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Meaning
The quote says that support for empire and a desire to stay apart from outside affairs have both been recurring tendencies in British and American history. It suggests these two impulses are not opposites that appear only once, but patterns that have repeatedly existed alongside each other. The wording presents imperial ambition and isolationism as alternating or coexisting features of national history.
When It Was Said
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Who It Was Said To
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Historical Context
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Source
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Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
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About Linda Colley
British academic and historian
Linda Colley is a British academic and historian of British, imperial, and global history from 1700. She is the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University, and has also held professorships at Yale University and the London School of Economics. Her work often uses interdisciplinary methods to examine the making of Britain and its place in wider imperial and global contexts. She is known for scholarship that connects political, cultural, and historical questions across long spans of modern history.
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