Distant Drums

"Distant Drums" reveals how colonies were central to the defence of the British Empire and the command of the oceans that underpinned it. It blends sweeping overviews of the nature of imperial defence with grass-roots explanations of how individual colonies were mobilised for war, drawing on the author's specialist knowledge of the Indian Ocean and colonies such as Bechuanaland, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Swaziland. This permits the full and dramatic range of action involved in imperial warfare -- f