Oxford World History of Empire: Volume Two: The History of Empires [Hardback]

The two volumes that form The Oxford World History of Empire successfully provide a nuanced and critical understanding and analysis of the empire project. The impression left with the reader at the end of the two volumes is a crucial understanding of imperialism. By shifting the gaze away from Eurocentric frameworks, we are provided with a significant insight into the formation of new empires and dynasties across the globe and throughout time. Perhaps of most significance, these volumes, by placing European colonialism into a global context reveal not only its short-lived and fragile nature, but also point out that imperialism was not a recent phenomenon, in fact the impact of empire has been strong and enduring throughout history. * History: The Journal of the Historical Association * The second volume is a tour-de-force narration and analysis of empire building. Through providing a history of history, the second volume successfully not only places the history of empire in the context of other imperial formations, forming to provides the reader with a thorough world history of empire. This is a significant historiographical work that successfully dispels myths about the stagnation of the non-European world, and the dominance of Europe, and yet collectively these chapters allow us to trace and identify deep commonalities in the imperial condition harking back to the third millennium BCE and spanning across the globe and through time. * History: The Journal of the Historical Association * The juxtaposition of various empires makes fascinating reading. These very engaging volumes will be a delightful read for any scholars interested in the history of empires. They will also make an excellent addition to any collection as a good general study of empires and an excellent starting point for research into specific empires. Highly recommended. * CHOICE * A veritable milestone-a project bringing together the top authorities in academe for a discussion on divergence and commonality of empires across history. The dimensions here are truly global unlike the Eurocentric framework that blighted empire studies from 30 years ago. In that sense and in many other ways, this History is unsurpassed. * Explorations in World History * The Oxford World History of Empire (OWHE) delivers a comprehensive and confidently authoritative account of the phenomenon that we label, as a matter of convenience, 'empire', from the third millennium B.C.E. right up to the present day.... This is a serious and important work of scholarship, and for those willing to plumb its depths there are many empirical and conceptual riches on offer.... The second volume of OWHE is an invaluable reference work on the rise and fall of empires over the course of several millennia of historical change, with rich empirical treatments of how empires operated as systems of power.... It is surely the best guide we now have to this protean form of social and political organisation, and it is only through understanding its deep past and current instantiations that we can hope to plan for a genuinely post-imperial future. * Journal of Roman Studies *