The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories

Written by leading scholars, this collection provides a wide-ranging and authoritative overview of modern empires. Spanning the era of modern imperial history from the early sixteenth century to the present, it challenges the often insular focus on specific experiences, and gives due attention to imperial formations outside the West including the Russian, Japanese, Mughal, Ottoman and Chinese. The Companion is divided into three broad sections. Part I: Times - surveys the three main...
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Written by leading scholars, this collection provides a wide-ranging and authoritative overview of modern empires. Spanning the era of modern imperial history from the early sixteenth century to the present, it challenges the often insular focus on specific experiences, and gives due attention to imperial formations outside the West including the Russian, Japanese, Mughal, Ottoman and Chinese. The Companion is divided into three broad sections. Part I: Times - surveys the three main eras of modern imperialism. Part II: Spaces - studies the principal imperial formations of the modern world, whilst in Part III: Themes - scholars think critically about some of the key features of imperial expansion and decline. Overall, the Companion emphasises the diversity of imperial experience and process. Comprehensive in its scope, it draws attention to the particularities of individual empires, rather than over-generalising as if all empires, at all times, and in all places, behaved in a similar manner. It is this contingent and historical specificity that enables us to explore in expansive ways precisely what constituted the modern empire.