Visions of empire : how five imperial regimes shaped the world

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Title:

Visions of empire : how five imperial regimes shaped the world

Author:

Kumar, Krishan, 1942- author.

ISBN:

9780691153636

Personal Author:

Kumar, Krishan, 1942- author.

Physical Description:

xviii, 576 pages ; 25 cm

General Note:

Source of cataloging data: WCP

Abstract:

The empires of the past were far-flung experiments in multinationalism and multiculturalism, and have much to teach us about navigating our own increasingly globalized and interconnected world. Until now, most recent scholarship on empires has focused on their subject peoples. Visions of Empire looks at their rulers, shedding critical new light on who they were, how they justified their empires, how they viewed themselves, and the styles of rule they adopted toward their subjects. Krishan Kumar provides panoramic and multifaceted portraits of five major European empires - Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian/Soviet, British, and French - showing how each, like ancient Rome, saw itself as the carrier of universal civilization to the rest of the world. Sometimes these aims were couched in religious terms, as with Islam for the Ottomans or Catholicism for the Habsburgs. Later, the imperial missions took more secular forms, as with British political traditions or the world communism of the Soviets. Visions of Empire offers new insights into the interactions between rulers and ruled, revealing how empire was as much a shared enterprise as a clash of oppositional interests. It explores how these empires differed from nation-states, particularly in how the ruling peoples of empires were forced to downplay or suppress their own national or ethnic identities in the interests of the long-term preservation of their rule.

Contents:

The idea of empire -- The Roman empire -- The Ottoman empire -- The Habsburg empire -- The Russian and Soviet empires -- The British empire -- The French empire -- Epilogue: nations after empires.

Subject Term:

Imperialism -- Case studies.

World politics.

World history.

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Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Aurora Downtown	Book	D32 .K86 2017	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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What the rulers of empire can teach us about navigating today's increasingly interconnected world

The empires of the past were far-flung experiments in multinationalism and multiculturalism, and have much to teach us about navigating our own increasingly globalized and interconnected world. Until now, most recent scholarship on empires has focused on their subject peoples. Visions of Empire looks at their rulers, shedding critical new light on who they were, how they justified their empires, how they viewed themselves, and the styles of rule they adopted toward their subjects.

Krishan Kumar provides panoramic and multifaceted portraits of five major European empires--Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian/Soviet, British, and French--showing how each, like ancient Rome, saw itself as the carrier of universal civilization to the rest of the world. Sometimes these aims were couched in religious terms, as with Islam for the Ottomans or Catholicism for the Habsburgs. Later, the imperial missions took more secular forms, as with British political traditions or the world communism of the Soviets.

Visions of Empire offers new insights into the interactions between rulers and ruled, revealing how empire was as much a shared enterprise as a clash of oppositional interests. It explores how these empires differed from nation-states, particularly in how the ruling peoples of empires were forced to downplay or suppress their own national or ethnic identities in the interests of the long-term preservation of their rule. This compelling and in-depth book demonstrates how the rulers of empire, in their quest for a universal world order, left behind a legacy of multiculturalism and diversity that is uniquely relevant for us today.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kumar (The Idea of Englishness), professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, argues persuasively that studying historical empires, with their diverse subject populations, far-flung networks, and complex political hierarchies, can provide insight into our globalized present. Beginning with the Roman Empire and proceeding briskly through the Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian, British, and French imperial regimes, Kumar leads a whirlwind tour of imperial ideology across space and time, paying special attention to the degree to which "nationness," or national ideology, was expressed in each imperial formation. While the book's thumbnail sketches of these six empires are accessible and often engrossing, the complicated relationship between nation and empire is explored only superficially in the introduction and conclusion, which serve to sum up other scholars' contributions rather than advance any original theoretical insights. Much as the regimes discussed "felt the strains of managing entities as complex and convoluted as multinational and far-flung empires," the book struggles to make sense of similarity and difference across its vast canvas. Tropes of empire (the French "civilizing mission," the British conquering the world in "a fit of absence of mind") are duly dragged out and reassessed in workmanlike but uninspiring prose. Kumar's work is a judiciously argued and useful survey for any student of empire. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Choice Review

In this excellent book, Kumar (sociology, Virginia) compares the histories of the Ottoman, Russian/Soviet, Habsburg, British, and French empires. His main concern is the ideas and ideologies of imperial elites and the ways they shaped imperial policies and conceptions of identity. Ideas of empire, Kumar shows, were not "a smoke screen that hid other, less idealistic, motives and interests." The empires in question, all influenced in important ways by the Roman model, developed and pursued imperial missions vital to their work and longevity. "Justification and legitimation," Kumar stresses, "are as much a part of rule as force and fraud." The picture he paints places striking emphasis on common patterns across the five empires in question as well as on their resilience in an era too often characterized in terms of the rise of nation-states. Whatever their faults, empires have much to teach, Kumar suggests, for they "show us another way ... of managing the diversity and differences that are now the inescapable fate of practically all so-called nation-states." Summing Up: Highly recommended. General collections; upper-division undergraduates and above. --Mark A. Soderstrom, Aurora University

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
1 The Idea of Empire	p. 1
2 The Roman Empire: Parent of Empire	p. 37
3 The Ottoman Empire	p. 74
4 The Habsburg Empire	p. 145
5 The Russian and Soviet Empires	p. 213
6 The British Empire	p. 310
7 The French Empire: "Imperial Nation-State"	p. 387
8 Epilogue: Nations after Empires	p. 465
Notes	p. 477
Bibliography	p. 507
Index	p. 553

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Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Choice Review

Table of Contents