Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 draws upon published and unpublished work by leading scholars in the history of European expansion and the history of political thought. It covers the whole span of imperial theories from ancient Rome to the American founding, and includes a series of essays which address the theoretical underpinnings of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British and Dutch empires in both the Americas and in Asia. The volume is unprecedented in its attention to the wider intellectual contexts within which those empires were situated - particularly the discourses of universal monarchy, millenarianism, mercantalism, and federalism - and in its mapping of the shift from Roman conceptions of imperium to the modern idea of imperialism.

The Ideological Origins of the British Empire presents a comprehensive history of British conceptions of empire for more than half a century. David Armitage traces the emergence of British imperial identity from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, using a full range of manuscript and printed sources. By linking the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland with the history of the British Empire, he demonstrates the importance of ideology as an essential linking between the processes of state-formation and empire-building. This book sheds light on major British political thinkers, from Sir Thomas Smith to David Hume, by providing fascinating accounts of the 'British problem' in the early modern period, of the relationship between Protestantism and empire, of theories of property, liberty and political economy in imperial perspective, and of the imperial contribution to the emergence of British 'identities' in the Atlantic world.

First published in 1999, this volume is an ambitious attempt to provide a wide-ranging introduction to local government in the overseas empires of Portugal, Spain, England and France, with further reference to the English East India Company and the Dutch East and West India Companies. In an exercise in compensatory history, the book examines government of empire not from the metropolitan perspective but at the local level, where government was most likely to impact on the everyday lives of both persons of European birth and indigenous peoples. The first part examines the institutional framework of local and regional government at the municipal, parish and county levels, extending this to include law and order, social welfare and education. The second part examines the social dimension of local government: governance in pluricultural societies; elite formation; creolization; representation and oligarchies; oversight, and negotiated authority. The work includes a comprehensive introduction, together with an extensive bibliography and a detailed index.

Administration, and representative assemblies in New France); and the British empire (the 17th and 18th century Privy Council, the Board of Trade and London, His Majesty's council, Bermuda, the role of the lower houses of assembly in 18th century politics, the general assembly of the Leeward Islands, financial administration in Barbados, the courts in the American colonies, and indirect rule. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.

This work examines the philosophical origins of Oromo egalitarian and democratic thoughts and practice, the Gadaa-Qaalluu system, kinship organization, the introduction and spread of Islam and the consequent socio-cultural change. It sheds light on the advent of the Ethiopian empire under Menelik II, its conquests and Arsi Oromo fierce resistance (1880-1900), the nature and legacy of Ethiopian imperial polity, centre-periphery relations, feudal political economy and its impacts on the newly conquered regions with a focus on Arsi Oromo country. The book also analyzes the root causes of the national political crisis including, but not limited to, the attempts at transforming the empire-state to a nation-state around a single culture, contested definition of national identity and state legitimacy, grievance narratives, uprisings, the birth and development of competing nationalisms as well as the limitations of the current ethnic federalism to address the national question in Ethiopia.

The Soviet Union is often characterised as nominally a federation, but really an empire, liable to break up when individual federal units, which were allegedly really subordinate colonial units, sought independence. This book questions this interpretation, revisiting the theory of federation, and discussing actual examples of federations such as the United States, arguing that many federal unions, including the United States, are really centralised polities. It also discusses the nature of empires, nations and how they relate to nation states and empires, and the right of secession, highlighting the importance of the fact that this was written in to the Soviet constitution. It examines the attitude of successive Soviet leaders towards nationalities, and the changing attitudes of nationalists towards the Soviet Union. Overall, it demonstrates that the Soviet attitude to nationalities and federal units was complicated, wrestling, in a similar way to many other states, with difficult questions of how ethno-cultural justice can best be delivered in a political unit which is bigger than the national state.