The Oxford History of the British Empire

According to the publisher, the series "deals with the interaction of British and non-western societies from the Elizabethan era to the late twentieth century, aiming to provide a balanced treatment of the ruled as well as the rulers, and to take into account the significance of the Empire for the peoples of the British Isles".

Published from 2004, the series includes: Max Beloff, reviewing the first two volumes in History Today, praised them for their readability and was pleased that his worry that they would be too anti-imperialist had not been realised.

[4] Saul Dubow in H-Net noted the uneven quality of the chapters in volume III and also the difficulty of such an endeavour given the state of historiography of the British Empire and the impossibility of maintaining a triumphalist tone in the modern era.

[5] Madhavi Kale of Bryn Mawr College, writing in Social History, also felt that the history took a traditional approach to the historiography of the empire and placed the English, and to a lesser extent the Scottish, Irish and Welsh at the centre of the account, rather than the subject peoples of the empire.

Kale summed up her review of volumes III–V of the history by saying it represented "a disturbingly revisionist project that seeks to neutralize ... the massive political and military brutality and repression" of the empire.