Ashley Jackson (historian)

Ashley Jackson is a professor of imperial and military history in the Defence Studies Department at King's College London and a visiting fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Jackson is a specialist in the history of the British Empire. He argued in 2013 that historians have even extended to a third and fourth empire:

The first British Empire was largely destroyed by the loss of the American colonies, followed by a 'swing to the east' and the foundation of a second British Empire based on commercial and territorial expansion in South Asia. The third British Empire was the construction of a 'white' dominion power bloc in the international system based on Britain's relations with its settler offshoots Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa....The fourth British Empire, meanwhile, is used to denote Britain's rejuvenated imperial focus on Africa and South-East Asia following the Second World War and the independence in 1947-8 of Britain's South Asian dependencies, when the Empire became a vital crutch in Britain's economic recovery.