The twelve studies of empire-building and empire-builders which make up this volume range widely across the dream world that was the British Empire from the late eighteenth century to the Second World War. The essays re-interpret the work of imperial heroes, eminent historians, and fictional heroines. They illustrate the variety of techniques used by British empire-builders and the variety of explanations they gave to account for their sometimes infamous behaviour.

The world's first known empires took shape in Mesopotamia between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, beginning around 2350 BCE. The next 2,500 years witnessed sustained imperial growth, bringing a growing share of humanity under the control of ever-fewer states. Two thousand years ago, just four major powers--the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han empires--ruled perhaps two-thirds of the earth's entire population. Yet despite empires' prominence in the early history of civilization, there have been surprisingly few attempts to study the dynamics of ancient empires in the western Old World comparatively. Such grand comparisons were popular in the eighteenth century, but scholars then had only Greek and Latin literature and the Hebrew Bible as evidence, and necessarily framed the problem in different, more limited, terms. Near Eastern texts, and knowledge of their languages, only appeared in large amounts in the later nineteenth century. Neither Karl Marx nor Max Weber could make much use of this material, and not until the 1920s were there enough archaeological data to make syntheses of early European and west Asian history possible. But one consequence of the increase in empirical knowledge was that twentieth-century scholars generally defined the disciplinary and geographical boundaries of their specialties more narrowly than their Enlightenment predecessors had done, shying away from large questions and cross-cultural comparisons. As a result, Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to address these deficits and encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE. A substantial introductory discussion of recent thought on the mechanisms of imperial state formation prefaces the five newly commissioned case studies of the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Roman, and Byzantine empires. A final chapter draws on the findings of evolutionary psychology to improve our understanding of ultimate causation in imperial predation and exploitation in a wide range of historical systems from all over the globe. Contributors include John Haldon, Jack Goldstone, Peter Bedford, Josef Wiesehöfer, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel, and Keith Hopkins, whose essay on Roman political economy was completed just before his death in 2004.

Weaving U.S. history into the larger fabric of world history, the contributors to Crossing Empires de-exceptionalize the American empire, placing it in a global transimperial context. They draw attention to the breadth of U.S. entanglements with other empires to illuminate the scope and nature of American global power as it reached from the Bering Sea to Australia and East Africa to the Caribbean. With case studies ranging from the 1830s to the late twentieth century, the contributors address topics including diplomacy, governance, anticolonialism, labor, immigration, medicine, religion, and race. Their transimperial approach—whether exemplified in examinations of U.S. steel corporations partnering with British imperialists to build the Ugandan railway or the U.S. reliance on other empires in its governance of the Philippines—transcends histories of interimperial rivalries and conflicts. In so doing, the contributors illuminate the power dynamics of seemingly transnational histories and the imperial origins of contemporary globality. Contributors. Ikuko Asaka, Oliver Charbonneau, Genevieve Clutario, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Michel Gobat, Julie Greene, Kristin L. Hoganson, Margaret D. Jacobs, Moon-Ho Jung, Marc-William Palen, Nicole M. Phelps, Jay Sexton, John Soluri, Stephen Tuffnell

Engineers are empire-builders. Watt, Brunel, and others worked to build and expand personal and business empires of material technology and in so doing these engineers also became active agents of political and economic empire. This book provides a fascinating exploration of the cultural construction of the large-scale technologies of empire.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain celebrated its possession of a unique "empire of liberty" that propagated the rule of private property, free trade, and free labor across the globe. The British also knew that their empire had been built by conquering overseas territories, trading slaves, and extorting tribute from other societies. Set in the context of the early-modern British Empire, Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism paints a striking picture of these tensions between the illiberal origins of capitalism and its liberal imaginations in metropolitan thought. Onur Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy and political theory to examine the impact of colonial economic relations on the development of liberal thought in Britain. He shows how a liberal self-image for the British Empire was constructed in the face of the systematic expropriation, exploitation, and servitude that built its transoceanic capitalist economy. The resilience of Britain's self-image was due in large part to the liberal intellectuals of empire, such as John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and their efforts to disavow the violent transformations that propelled British colonial capitalism. Ince forcefully demonstrates that liberalism as a language of politics was elaborated in and through the political economic debates around the contested meanings of private property, market exchange, and free labor. Weaving together intellectual history, critical theory, and colonial studies, this book is a bold attempt to reconceptualize the historical relationship between capitalism, liberalism, and empire in a way that continues to resonate with our present moment.

