This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.
Author(s): Peter Fibiger Bang, C. A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 1292
City: Oxford
Cover
The Oxford World History of Empire
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Contributors
List of Figures, Tables and Maps
Prolegomena
Part I. Bronze to Iron Age
1. Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (2686–1069 bce)
2. The Sargonic and Ur III Empires
3. The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire
4. The Achaemenid Persian Empire: From the Medes to Alexander
5. Ancient Mediterranean City-State Empires: Athens, Carthage, Early Rome
Part II. The Classical Age
Culminating in the Formation of Large World Empires on the Margins of Eurasia: The Mediterranean and China (323 bce–600 ce)
6. Hellenistic Empires: The Dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids
7. The Mauryan Empire
8. The First East Asian Empires: Qin and Han
9. The Roman Empire
10. The Parthian and Sasanian Empires
11. The Kushan Empire
Part III. The Ecumenic Turn
Eclipse of the Old World and the Rise of Islam (600–1200)
12. The Caliphate
13. The Tang Empire
14. Śrīvijaya
15. The Khmer Empire
16. The Byzantine Empire (641–1453 ce)
17. Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire, and Its Successors
Part IV. The Mongol Moment
The Rise of Chinggis Khan and the Central Asian Steppe, Followed by Regional Reassertion
18. The Mongol Empire and the Unification of Eurasia
19. The Ming Empire
20. The Delhi Sultanate as Empire
21. Caliphs, Popes, Emperors, Kings, and Sultans: The Imperial Commonwealths of Medieval Islam and Western Christendom
22. The Venetian Empire
23. The Mali and Songhay Empires
Part V. Another World
The Separate but Parallel Path of Imperial Formations in the Precolonial Americas
24. The Aztec Empire
25. The Inca Empire
Part VI. The Great Confluence
The Culmination of Universal Empires and the Conquest of the New World: Agrarian Consolidation and the Rise of European Commercial and Colonial Empires (1450–1750)
26. The Ottoman Empire
27. The Mughal Empire
28. The Habsburg Monarchy and the Spanish Empire (1492–1757)
29. The Qing Empire: Three Governments in One State and the Stability of Manchu Rule
30. The Portuguese Empire (1415–1822)
31. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: Qua Patet Orbis
32. The First British Empire: Atlantic Empire and the Peoples of the British Monarchy (1603–1815)
Part VII. The Global Turn
The Age of European Colonialism, Subjection of Old Agrarian Empires to the European-Led World Economy, and Nationalist Secessions (1750–1914)
33. Deconstructing the British Empire: Between Repression and Reform
34. An Imperial Nation-State: France and Its Empires
35. The Russian Empire (1453–1917)
36. Late Spanish Empire: Reform and Crisis (1762–1898)
37. US Expansionism during the Nineteenth Century: “Manifest Destiny”
38. The Kinetic Empires of Native American Nomads
39. Ottoman Turkey and Qing China: Response and Decline (1774–1937)
40. The Sokoto Caliphate
Part VIII. The Twentieth Century
The Collapse of Colonial Empires and the Rise of Superpowers
41. The German and Japanese Empires: Great Power Competition and the World Wars in Trans-Imperial Perspective
42. Decolonization and Neocolonialism
43. The Soviet Union
44. America’s Global Imperium
45. Epilogue: Beyond Empire?
Index of Places, Names, and Events.
