Was Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz' plan for naval expansion and the development of a "risk fleet" as a way to position Wilhelmine Germany as a world power to rival Britain so unique? This comparative study of the modern naval strategy of Germany, Britain, France, and the United States seeks to answer that question. First, Hobson is the only naval scholar to simultaneously compare the "Tirpitz Plan" with plans of the other leading nations of that time. Second, Hobson also interacts with how other scholars have assessed the complex interplay between naval history--both in and outside Germany--maritime law, and naval strategy. Hobson offers a unique interpretation of the causes and objectives of the German Imperial Navy at the end of the nineteenth century, forces that ultimately led to the First World War.

Empires of the Sea brings together studies of maritime empires from the Bronze Age to the Eighteenth Century. The volume aims to establish maritime empires as a category for the (comparative) study of premodern empires, and from a partly ‘non-western’ perspective. The book includes contributions on Mycenaean sea power, Classical Athens, the ancient Thebans, Ptolemaic Egypt, The Genoese Empire, power networks of the Vikings, the medieval Danish Empire, the Baltic empire of Ancien Régime Sweden, the early modern Indian Ocean, the Melaka Empire, the (non-European aspects of the) Portuguese Empire and Dutch East India Company, and the Pirates of Caribbean.

This is a story of tides and coastlines, winds and waves, islands and beaches. It is also a retelling of indigenous creativity, agency, and resistance in the face of unprecedented globalization and violence. Waves Across the South shifts the narrative of the Age of Revolutions and the origins of the British Empire; it foregrounds a vast southern zone that ranges from the Arabian Sea and southwest Indian Ocean across to the Bay of Bengal, and onward to the South Pacific and the Tasman Sea. As the empires of the Dutch, French, and especially the British reached across these regions, they faced a surge of revolutionary sentiment. Long-standing venerable Eurasian empires, established patterns of trade and commerce, and indigenous practice also served as a context for this transformative era. In addition to bringing long-ignored people and events to the fore, Sujit Sivasundaram opens the door to new and necessary conversations about environmental history, the consequences of historical violence, the legacies of empire, the extraction of resources, and the indigenous futures that Western imperialism cut short. The result is nothing less than a bold new way of understanding our global past, one that also helps us think afresh about our shared future.

This volume reiterates the relevance of imperialism in the present, as a continuous arrangement, from the early years of empire-colonies to the prevailing pattern of expropriation across the globe. While imperialism as an arrangement of exploitation has sustained over ages, measures deployed to achieve the goals have gone through variations, depending on the network of the prevailing power structure. Providing a historical as well as a conceptual account of imperialism in its ‘classical’ context, this collection brings to the fore an underlying unity which runs across the diverse pattern of imperialist order over time. Dealing with theory, the past and the contemporary, the study concludes by delving into the current conjuncture in Latin America, the United States and Asia. The Changing Face of Imperialism will provide fresh ideas for future research into the shifting patterns of expropriation – spanning the early years of sea-borne plunder and the empire-colonies of nineteenth-century to contemporary capitalism, which is rooted in neoliberalism, globalization and free market ideology. With contributions from major experts in the field, this book will be a significant intervention. It will be of interest to scholars and researchers of economics, politics, sociology and history, especially those dealing with imperial history and colonialism.

Today, the countries bordering the Red Sea are riven with instability. Why are the region's contemporary problems so persistent and interlinked? Through the stories of three compelling characters, Colonial Chaos sheds light on the unfurling of anarchy and violence during the colonial era. A noble Somali sultan, a cunning Yemeni militia leader, and a Machiavellian French merchant ran amok in the southern Red Sea in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In response to colonial hostility and gunboat diplomacy, they attacked shipwrecks, launched piratical attacks, and traded arms, slaves, and drugs. Their actions contributed to the transformation of the region's international relations, redrew the political map, upended its diplomatic culture, and remodelled its traditions of maritime law, sowing the seeds of future unrest. Colonisation created chaos in the southern Red Sea. Colonial Chaos offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the relationship between the region's colonial past and its contemporary instability.

A history of imperial competition, colonial cooperation, and revolutionary currents in the maritime borderlands of the early nineteenth-century Caribbean.