Showing papers on "Empire published in 2008"

Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination

Abstract: In this article, I look at “imperial formations” rather than at empire per se to register the ongoing quality of processes of decimation, displacement, and reclamation. Imperial formations are relations of force, harboring political forms that endure beyond the formal exclusions that legislate against equal opportunity, commensurate dignities, and equal rights. Working with the concept of imperial formation, rather than empire per se, the emphasis shifts from fixed forms of sovereignty and its denials to gradated forms of sovereignty and what has long marked the technologies of imperial rule—sliding and contested scales of differential rights. Imperial formations are defined by racialized relations of allocations and appropriations. Unlike empires, they are processes of becoming, not fixed things. Not least they are states of deferral that mete out promissory notes that are not exceptions to their operation but constitutive of them: imperial guardianship, trusteeships, delayed autonomy, temporary intervention, conditional tutelage, military takeover in the name of humanitarian works, violent intervention in the name of human rights, and security measures in the name of peace.

Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Life Beyond the Limits: Inventing the Bioeconomy 2. On Pharmaceutical Empire: AIDS, Security, and Exorcism 3. Preempting Emergence: The Biological Turn in the War on Terror Intermezzo 4. Contortions: Tissue Engineering and the Topological Body 5. Labors of Regeneration: Stem Cells and the Embryoid Bodies of Capital 6. The Unborn Born Again: Neo-Imperialism, the Evangelical Right, and the Culture of Life Epilogue Notes References Index

Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: This book is a comparative study of imperial organization and longevity that assesses Ottoman successes as well as failures against those of other empires with similar characteristics. Barkey examines the Ottoman Empire's social organization and mechanisms of rule at key moments of its history, emergence, imperial institutionalization, remodeling, and transition to nation-state, revealing how the empire managed these moments, adapted, and averted crises and what changes made it transform dramatically. The flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as their control over economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular 'negotiated empire'. Her analysis illuminates topics that include imperial governance, imperial institutions, imperial diversity and multiculturalism, the manner in which dissent is handled and/or internalized, and the nature of state society negotiations.

The Linguistic Imperialism of Neoliberal Empire

Abstract: The article explores the transition from the linguistic imperialism of the colonial and postcolonial ages to the increasingly dominant role of English as a neoimperial language. It analyzes ‘global’ English as a key dimension of the U.S. empire. U.S. expansionism is a fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the United States that can be traced back over two centuries. Linguistic imperialism and neoimperialism are exemplified at the micro and macro levels, and some key defining traits explored, as are cultural and institutional links between the United Kingdom and the United States, and the role of foundations in promoting ‘world’ English. Whereas many parts of the world have experienced a longstanding engagement with English, the use of English in continental Europe has expanded markedly in recent years, as a result of many strands of globalization and European integration. Some ongoing tensions in language policy in Europe, and symptoms of complicity in accepting linguistic hegemony, are explored....

Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or a New Hegemony?

Abstract: Lately, there has been increasing interest among international relations (IR) scholars in Chinese thought, both as an alternative to Eurocentric IR, and because the PRC as an emerging power will soon have the institutional power to promote its view of the world. Rather than look for suitable Chinese parallels to “international,”“security,” or other mainstream concepts, this article will examine the concept of “Tianxia All-under-Heaven” to understand Chinese visions of world order. Tianxia is interesting both because it was key to the governance and self-understanding of over two millennia of Chinese empire, and also because discussion of Tianxia is becoming popular again in the twenty-first century as a Chinese model of world order that is universally valid. After outlining a popular discussion of the “magnanimous” and all-inclusive Tianxia system, the article will examine some of the theoretical problems raised by this reading of Tianxia, in particular how its approach to “Otherness” encourages a conversion of difference, if not a conquest of it. It will conclude that Tianxia’s most important impact will not be on the world stage, but in China’s domestic politics, where it blurs the conceptual boundaries between empire and globalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Hence rather than guide us toward a post-hegemonic world order, Tianxia presents a new hegemony where imperial China’s hierarchical governance is updated for the twenty-first century.

