The volume will focus on a comparative level on a specific group of states that are commonly labelled as “empires” and that we encounter through all historical periods. Although they are very successful at the very beginning, like most empires are, this success is very ephemeral and transient. The era of conquest is never followed by a period of consolidation. Collapse and/or reduction to much smaller dimension run as fast as the process of wide-ranging conquest and expansion. The volume singles out a series of such “short-term empires” and aims to provide a methodologically clearly structured as well as a uniform and consistent approach by developing a general set of questions that guarantee the possibility to compare and distinguish. This way it intends to examine not only already well established empires but also to illuminate forgotten ones.

A pioneering volume comparing the great historical empires, such as the Roman, Mughal and Ottoman. Leading interdisciplinary thinkers study tributary empires from diverse perspectives, illuminating the importance of these earlier forms of imperialism to broaden our perspective on modern concerns about empire and the legacy of colonialism.

The concept of the short term involves a complex network of quantitative, qualitative, and operational ideas. It is essential everywhere from the ontology of time, to the science of memory, to the preservation of art, to emotional life, to the practice of ethics. But what does the idea of the short term mean? What makes a temporal term short? What makes a time segment terminate? Is the short term a quantitative idea, or a qualitative or functional idea? When is it a good idea to understand events as short term events, and when is it a good idea to make decisions based on the short term? What does it mean for the nature of time if some of it can be short? Jay Lampert explores these questions in depth and makes use of the resources of short (as well as long) term processes in order to develop best temporal practices in ethical, aesthetic, epistemological, and metaphysical activities, both theoretical and practical. The methodology develops ideas based on the history of philosophy (from Plato to Hegel to Husserl to Deleuze), interdisciplinary studies (from cognitive science to poetics), and practical spheres where short term practices have been studied extensively (from short term psychotherapy to short term financial investments). Philosophy of the Short Term is the first book to deal systematically with the concept of the short term.

The articles of this comprehensive edited volume offer a multidisciplinary, global and comparative approach to the history of empires. They analyze their ends over a long spectrum of humankind’s history, ranging from Ancient History through Modern Times. As the main guiding question, every author of this volume scrutinizes the reasons for the decline, the erosion, and the implosion of individual empires. All contributions locate and highlight different factors that triggered or at least supported the ending or the implosion of empires. This overall question makes all the contributions to this volume comparable and allows to detect similarities, differences as well as inconsistencies of historical processes.

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era. Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.

A great deal of the world's history is the history of empires. Indeed it could be said that all history is colonial history, if one takes a broad enough definition and goes far enough back. And although the great historic imperial systems, the land-based Russian one as well as the seaborne empires of western European powers, have collapsed during the past half century, their legacies shape almost every aspect of life on a global scale. Meanwhile there is fierce argument, and much speculation, about what has replaced the old territorial empires in world politics. Do the United States and its allies, transnational companies, financial and media institutions, or more broadly the forces of 'globalization', constitute a new imperial system? Stephen Howe interprets the meaning of the idea of 'empire' through the ages, disentangling the multiple uses and abuses of the labels 'empire', 'colonialism', etc., and examines the aftermath of imperialism on the contemporary world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book provides an analysis of the latest research findings in the field of world history, and includes terse articulations of modernity vis-à-vis empire. In doing so, the author brings together insights from both the disciplines of history and international relations into world systems, emphasising economic aspects, and offering a road map for the evolution of the field of world history. The book achieves this by critically analysing the works of Peter Fibiger Bang, Christopher Alan Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Krishnan Kumar, Xin Fan, Christopher A. Ford and Diego Olstein. The author includes discussions such as how the Roman empire impacted all subsequent Western empires, both early and modern, and current debates in world history and politics such as China’s rise.