Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

• Documentary

How did Britain come to rule the world? asks Niall Ferguson in Empire. What would today's world be like now if it hadn't? Could such an organisation – run by, according to Winston Churchill, 'the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the ambitious soldier and the lying spectator' – ever have been a force for good?

First aired

9 January 2003

Network

Channel 4