The Comanche Empire

Abstract: In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere Pekka Hamalainen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875 With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches' remarkable impact on the trajectory of history

The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914

Abstract: What led modern colonizers to treat their subject populations in radically differing ways, ranging from genocide to efforts to "salvage" precolonial cultures? In Southwest Africa, Germany massacred the Ovaherero and Witbooi; in Samoa, Germany pursued a program of cultural retraditionalization; and in the Chinese leasehold colony of Qingdao/Kiaochow, the Germans moved from policies of racialized segregation to a respectful civilizational exchange. Bourdieu is not generally seen as a theorist of empire, despite the partial genesis of his lifelong research program in the late colonial crucible of French Algeria (Bourdieu 1958; Yacine 2004). Nonetheless, Bourdieu's theoretical work—most notably his conceptions of field and capital—helps solve the main riddle of the colonial state. Different European social groups competed inside the colonial state field for a specific form of symbolic capital: ethnographic capital. This involved exhibiting an alleged talent for judging the culture and character of the colonized, a gift for understanding "the natives." Competitive dynamics among the colonial rulers decisively shaped the ongoing production of native policies. Policy formation was also influenced by geopolitical and economic interests, responses by the colonized, and the metropolitan government's final authority in appointing and dismissing colonial officials. The effects of these additional mechanisms were typically mediated by the internal dynamics of the semi-autonomous colonial state.

The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization

Abstract: Acknowledgments ix 1. The Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation / The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Y. Dong, and Tani E. Barlow) 1 2. The Modern Girl Around the World: Cosmetics Advertising and the Politics of Race and Style/ The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group (Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Madeleine Y. Dong, and Tani E. Barlow) 25 3. From the Washtub to the World: Madam C. J. Walker and the "Re-creation" of Race Womanhood, 1900-1935 / Davarian L. Baldwin 55 4. Making the Modern Girl French: From New Woman to Eclaireuse / Mary Louise Roberts 77 5. The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa / Lynn M. Thomas 96 6. Racial Masquerade: Consumption and Contestation of American Modernity / Alys Eve Weinbaum 120 7. All-Consuming Nationalism: The Indian Modern Girl in the 1920s and 1930s / Priti Ramamurthy 147 8. The Dance Class or the Working Class: The Soviet Modern Girl / Anne E. Gorsuch 174 9. Who Is Afraid of the Chinese Modern Girl? / Madeleine Y. Dong 194 10. "Blackfella Missus Too Much Proud": Techniques of Appearing, Femininity, and Race in Australian Modernity / Liz Conor 220 11. The "Modern Girl" Question in the Periphery of Empire: Colonial Modernity and Mobility among Okinawan Women in the 1920s and 1930s / Ruri Ito 240 12. Contesting Consumerisms in Mass Women's Magazines / Barbara Sato 263 13. Buying In: Advertising and the Sexy Modern Girl Icon in Shanghai in the 1920s and 2930s / Tani E. Barlow 288 14. Fantasies of Universality? Neue Frauen, Race, and Nation in Weimer and Nazi Germany / Uta G. Poiger 317 Concluding Commentaries 15. Girls Lean Back Everywhere / Kathy Peiss 347 16. After the Grand Tour: The Modern Girl, the New Woman, and the Colonial Maiden / Miriam Silverberg 354 17. The Modern Girl and Commodity Culture / Timothy Burke 362 Bibliography 371 Contributors 405 Index 409

American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization

Abstract: Neil Smith. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. xxvii and 570 pp., maps, photos., notes, and index. $39.95 cloth (ISBN 0-520-23027-2). This book is full of new information on the pr...

Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire

Abstract: Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a geopolitics that puts Russia at the center of a number of axes: European-Asian, Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, Mediterranean-Indian, Slavic-Turkic, and so on. This volume examines the political presuppositions and expanding intellectual impact of Eurasianism, a movement promoting an ideology of Russian-Asian greatness, which has begun to take hold throughout Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Eurasianism purports to tell Russians what is unalterably important about them and why it can only be expressed in an empire. Using a wide range of sources, Marlene Laruelle discusses the impact of the ideology of Eurasianism on geopolitics, interior policy, foreign policy, and culturalist philosophy.

Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad

Abstract: * Acknowledgments * Introduction: The Program of Emigrant Colonialism *1. From Africa to the Americas *2. The Great Ethnographic Empire *3. Migration and Money *4. The Language of Dante *5. For Religion and for the Fatherland *6. Emigration and the New Nationalism *7. Earthquake, Pestilence, and World War * Conclusion: Toward a Global Nation * Appendix: Maps and Figures * Notes

Trade and Empire

Abstract: Although many modern studies find large and significant effects of prior colonial status on bilateral trade, there is very little empirical research that has focused on the contemporaneous impact of empire on trade. We employ a new database of over 21,000 bilateral trade observations during the Age of High Imperialism, 1870-1913, to quantitatively assess the effect of empire on trade. Our augmented gravity model shows that belonging to an empire roughly doubled trade relative to those countries that were not part of an empire. The positive impact that empire exerts on trade does not appear to be sensitive to whether the metropole was Britain, France, Germany, Spain, or the United States or to the inclusion of other institutional factors such as being on the gold standard. In addition, we examine some of the channels through which colonial status impacted bilateral trade flows. The empirical analysis suggests that empires increased trade by lowering transactions costs and by establishing trade policies that promoted trade within empires. In particular, the use of a common language, the establishment of currency unions, the monetizing of recently acquired colonies, preferential trade arrangements, and customs unions help to account for the observed increase in trade associated with empire.

Empire, colony, genocide : conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history

Abstract: Preface A. Dirk Moses SECTION I: INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND CONCEPTUAL QUESTIONS Chapter 1. Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History A. Dirk Moses Chapter 2. Anti-colonialism in Western Political Thought: The Colonial Origins of the Concept of Genocide Andrew Fitzmaurice Chapter 3. Are Settler-Colonies Inherently Genocidal? Re-reading Lemkin John Docker Chapter 4. Structure and Event: Settler Colonialism, Time, and the Question of Genocide Patrick Wolfe Chapter 5. "Crime without a Name": The Case for "Indigenocide" Raymond Evans Chapter 6. Colonialism and Genocides: Towards an Analysis of the Settler Archive of the European Imagination Lorenzo Veracini Chapter 7. Biopower and Modern Genocide Dan Stone SECTION II: EMPIRE, COLONIZATION AND GENOCIDE Chapter 8. Empires, Native Peoples, and Genocide Mark Levene Chapter 9. Colonialism, History, and Genocide in Cambodia, 1747-2005 Ben Kiernan Chapter 10. Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea Ann Curthoys Chapter 11. "The aborigines... were never annihilated, and still they are becoming extinct": Settler Imperialism and Genocide in 19th-century America and Australia Norbert Finzsch Chapter 12. Navigating the Cultural Encounter: Blackfoot Religious Resistance in Canada (c. 1870-1930) Blanca Tovias Chapter 13. Genocide in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa Dominik J. Schaller Chapter 14. Inner Colonization and Inter-imperial Conflict: The Destruction of the Armenians and the End of the Ottoman Empire Donald Bloxham Chapter 15. Inner Colonialism and the Question of Genocide in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union Robert Geraci Chapter 16. Colonialism and Genocide in Nazi-occupied Poland and Ukraine David Furber and Wendy Lower SECTION III: SUBALTERN GENOCIDE Chapter 17. Genocide from Below: The Great Inca Rebellion of 1780-82 in the Southern Andes David Cahill Chapter 18. Political Loyalties and the Genocide of a Settler Community: The Eurasians in Indonesia, 1945-46 Robert Cribb Chapter 19. Savages, Subjects, and Sovereigns: Conjunctions of Modernity, Genocide, and Colonialism Alexander L. Hinton Notes on Contributors Select Bibliography Index

Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire

Abstract: As the killing of those at the margins of liberal and neoliberal sovereignty continues to be glamorized and fetishized in the name of ‘democracy,’ we are confronted with urgent questions about the ways in which life, death, and desire are being (re)constituted in the current political moment. The intensification of carnage wrought by empire has brought with it a renewed thrust to draw in precisely those who are the most killable into performing the work of murder. As we are seduced into empire’s fold by participating, often with glee and pleasure, in the deaths of those in our own communities as well as those banished to the ‘outsides’ of citizenship and subjectivity, we must ask: How are these seductions produced and naturalized?1 What forms of (non)spectacular violence must be authorized to heed the promises being offered by empire? These are the central problematics this paper engages.2

The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle against U.S. Military Posts

