Empires and Colonies provides a thoroughgoing and lively exploration of the expansion of the seaborne empires of western Europe from the fifteenth century and how that process of expansion affected the world, including its successor, the United States. Whilst providing special attention to Europe, the book is careful to highlight the ambivalence and contradiction of that expansion. The book also illuminates connections between empires and colonies as a theme in history, concentrating on culture while also discussing the rich social, economic and political dimensions of the story. Furthermore, Empires and Colonies recognizes that whilst a study of the expansion of Europe is an important part of world history, it is not a history of the world per se. The focus on culture is used to assert that areas and peoples that lack great economic power at any given time also deserve attention. These alternative voices of slaves, indigenous peoples and critics of empire and colonization are an important and compelling element of the book. Empires and Colonies will be essential reading not only for students of imperial history, but also for anyone interested in the makings of our modern world.

Empire, Colony, Postcolony provides a clear exposition of the historical, political and ideological dimensions of colonialism, imperialism, and postcolonialism, with clear explanations of these categories, which relate their histories to contemporary political issues. The book analyzes major concepts and explains the meaning of key terms. The first book to introduce the main historical and cultural parameters of the different categories of empire, colony, postcolony, nation, and globalization and the ways in which they are analyzed today Explains in clear and accessible language the historical and theoretical origins of postcolonial theory as well as providing a postcolonial perspective on the formations of the contemporary world Written by an acknowledged expert on postcolonialism

This book analyzes the role played by initial endowments and colonizer identity in seeking to explain institutional development in former colonies. It presents a model of two styles of imperialism that integrates the colonial origin and endowment views explaining current institutions. The authors argue that Great Britain and Portugal adopted an ‘economically-oriented’ style, which was pragmatic and sensitive to initial conditions. For this style of imperialism the endowment view is applicable. In contrast, France employed a ‘politically-oriented’ style of imperialism, in which ideological and political motivations were more present. This led to a uniform colonial policy that largely disregarded initial endowments. In turn, the case of Spain represents a hybrid of the two models. The empirical analysis presented here reveals a remarkable degree of heterogeneity in the relationship of endowments and colonizer identity with current institutions.

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”

In spite of its tough message, there is much compassion and humanity in The Final Empire. Right away as you begin to read this work, you sense increasingly the grand perspective in Kötke's words. He is not speaking of anarchy. He is offering vital common sense. It's just that his meaning is so unavoidably political. And so much against what we have been taught all our lives: The materialistic values of civilization teach us that the accumulation of wealth is progress. The material wealth of the civilization is derived from the death of the earth, the soils, the forests, the fish stocks, the 'free resources' of flora and fauna. The ultimate end of this is for all human species to live in giant parasitical cities of cement and metal while surrounded by deserts of exhausted soils. The simple polar opposites are: the richness and wealth of the natural life of earth versus the material wealth of people living out their lives in artificial environments. This amounts to a direct challenge to humankind. A demand for radical change. A re-envisioning of our part in the community of life and the precepts of individuality. And Mr. Kötke provides a strong argument for this case. He traces the environmental scars of civilization through the ages. Empire after empire, desertification of the top soil winds its way around the globe in an erosive helix from China to India to Mesopotamia to Italy to North America. As radical as it may seem at first glance, The Final Empire is a necessary and sensible primer for the recovery of the planet. It blends a critical statistical analysis of our deteriorating environment with a positivism of hope for a post-empire age and a new whole-human relation to the living community of Earth. Dan Armstrong, Author of the Novels, Prairie Fire and Taming the Dragon

This book tackles the question of border control in and around imperial Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, with a specific focus on its documentation regime. It explores the institutional development, media and literary discourses, and on[1]the-ground practices of documentary identification in the Japanese empire and the places visited by its subjects. The contributing authors, covering such regions as Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, Siberia, Australia, and the United States, place the question of individual identity in the eyes of the respective governments in dialogue with the global developments of the identification and mobility control practices. The chapters suggest the importance of focusing more than previously on the narrative of individual identification, not as a tool for creating nation states but as a tool for generating, strengthening, and maintaining asymmetrical relationships between people of different socioeconomic backgrounds who moved in and out of empires. This book joins the effort in the recent scholarship in migration history to highlight experiences of migrants beyond the transatlantic world, and that in East Asian history to investigate the space and connections beyond the boundaries of the nation states. By bringing together the analyses on the trans-Pacific mobility and Japan’s imperial expansion and its aftermath in East Asia, it shows a complex interplay between state power and moving individuals, two forces whose relationships went far beyond simple competition.

Rhodesia’s illegal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 is an act that not only shaped regional politics but also had a profound effect on Britain’s attempt to retreat from its empire. This edited collection brings together leading voices in the field, whose contributions – on the role of finance, ‘big business’, and the regional and international actors involved in the country’s negotiated independence – update long-held historiographical wisdoms, signalling a revival in economic and diplomatic explanations for the country’s decolonisation. In particular, they shed fresh light on the role(s) played in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe by economic (private business) and political (liberation movements, Western and Southern African governments) actors that until now have been studied with very limited access to primary sources. As scholarship on Zimbabwe is currently dominated by studies that seek to understand the ‘crisis’ in which the country has recently found itself, this collection acts as a clarion call that reinforces the importance of studies of earlier historical processes. In doing so, the book provides a more nuanced understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between Zimbabwe’s colonial and postcolonial history, and examines the roles played by external governments and individuals in the decolonisation of Zimbabwe. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the pivotal figure in colonial and revolutionary America, comes vividly to life in this “thorough biography of ... America’s first Renaissance man” (The Washington Post) by the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War. "The authoritative Franklin biography for our time.” —Joseph J. Ellis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers Wit, diplomat, scientist, philosopher, businessman, inventor, and bon vivant, Benjamin Franklin's "life is one every American should know well, and it has not been told better than by Mr. Brands" (The Dallas Morning News). From penniless runaway to highly successful printer, from ardently loyal subject of Britain to architect of an alliance with France that ensured America’s independence, Franklin went from obscurity to become one of the world’s most admired figures, whose circle included the likes of Voltaire, Hume, Burke, and Kant. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and a host of other sources, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has written a thoroughly engaging biography of the eighteenth-century genius. A much needed reminder of Franklin’s greatness and humanity, The First American is a work of meticulous scholarship that provides a magnificent tour of a legendary historical figure, a vital era in American life, and the countless arenas in which the protean Franklin left his legacy. Look for H.W. Brands's other biographies: ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNION (Ulysses S. Grant), TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS (Franklin Roosevelt) and REAGAN.