James Lawrence. The Rise and fall of the British Empire

New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. — 890 p. "The present day demography, economy and political life of North America and much of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific owes much to former British rule and influence. English is the most widely spoken global language, and
the governance, everyday lives and habits of mind of hundreds of millions of men and women have been shaped by prolonged contact with Britain and
its values. For better or worse, the modern, post-imperial world is the product of that age of empires which extended from the early sixteenth to
the early twentieth centuries. Britain got most, in every sense, from this surge of European expansion."