Abstract: List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword - Cynthia EnloeIntroduction: Bases, Empire, and Global ResponseCatherine LutzPart I: Mapping U.S. Power 1. U.S. Foreign Military Bases and Military Colonialism: Personal and Analytical Perspectives Joseph Gerson 2. U.S. Military Bases in Latin America and the Caribbean John Lindsay-Poland 3. U.S. Nuclear Weapons Bases in Europe David Heller and Hans Lammerant 4. Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site Tom EngelhardtPart II: Global Resistance 5. People's Movement Responses to Evolving U.S. Military Activities in the Philippines Roland G. Simbulan 6. "Give Us Back Diego Garcia": Unity and Division among Activists in the Indian Ocean David Vine and Laura JefferyTHE BASES OF EMPIRE 7. Environmental Struggle after the Cold War: New Forms of Resistance to the U.S. Military in Vieques, Puerto Rico Katherine T. McCaffrey 8. Okinawa: Women's Struggle for Demilitarization Kozue Akibayashi and Suzuyo Takazato 9. Opposition to the U.S. Military Presence in Turkey in the Context of the Iraq War Ays,e Gul Altinay and Amy Holmes10. Resisting Militarization in Hawai'i Kyle KajihiroAfterword: Down Here Julian AguonList of ContributorsIndex

Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans

Abstract: "Building the Devil's Empire" is the first comprehensive history of New Orleans' early years, tracing the town's development from its origins in 1718 to its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768. Shannon Lee Dawdy's picaresque account of New Orleans' wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers. But she also widens her lens to reveal the port city's global significance, examining its role in the French Empire and the Caribbean, and she concludes that by exemplifying a kind of rogue colonialism - where governments, outlaws, and capitalism become entwined - New Orleans should prompt us to reconsider our notions of how colonialism works.

Empire of law and Indian justice in colonial Mexico

Abstract: Contents Acknowledgments 000 Chapter 1 Opening 000 Chapter 2 Ordering the Circumstances of Encounter 000 Chapter 3 Help Us and Protect Us 000 Chapter 4 Precarious Possessions 000 Chapter 5 Liberty, Not Servitude 000 Chapter 6 Of Guilt and Punishment 000 Chapter 7 Voices in the Republic 000 Chapter 8 Rebellious Subjects 000 Chapter 9 Summation and Beyond 000 Notes 000 Sources Cited 000 Index 000

Trade and Empire

Abstract: We employ a new database of over 21,000 bilateral trade observations from 1870–1913 to assess the contemporaneous effects of empire on trade. Our analysis shows that belonging to an empire roughly doubled trade relative to those countries that were not part of an empire. The use of a common language, the establishment of currency unions, the monetisation of recently acquired colonies, and the establishment of preferential trade agreements and customs unions help to account for the observed increase in trade associated with empire.

“BUT WHAT IF I SHOULD NEED TO DEFECATE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, MADAME?”: Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site

Abstract: In this article, I examine systems of care aimed at improving citizens and ruined colonial buildings in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil's Pelourinho World Heritage Site. Such UNESCO-sanctioned trusteeship, or the identification of buildings, bodies, and practices in need of a tutelage that would recuperate them as signs of a common humanity, maintains and exacerbates segmentations of knowledge essential to imperial control. I thus work to reconsider the Pelourinho, and cultural heritage, as imperial formations in light of UNESCO's system of producing world heritage through the specification of “exceptional universal value” in which the exceptional object obfuscates not simply as an emergency, but through its monumentalization as an ostensibly shared property. This attempt to gain a clearer understanding of empires' real effects is catalyzed by a number of residents of the Pelourinho who, in their subjection to decades of state-directed surveillance intended to make them into living human ancestors, have come to reject sentimental attachments to buildings or the purveyors of philanthropy. Yet the ways they do so are revelatory of new approaches to exceptions: Residents reject victimhood as a state of being injured and instead weave accounts of the structures that engender, and continue to reproduce, such violence. I follow in the path of this quite iconoclastic version of “historical reconstruction” as a way to draw out an ambivalently postcolonial Brazil whose own claims to exceptionality may be understood, like those put together by the woman I call Topa, as forced by entwined historical processes, rather than isolated emergencies or remainders beyond the political. My aim is to show how empires can be linked across space and time, without relying on empirical mapping of their constitutive parts and ideological props—recognizing, instead, the specificity of empire's effects.

