alienation of masses in native population and immigrants alike who started looking for the meaning in the religion and radicalisation.
This is definitely worth the read.
Peace
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