A Star Wars World: The Making of a Media Empire uncovers the deep and often overlooked relationship between Britain and the global Star Wars franchise, revealing how British labour, land, and resources have shaped one of the world's most influential media brands. Drawing on archival research, first-person testimony, and political ecological analysis, Rebecca Harrison reframes Star Wars not simply as a US cultural product but as a transnational industrial enterprise dependent on Britain's imperial infrastructures, extractive economies, and working cultures. By approaching fifty years of Star Wars production through a history-from-below lens, Harrison brings to light voices and experiences usually effaced from franchise histories-below-the-line crew, local communities, and even the wildlife impacted by location shoots.
Harrison documents how Scotland, Wales, and England have contributed to, and been shaped by, Star Wars media-making-from English studios and military-industrial supply chains, to quarry floors, reservoirs, forests, and former industrial sites transformed into alien worlds. She shows how the franchise's production practices are embedded in long-standing hierarchies of class, land ownership, and colonial power, and that these dynamics manifest materially: in the composition of props and costumes, in the logistics of location filming, and in the environmental footprints of everything from aluminium droids to digital effects pipelines. Combining interdisciplinary scholarship with original fieldwork and interviews, Harrison situates Star Wars within broader debates about screen-industry colonialism, labour, extractivism, and Britain's ongoing struggles over land rights and ecological futures.
A Star Wars World offers a critical yet generous account of a franchise that continues to shape global culture. It invites readers to enjoy Star Wars while also understanding the political, ecological, and historical forces that make the saga possible-and profitable. As the franchise approaches its fiftieth anniversary, the book provides an urgently needed reflection on the costs and consequences of blockbuster media-making, and asks how audiences, policymakers, and industry figures might rethink their relationships with franchise entertainment in a time of intensifying social and environmental crisis.