The First Imperial Age explores with subtlety and vigour the origins of Europe's rise to world hegemony in the early modern period, in a survey which brings together a huge range of Geoffrey Scammell's own and other recent research. After a slow start in the 1400s, the pace of European exploration and discovery quickened dramatically. By the end of the period, Europeans in pursuit of Asia and the opportunities encountered en route had determined the outlines of the Africa land mass, discovered and partly subjugated the Americas, opened a sea route to the Far East and established themselves in the great maritime economy of Asia. Europe became a world trader; indigenous people the world over were converted to Christianity; colonies became matters of dispute between European states, and although European knowledge of the worlds they discovered were largely confined to their coastlines, they know enought to feel thay had at last surpassed the deeds of antiquity. Geofrrey Scammell's detached and sceptical view highlights the ambiguities inherent in these triumphs: Europe rose to wealth and power at painful cost to much of the rest of the world, and set in train an enduring legacy of racial tension. The book takes an original approach to its subject. After outlining the salient features of the story, it is organised around broad themes: the reasons for Europe's expansion, how Europeaans could establish themselves in some part of the world and not others, the ways in which they exploited their new possessions; the nature of colonial societies; the influence of Europe on empire; and the nature of imperial experience.

A new history explores how one of Renaissance ItalyÕs leading cities maintained its influence in an era of global exploration, trade, and empire. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was not an imperial power, but it did harbor global ambitions. After abortive attempts at overseas colonization and direct commercial expansion, as Brian Brege shows, Tuscany followed a different path, one that allowed it to participate in EuropeÕs new age of empire without establishing an empire of its own. The first history of its kind, Tuscany in the Age of Empire offers a fresh appraisal of one of the foremost cities of the Italian Renaissance, as it sought knowledge, fortune, and power throughout Asia, the Americas, and beyond. How did Tuscany, which could not compete directly with the growing empires of other European states, establish a global presence? First, Brege shows, Tuscany partnered with larger European powers. The duchy sought to obtain trade rights within their empires and even manage portions of other statesÕ overseas territories. Second, Tuscans invested in cultural, intellectual, and commercial institutions at home, which attracted the knowledge and wealth generated by EuropeÕs imperial expansions. Finally, Tuscans built effective coalitions with other regional powers in the Mediterranean and the Islamic world, which secured the duchyÕs access to global products and empowered the Tuscan monarchy in foreign affairs. These strategies allowed Tuscany to punch well above its weight in a world where power was equated with the sort of imperial possessions it lacked. By finding areas of common interest with stronger neighbors and forming alliances with other marginal polities, a small state was able to protect its own security while carving out a space as a diplomatic and intellectual hub in a globalizing Europe.

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.

When European explorers went out into the world to open up trade routes and establish colonies, they brought back much more than silks and spices, cotton and tea. Inevitably, they came into contact with the peoples of other parts of the world and formed views of them occasionally admiring, more often hostile or contemptuous. Using a stunning array of sources - missionaries' memoirs, the letters of diplomats' wives, explorers' diaries and the work of writers as diverse as Voltaire, Thackeray, Oliver Goldsmith and, of course, Kipling - Victor Kiernan teases out the full range of European attitudes to other peoples. Erudite, ironic and global in its scope, The Lords of Human Kind has been a major influence on a generation of historians and cultural critics and is a landmark in the history of Eurocentrism.