Romanising oriental Gods

Abstract: The relative sophistication of the three major 'Oriental cults' of the Roman Empire, combining unfamiliar myth with distinctive ritual, enabled them, like Early Christianity, to offer a properly ethical salvation in the Weberian sense.

American empire and the politics of meaning

Abstract: When the United States took control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it declared that it would transform its new colonies through lessons in self-government and the ways of American-style democracy. In both territories, U.S. colonial officials built extensive public school systems, and they set up American-style elections and governmental institutions. The officials aimed their lessons in democratic government at the political elite: the relatively small class of the wealthy, educated, and politically powerful within each colony. While they retained ultimate control for themselves, the Americans let the elite vote, hold local office, and formulate legislation in national assemblies. American Empire and the Politics of Meaning is an examination of how these efforts to provide the elite of Puerto Rico and the Philippines a practical education in self-government played out on the ground in the early years of American colonial rule, from 1898 until 1912. It is the first systematic comparative analysis of these early exercises in American imperial power. The sociologist Julian Go unravels how American authorities used “culture” as both a tool and a target of rule, and how the Puerto Rican and Philippine elite received, creatively engaged, and sometimes silently subverted the Americans’ ostensibly benign intentions. Rather than finding that the attempt to transplant American-style democracy led to incommensurable “culture clashes,” Go assesses complex processes of cultural accommodation and transformation. By combining rich historical detail with broader theories of meaning, culture, and colonialism, he provides an innovative study of the hidden intersections of political power and cultural meaning-making in America’s earliest overseas empire.

Gender, Race, and Labor in the Archaeology of the Spanish Colonial Americas

Abstract: Gender and race are central to archaeological investigations of empire. In research on the Spanish colonization of the Americas, one prominent theory, the St. Augustine pattern, argues that cohabitation between Spanish men and Native American and African women in colonial households resulted in a distinctly gendered form of cultural transformation: indigenous, African, and syncretic cultural elements appear within private domestic activities associated with women; and European cultural elements are conservatively maintained in publicly visible male activities. This article reconsiders the St. Augustine pattern through analyses of new research that has revealed considerable diversity in the processes and outcomes of colonization throughout the Spanish Americas. Archaeological methodologies such as the St. Augustine pattern that rely on binary categories of analysis mask the complexity and ambiguity of material culture in colonial sites. Additionally, the abundance and ubiquity of indigenous, African, and s...

Imperialism, Domination, Culture: The Continued Relevance of Critical Geopolitics

Abstract: Twenty years ago Gearoid O Tuathail called for an approach within Political Geography that made geopolitical culture and the formulation of foreign policy the object of analysis. He specified the task of what subsequently became critical geopolitics as the need to expose the complicity of geopolitics with domination and imperialism. After the cold war there was a decade when military matters declined in importance and globalisation confused the geographical designations of danger. In the aftermath of 9/11 the utility of force has been reasserted by a neo-Reaganite American foreign policy using military force in the global war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. Now the geopolitical culture is a matter of debates about empire and the appropriate geopolitical designation of danger, whether in Thomas Barnett's non integrated gap on “the Pentagon's New Map” or in the complex geographies of Alain Joxe's “Empire of Disorder”. This re-militarisation of global politics clearly suggests the continued relevance of ...

Rome the Cosmopolis

Abstract: Book synopsis: Rome stands today for an empire and for a city. The essays gathered in this volume explore some of the many ways in which the two were interwoven. Rome was fed, beautified and enriched by empire just as it was swollen, polluted, infected and occupied by it. Empire was paraded in the streets of Rome, and exhibited in the city's buildings. Empire also made the city ineradicably foreign, polyglot, an alien capital, and a focus for un-Roman activities. The city was where the Roman cosmos was most concentrated, and so was most contested. Deploying a range of methodologies on materials ranging from Egyptian obelisks to human skeletal remains, via Christian art and Latin poetry, the contributors to this volume weave a series of pathways through the world-city, exploring the different kinds of centrality Rome had in the empire. The result is a startlingly original picture of both empire and city.

Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science

Abstract: Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first - and most successful - British men of science to become a full-time professional. He was also, Jim Endersby argues, the perfect embodiment of Victorian science. A vivid picture of the complex interrelationships of scientific work and scientific ideas, "Imperial Nature" gracefully uses one individual's career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era. By focusing on science's material practices and one of its foremost practitioners, Endersby ably links concerns about empire, professionalism, and philosophical practices to the forging of a nineteenth-century scientific identity.

