In the full statement of his theme in the chapter called 'Perspectives', Cannadine, for all his unfailing courtesy to individual named scholars, fires off a canister of grape shot into the serried ranks of anonymous historians and others who seek to 'approach and recover' the past 'through the stereotypical and unequal collectivities' of race, class or gender . He urges those who see race as determining all to reflect that 'past societies and empires, predicated on individual inequality, had ways of dealing with race that contemporary societies, dedicated to collective equality, do not'