Author: H. L. Wesseling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131789507X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
The nineteenth century was Europe's colonial century. At the beginning of the period, the only colonial empire that existed was the British Empire. By the end of the century the situation was completely different and Europe's colonial possessions had come to constitute a large part of the world. The French had acquired an immense colonial empire and the Dutch had extended their control over Indonesia. Germany and Italy, unified only in the latter half of the century, had claimed their place under the sun. Even the tiny Kingdom of Belgium had acquired a huge colonial territory in Africa: the Belgian Congo. This is the first book to describe the whole process of colonization from conquest to pacification, and to analyze it in the light of administrative, cultural and economic developments. The European Colonial Empires discusses a uniquely long period instead of merely focussing on the shorter, accepted age of classical imperialism. Wesseling argues that European colonial expansion can be understood only by putting it into this long-term perspective and by comparing the differences between the colonies in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean. This book redresses the balance that privileges the British colonial and imperial experience. It emphasizes the continental European experience while relating developments to the British enterprise.
Author: Michael Doyle
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150173413X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
Although empires have shaped the political development of virtually all the states of the modern world, "imperialism" has not figured largely in the mainstream of scholarly literature. This book seeks to account for the imperial phenomenon and to establish its importance as a subject in the study of the theory of world politics. Michael Doyle believes that empires can best be defined as relationships of effective political control imposed by some political societies—those called metropoles—on other political societies—called peripheries. To build an explanation of the birth, life, and death of empires, he starts with an overview and critique of the leading theories of imperialism. Supplementing theoretical analysis with historical description, he considers episodes from the life cycles of empires from the classical and modern world, concentrating on the nineteenth-century scramble for Africa. He describes in detail the slow entanglement of the peripheral societies on the Nile and the Niger with metropolitan power, the survival of independent Ethiopia, Bismarck's manipulation of imperial diplomacy for European ends, the race for imperial possession in the 1880s, and the rapid setting of the imperial sun. Combining a sensitivity to historical detail with a judicious search for general patterns, Empires will engage the attention of social scientists in many disciplines.
Author: John Atkinson Hobson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Author: John P. Halstead
Publisher: Boston : G. K. Hall
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
Author: Lance Edwin Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521357234
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Historians have so far made few attempts to assess directly the costs and benefits of Britain's investment in empire. This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism: how large was the flow of finance to the empire? How great were the profits on empire investment? What were the social costs of maintaining the empire? Who received the profits, and who bore the costs? The authors show that colonial finance did not dominate British capital markets; returns from empire investment were not high in comparison to earnings in the domestic and foreign sectors; there is no evidence of continued exploitative profits; and empire profits were earned at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. They depict British imperialism as a mechanism to effect an income transfer from the tax-paying middle class to the elites in which the ownership of imperial enterprise was heavily concentrated, with some slight net transfer to the colonies in the process.
Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674034260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
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Book Description
Many have told of the East India Company’s extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy and able to buy British land and titles, but this is only a fraction of the story. When one of these men—Warren Hastings—was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company’s exploits to the attention of the public. Through the trial and after, the British government transformed public understanding of the Company’s corrupt actions by creating an image of a vulnerable India that needed British assistance. Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission. In this fascinating, and devastating, account of the scandal that laid the foundation of the British Empire, Nicholas Dirks explains how this substitution of imperial authority for Company rule helped erase the dirty origins of empire and justify the British presence in India. The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England’s development in the eighteenth century and beyond. We see how mercantile trade was inextricably linked with imperial venture and scandalous excess and how these three things provided the ideological basis for far-flung British expansion. In this powerfully written and trenchant critique, Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself. By returning to the moment when the scandal of empire became acceptable we gain a new understanding of the modern culture of the colonizer and the colonized and the manifold implications for Britain, India, and the world.
Author: Jack Harrington
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783489227
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
Contemporary citizenship is haunted by the ghost of imperialism. Yet conceptions of European citizenship fail to explain issues that are inclusive of the impact of empire today, and are integral to the reality of citizenship; from the notion of ‘minorities’ to the assertion of citizenship rights by migrants and the withdrawal of fundamental rights from particular groups. The Uses of Imperial Citizenship examines the ways in which ideas of citizenship and subjecthood were applied in societies under imperial rule in order to expand our understanding of these concepts. Taking examples from the experience of the British and French empires, the book examines the ways in which claims to the rights and obligations of imperial subjects by otherwise marginalised people – from women activists to ‘native’ newspaper editors – shaped the history of British and French concepts of citizenship. Through extensive analysis of colonial and diplomatic archives, parliamentary debates and commissions, journalism and contemporary works on colonial administration, the book explores how governments and people in colonial societies saw themselves within, on the frontiers of, and outside of imperial notions of citizenship and subjecthood.
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241958512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 681
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Book Description
Niall Ferguson's acclaimed bestseller on the highs and lows of Britain's empire 'A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all' Jan Morris Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. 'The most brilliant British historian of his generation ... Ferguson examines the roles of "pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts" in the creation of history's largest empire ... he writes with splendid panache ... and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit' Andrew Roberts 'Dazzling ... wonderfully readable' New York Review of Books 'Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence' Sunday Times
Author: Kimberly J. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131684188X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.
Author: David Todd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691205337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth century After Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military conquest. A Velvet Empire is a global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms of imperial collaboration that extended France's power from the Middle East to Latin America and ushered in the modern age of globalization. David Todd shows how French elites pursued a cunning strategy of imperial expansion in which conspicuous commodities such as champagne and silk textiles, together with loans to client states, contributed to a global campaign of seduction. French imperialism was no less brutal than that of the British. But while Britain widened its imperial reach through settler colonialism and the acquisition of far-flung territories, France built a "velvet" empire backed by frequent military interventions and a broadening extraterritorial jurisdiction. Todd demonstrates how France drew vast benefits from these asymmetric, imperial-like relations until a succession of setbacks around the world brought about their unravelling in the 1870s. A Velvet Empire sheds light on France's neglected contribution to the conservative reinvention of modernity and offers a new interpretation of the resurgence of French colonialism on a global scale after 1880. This panoramic book also highlights the crucial role of collaboration among European empires during this period—including archrivals Britain and France—and cooperation with indigenous elites in facilitating imperial expansion and the globalization of capitalism.
