The British Empire was an extraordinary and paradoxical entity. North America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australasia and innumerable small islands and territories have been fundamentally shaped - economically, socially and politically - by a nation whose imperial drive came from a bewildering mixture of rapacity and moral zeal, of high-mindedness and viciousness, of strategic cunning and feckless neglect. This account of the rise and fall of the British Empire concentrates on the 19th and 20th centuries, giving the background of the "First British Empire", which was lost with the creation of the United States of America. It relates the importance of the Empire to Britain's success as the only genuine world power in the Victorian era, and its ability to win the two great wars of the 20th century.