The Horn of Africa is a deeply troubled region engulfed in three interlocking crises. The first is a security crisis characterized by a range of devastating inter-state and inter-communal conflicts, including civil wars. The second is an economic crisis, evidenced by widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity, and frequent cycles of famines. The effects of the third - environmental - crisis are all too visible in the droughts, deforestation and desertification ravaging the region. What is more, these three crises are mutually reinforcing locking the region into a cycle of disaster. Conflicts contribute to poverty, which in turn intensifies environmental degradation, leading to scarcities which fuel further conflicts. In this clear and authoritative guide, Kidane Mengisteab explores the key drivers of instability in the Horn of Africa, suggesting structural and institutional changes that - if implemented - could help lift the region out of crisis. The Horn’s complex crises must be tackled in a comprehensive manner. But, he contends, this can only be achieved if the causes of conflict are addressed head-on. Without peace, the region cannot resolve its economic problems, and nor can it develop the capabilities required to cope with environmental change. The Horn of Africa will be essential reading for students and scholars in conflict and security studies, as well as anyone with an interest in learning more about the dynamics of this troubled region

The role and economic power of corporations that dominate the world economy has generated considerable controversy. The most heated debate and the most critical questions surrounding the role of multinational corporations relate to foreign direct investment (FDI). This key volume offers an entirely fresh perspective of the role of multinationals and the development impact of FDI. Contrary to prevailing opinion, it examines whether imperialism is a much more useful concept for describing and explaining the dynamics of world development than globalization. FDI is a mechanism for empire-centred capital accumulation, a powerful lever for political control and for re-ordering the world economy. This is a much needed analysis of global capitalism and its impact around the world, resulting in an excellent resource for students, academics and activists.

Empires, the largest political systems of the ancient and early modern world, powerfully transformed the lives of people within and even beyond their frontiers in ways quite different from other, non-imperial societies. Appearing in all parts of the globe, and in many different epochs, empires invite comparative analysis - yet few attempts have been made to place imperial systems within such a framework. This book brings together studies by distinguished scholars from diverse academic traditions, including anthropology, archaeology, history and classics. The empires discussed include case studies from Central and South America, the Mediterranean, Europe, the Near East, South East Asia and China, and range in time from the first millennium BC to the early modern era. The book organises these detailed studies into five thematic sections: sources, approaches and definitions; empires in a wider world; imperial integration and imperial subjects; imperial ideologies; and the afterlife of empires.

A comprehensive account of two of the most important empires in medieval North AfricaThis is the first book in English to provide a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of the Almoravids and the Almohads, the two most important Berber dynasties of the medieval Islamic west, an area that encompassed southern Spain and Portugal, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The a'anhAja Almoravids emerged from the Sahara in the 1050s to conquer vast territories and halt the Christian advance in Iberia. They were replaced a century later by their rivals, the Almohads, supported by the Maa'GBPmAda Berbers of the High Atlas. Although both have often been seen as uncouth, religiously intolerant tribesmen who undermined the high culture of al-Andalus, this book argues that the eleventh to thirteenth centuries were crucial to the Islamisation of the Maghrib, its integration into the Islamic cultural sphere, and its emergence as a key player in the western Mediterranean, and that much of this was due to these oft-neglected Berber empires.Key featuresThe first work in English to give a full account of the Almoravids and AlmohadsFeatures numerous translated quotes and anecdotes from Arabic primary sourcesProvides an intimate portrait of the daily lives and material culture of people living within the empires, as well as delivering a clear dynastic historyUses maps, genealogical tables, illustrations and a chronology