Talented young historian Maya Jasanoff tells an alternative history of the British Empire, one that brings us the very personal stories of those British people who found themselves on the edges of Empire. Instead of a story of 'conquest', she brings us startling and fascinating stories of cross-cultural exchange.

A Palladian mansion filled with western art in the centre of old Calcutta, the Mughal Emperor's letters in an archive in the French Alps, the names of Italian adventurers scratched into the walls of Egyptian temples. In this imaginative book, Maya Jasanoff delves into the stories behind artefacts like these to uncover the lives of collectors in India and Egypt who lived on the frontiers of European empire. Edge of Empire traces their exploits to tell an intimate history of imperialism.

Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire tells a story about the making of European empires, one that breaks away from the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance, to delve into the personal dimensions of imperialism. She asks what people brought to imperial frontiers and what they took away, and what motives drove them, whether ambition, opportunism, curiosity, or greed. This rich and compelling book enters a world where people lived, loved, and died, and identified with each other across cultures a lot more than our prejudices about 'Empire' might suggest.