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The Empire Strikes Out
by Robert EliasIs the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of "the American way."From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, we see baseball's role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. And from Albert Spalding and baseball's first World Tour to Bud Selig and the World Baseball Classic, we witness the globalization of America's national pastime and baseball's role in spreading the American dream. Besides describing baseball's frequent and often surprising connections to America's presence around the world, Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself and asks whether baseball can play a positive role or rather only reinforce America's dominance around the globe. Like Franklin Foer in How Soccer Explains the World, Elias is driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals. His seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that's about more than just sports.
Empire, Technology and Seapower: Royal Navy crisis in the age of Palmerston (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)
by Howard J. FullerThis book examines British naval diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, showing how the mid-Victorian Royal Navy suffered serious challenges during the period. Many recent works have attempted to depict the mid-Victorian Royal Navy as all-powerful, innovative, and even self-assured. In contrast, this work argues that it suffered serious challenges in the form of expanding imperial commitments, national security concerns, precarious diplomatic relations with European Powers and the United States, and technological advancements associated with the armoured warship at the height of the so-called 'Pax Britannica'. Utilising a wealth of international archival sources, this volume explores the introduction of the monitor form of ironclad during the American Civil War, which deliberately forfeited long-range power-projection for local, coastal command of the sea. It looks at the ways in which the Royal Navy responded to this new technology and uses a wealth of international primary and secondary sources to ascertain how decision-making at Whitehall affected that at Westminster. The result is a better-balanced understanding of Palmerstonian diplomacy from the end of the Crimean War to the American Civil War, the early evolution of the modern capital ship (including the catastrophic loss of the experimental sail-and-turret ironclad H.M.S. Captain), naval power-projection, and the nature of 'empire', 'technology', and 'seapower'. This book will be of great interest to all students of the Royal Navy, and of maritime and strategic studies in general.
The Empire That Would Not Die: The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640 - 740
by John HaldonThe eastern Roman Empire was the largest state in western Eurasia in the sixth century. A century later, it was a fraction of its former size. Ravaged by warfare and disease, the empire seemed destined to collapse. Yet it did not die. John Haldon elucidates the factors that allowed the empire to survive against all odds into the eighth century.
Empire, the British Museum, and the Making of the Biblical Scholar in the Nineteenth Century: Archival Criticism
by Gregory L. CuéllarSince the modern period, the field of biblical studies has relied upon libraries, museums, and archives for its evidentiary and credentialing needs. Yet, absent in biblical scholarship is a thorough and critical examination of the instrumentality of the discipline’s master archives for elite power structures. Addressing this gap in biblical scholarship lies central to this book. Interrogated here is a premier repository or master archive of the discipline: the British Museum. Using an assemblage of critical theories from archival discourse to postcolonial studies, space theory to governmentality studies, the focal point of this book is at the intersections of the Museum’s rise to scientific prominence, the British Empire, and the conferring of scientific authority to modern biblical critics in the nineteenth century. Gregory L. Cuéllar initiates a season of historicization of the master archives of biblical studies and archival criticism.
Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity
by Garth FowdenIn this bold approach to late antiquity, Garth Fowden shows how, from the second-century peak of Rome's prosperity to the ninth-century onset of the Islamic Empire's decline, powerful beliefs in One God were used to justify and strengthen "world empires." But tensions between orthodoxy and heresy that were inherent in monotheism broke the unitary empires of Byzantium and Baghdad into the looser, more pluralistic commonwealths of Eastern Christendom and Islam. With rare breadth of vision, Fowden traces this transition from empire to commonwealth, and in the process exposes the sources of major cultural contours that still play a determining role in Europe and southwest Asia.
An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic (Early American Places #18)
by Kate Luce MulryExamines the efforts to bring political order to the English empire through projects of environmental improvementWhen Charles II ascended the English throne in 1660 after two decades of civil war, he was confronted with domestic disarray and a sprawling empire in chaos. His government sought to assert control and affirm the King’s sovereignty by touting his stewardship of both England’s land and the improvement of his subjects’ health. By initiating ambitious projects of environmental engineering, including fen and marshland drainage, forest rehabilitation, urban reconstruction, and garden transplantation schemes, agents of the English Restoration government aimed to transform both places and people in service of establishing order. Merchants, colonial officials, and members of the Royal Society encouraged royal intervention in places deemed unhealthy, unproductive, or poorly managed. Their multiple schemes reflected an enduring belief in the complex relationships between the health of individual bodies, personal and communal character, and the landscapes they inhabited.In this deeply researched work, Kate Mulry highlights a period of innovation during which officials reassessed the purpose of colonies, weighed their benefits and drawbacks, and engineered and instituted a range of activities in relation to subjects’ bodies and material environments. These wide-ranging actions offer insights about how restoration officials envisioned authority within a changing English empire.An Empire Transformed is an interdisciplinary work addressing a series of interlocking issues concerning ideas about the environment, governance, and public health in the early modern English Atlantic empire.