The Art of Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca

Abstract: In The Art of Being In-between Yanna Yannakakis rethinks processes of cultural change and indigenous resistance and accommodation to colonial rule through a focus on the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, a rugged, mountainous, ethnically diverse, and overwhelmingly indigenous region of colonial Mexico. Her rich social and cultural history tells the story of the making of colonialism at the edge of empire through the eyes of native intermediary figures: indigenous governors clothed in Spanish silks, priests’ assistants, interpreters, economic middlemen, legal agents, landed nobility, and “Indian conquistadors.” Through political negotiation, cultural brokerage, and the exercise of violence, these fascinating intercultural figures redefined native leadership, sparked indigenous rebellions, and helped forge an ambivalent political culture that distinguished the hinterlands from the centers of Spanish empire. Through interpretation of a wide array of historical sources—including descriptions of public rituals, accounts of indigenous rebellions, idolatry trials, legal petitions, court cases, land disputes, and indigenous pictorial histories—Yannakakis weaves together an elegant narrative that illuminates political and cultural struggles over the terms of local rule. As cultural brokers, native intermediaries at times reconciled conflicting interests, and at other times positioned themselves in opposing camps over the outcome of municipal elections, the provision of goods and labor, landholding, community ritual, the meaning of indigenous “custom” in relation to Spanish law, and representations of the past. In the process, they shaped an emergent “Indian” identity in tension with other forms of indigenous identity and a political order characterized by a persistent conflict between local autonomy and colonial control. This innovative study provides fresh insight into colonialism’s disparate cultures and the making of race, ethnicity, and the colonial state and legal system in Spanish America.

All the difference in the world: postcoloniality and the ends of comparison

Abstract: Table of Contents Acknowledgements Preface CHAPTER 1 Grounds for Comparison Comparative Reaches Unimagined The Time of Comparison The Space of Comparison Incommensurability : Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison CHAPTER 2 Ungrounding Comparison: Conrad and Colonial Narration Imperial Comparison Marlow and The Rhetoric of Dissimilation Foiled Communities CHAPTER 3 The Empire's Loose Ends: Dissimilated Readings Dissimilation Dissimilation and Com-paraison Relation CHAPTER 4 Ruined Comparatives: Epic Similitude and the Pedagogy of Poetic Space in Derek Walcott's Omeros History and The Place Without People: Amnesia and Analogy Forgettable Vacations and Metaphor in Ruins Homeric Similes and Omeric Similitudes: A Contingent Excursus Pedagogy of Poetic Space ("Our Last Resort As Much As Yours, Omeros") Envoi CHAPTER 5 The Gift of Belittling All Things: Catastrophic Miniaturization in Aim' C'saire and Simone Schwarz-Bart Geometries of Blood The Plenitude of Smallness Irreducibility Catastrophe and Finitude The Horizon's Hero: Monocosm to Microcosm REFERENCE LIST Index

Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought

Abstract: * Note on Nomenclature * List of Figures * Introduction *1. The Rise and Fall of the Trojan Turks *2. Barbarians at the Gates *3. In Search of the Classical Turks *4. Translations of Empire *5. Wise Men in the East * Epilogue * Appendix: The Caspian Gates * Abbreviations * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index

Roundtable: John Darwin's After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405

Abstract: Tamerlane was the last of the 'world conquerors': his armies looted and killed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of China. Nomad horsemen from the Steppes had been the terror of Europe and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405, an epoch of history came to an end. The future belonged to the great dynastic empires - Chinese, Mughal, Iranian and Ottoman - where most of Eurasia's culture and wealth was to be found, and to the oceanic voyagers from Eurasia's 'Far West', just beginning to venture across the dark seas.\"After Tamerlane\" is an immensely important and stimulating work. It takes a fresh look at our global past. Our idea of world history is still dominated by the view from the West: it is Europe's expansion that takes centre-stage. But for much of the six-hundred year span of this book. Asia's great empires seemed much more than a match for the intruders from Europe. It took a revolution in Eurasia to change this balance of power, although never completely. The Chinese empire, against all the odds, has survived to this day. The British empire came and went. The Nazi empire was crushed almost at once. The rise, fall and endurance of empires - and the causes behind them - remain one of the most fascinating puzzles in world history.