(Winner of the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize and a Book of the Year in the Economist, the Guardian and the Sunday Times) The talented historian who also wrote 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize finalist Liberty"s Exiles, Maya Jasanoff here offers an alternative history of the British Empire. The book is not an account of conquest, but rather a collection of intriguing, sometimes startling accounts of cross-cultural exchange from those who found themselves on the edges of the British Empire. From a Palladian mansion filled with Western art in the center of old Calcutta to the names of Italian adventurers scratched into the walls of Egyptian temples, Jasanoff delves into the stories behind artifacts like these to uncover the lives of collectors in India and Egypt.