Ulrike von Hirschhausen/Jörn Leonhard: Between Historicization and Globalization. Topics, Issues, and Trends in new research on Empires

Abstract

The following article examines recent publications on empires and imperial history in world history, covering general overviews, comparative studies and monographs on individual cases. As a preliminary result of a general expansion of empire-studies – diachronically, with regard to different historical spaces and thematically – the authors identify a danger of inflating the concept and thereby weakening its analytical strength. Furthermore, a growing gulf between macro- perspectives and panoramas on the one hand and mikro-analyses on the other makes it difficult to achieve a suitable framework for precise research on empires. The article therefore argues in favour of a meso level, as the comparative view on the complex relation between empires and nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth century can illustrate.

The following titels were discussed i.a.:
Ferguson, N.: Empire (390); Hardt, M./Negri, A.: Empire (390); Münkler, H.: Imperien (390); Randeria, S./Eckert, A. (Hrsg.): Vom Imperialismus zum Empire (390); Burbank, J./Hagen, M./Remnev, A. (Hrsg.): Russian Empire (391); Cooper, F.: Colonialism in Question (391); Bar- key, K.: Empire of Difference (392); Barkey, K./Hagen, M. (Hrsg.): After Empire (392); Dale, S.: The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (392); Finkel, C.: Osmans Dream (393); Gam- merl, B.: Staatsbürger, Untertanen und Andere (394); Reynolds, M.: Shattering Empires (396); Crews, R.: For Prophet and Tsar (397); Roshwald, A.: Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires (397); Joffe, J.: Überpower (399); Wende, P.: Das Britische Empire (399); Darwin, J.: The Empire Project (400); Green- feld, L.: Five Roads to Modernity (402); Hart, J.: Comparing Empires (402); Lieven, D.: Empire (402); Miller, A./Rieber, A. (Hrsg.): Imperial Rule (402)