The Empire Trap: The Rise and Fall of U.S. Intervention to Protect American Property Overseas, 1893-2013
by Noel MaurerHow the United States became an imperial power by bowing to pressure to defend its citizens' overseas investmentsThroughout the twentieth century, the U.S. government willingly deployed power, hard and soft, to protect American investments all around the globe. Why did the United States get into the business of defending its citizens' property rights abroad? The Empire Trap looks at how modern U.S. involvement in the empire business began, how American foreign policy became increasingly tied to the sway of private financial interests, and how postwar administrations finally extricated the United States from economic interventionism, even though the government had the will and power to continue.Noel Maurer examines the ways that American investors initially influenced their government to intercede to protect investments in locations such as Central America and the Caribbean. Costs were small—at least at the outset—but with each incremental step, American policy became increasingly entangled with the goals of those they were backing, making disengagement more difficult. Maurer discusses how, all the way through the 1970s, the United States not only failed to resist pressure to defend American investments, but also remained unsuccessful at altering internal institutions of other countries in order to make property rights secure in the absence of active American involvement. Foreign nations expropriated American investments, but in almost every case the U.S. government's employment of economic sanctions or covert action obtained market value or more in compensation—despite the growing strategic risks. The advent of institutions focusing on international arbitration finally gave the executive branch a credible political excuse not to act. Maurer cautions that these institutions are now under strain and that a collapse might open the empire trap once more.With shrewd and timely analysis, this book considers American patterns of foreign intervention and the nation's changing role as an imperial power.
The Empire Trilogy
by J. G. FarrellThe Empire Trilogy--consisting of the Lost Booker Prize-winning Troubles, the Booker Prize-winning The Siege of Krishnapur,and The Singapore Grip--is Farrell's re-examination of the legacy, and limits, of British imperial rule. The three volumes, connected by theme rather than character, and above all by their shared wit, brio, and daring, range in setting from the India of the Great Mutiny of 1857, to Ireland immediately after the Great War, to the besieged Singapore of World War II. Together the books constitute not only a spectacular entertainment but also an ambitious refashioning of the traditional historical novel to meet the tragic realities of the modern world. · The Siege of Krishnapur - India, 1857--the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years.Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion--at once brutal, blundering, and wistful--is soon revealed. · Troubles - 1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles." · The Singapore Grip - Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn't what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore's oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett's partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming--what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett's price-fixing and market manipulation--but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between classes and nations, is about to come to a terrible end.
Empire Under the Microscope: Parasitology and the British Literary Imagination, 1885–1935 (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine)
by Emilie Taylor-PirieThis open access book considers science and empire, and the stories we tell ourselves about them. Using British Nobel laureate Ronald Ross (1857-1932) and his colleagues as access points to a wider professional culture, Empire Under the Microscope explores the cultural history of parasitology and its relationships with the literary and historical imagination between 1885 and 1935. Emilie Taylor-Pirie examines a wealth of archival material including medical lectures, scientific publications, popular biography, and personal and professional correspondence, alongside novels, poems, newspaper articles, and political speeches, to excavate the shared vocabularies of literature and medicine. She demonstrates how forms such as poetry and biography; genres such as imperial romance and detective fiction; and modes such as adventure and the Gothic, together informed how tropical diseases, their parasites, and their vectors, were understood in relation to race, gender, and nation. From Ancient Greece, to King Arthur’s Knights, to the detective work of Sherlock Holmes, parasitologists manipulated literary and historical forms of knowledge in their professional self-fashioning to create a modern mythology that has a visible legacy in relationships between science and society today.
Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Imperial Laboratories of Governance (Interventions)
by Alexander D BarderThis book explores the reverberating impacts between historical and contemporary imperial laboratories and their metropoles through three case studies concerning violence, surveillance and political economy. The invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 forced the United States to experiment and innovate in considerable ways. Faced with growing insurgencies that called into question its entire mission, the occupation authorities engaged in a series of tactical and technological innovations that changed the way it combated insurgents and managed local populations. The book presents new material to develop the argument that imperial and colonial contexts function as a laboratory in which techniques of violence, population control and economic principles are developed which are subsequently introduced into the domestic society of the imperial state. The text challenges the widely taken for granted notion that the diffusion of norms and techniques is a one-way street from the imperial metropole to the dependent or weak periphery. This work will be of great interest to scholars of international relations, critical security studies and international relations theory.
The Empire Within
by Sean MillsIn a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place, Mills pulls back the curtain on the decade's activists and intellectuals, showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex, race, and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. The temporary unity forged around ideas of decolonization came undone in the 1970s, however, as many were forced to come to terms with the contradictions and ambiguities of applying ideas of decolonization in Quebec. From linguistic debates to labour unions, and from the political activities of citizens in the city's poorest neighbourhoods to its Caribbean intellectuals, The Empire Within is a political tour of Montreal that reconsiders the meaning and legacy of the city's dissident traditions. It is also a fascinating chapter in the history of postcolonial thought.
The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Studies on the History of Quebec/Études d'histoire du Québec #23)
by Sean MillsIn a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place, Mills pulls back the curtain on the decade's activists and intellectuals, showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex, race, and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. The temporary unity forged around ideas of decolonization came undone in the 1970s, however, as many were forced to come to terms with the contradictions and ambiguities of applying ideas of decolonization in Quebec. From linguistic debates to labour unions, and from the political activities of citizens in the city's poorest neighbourhoods to its Caribbean intellectuals, The Empire Within is a political tour of Montreal that reconsiders the meaning and legacy of the city's dissident traditions. It is also a fascinating chapter in the history of postcolonial thought.
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain
by Sathnam SangheraA best-selling journalist&’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism."Empireland is brilliantly written, deeply researched and massively important. It&’ll stay in your head for years.&” —John Oliver, Emmy Award-winning host of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver"With a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Booker Prize-winner Marlon JamesEmpire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do. From common thought to our daily routines; from the foundations of social safety nets to the realities of racism; and from the distrust of public intellectuals to the exceptionalism that permeates immigration debates, the Brexit campaign and the global reckonings with controversial memorials, Empireland shows how the pernicious legacy of Western imperialism undergirds our everyday lives, yet remains shockingly obscured from view.In accessible, witty prose, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Sathnam Sanghera traces this legacy back to its source, exposing how—in both profound and innocuous ways—imperial domination has shaped the United Kingdom we know today. Sanghera connects the historical dots across continents and seas to show how the shadows of a colonial past still linger over modern-day Britain and how the world, in turn, was shaped by Britain&’s looming hand. The implications, of course, extend to Britain&’s most notorious former colony turned imperial power: the United States of America, which prides itself for its maverick soul and yet seems to have inherited all the ambition, brutality and exceptional thinking of its parent.Empireland is a revelatory and lucid work of political history that offers a sobering appraisal of the past so we may move toward a more just future.
Empires and Boundaries: Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings (Routledge Studies in Cultural History)
by Harald Fischer-Tiné Susanne GehrmannEmpires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings is an exciting collection of original essays exploring the meaning and existence of conflicting and coexisting hierarchies in colonial settings. With investigations into the colonial past of a diversity of regions – including South Asia, South-East Asia, and Africa – the dozen notable international scholars collected here offer a truly inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the structures and workings of power in British, French, Dutch, German, and Italian colonial contexts. Integrating a historical approach with perspectives and theoretical tools specific to disciplines such as social anthropology, literary and film studies, and gender studies, Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings, is a striking and ambitious contribution to the scholarship of imperialism and post-colonialism and an essential read for anyone interested in the revolution being undergone in these fields of study.
Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, And The Steppe, Ca. 250-750
by Michael Maas Nicola Di CosmoEmpires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. <P><P>In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. <P>This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. <P>This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.<P> Proposes an integrated view of Eurasia during the period ca.250–750 CE that brings together Rome, China, Iran, and the central steppe lands, allowing readers to gain a fresh approach to a coherent transformational period in world history that has not been discussed within these chronological and geographical parameters before.<P> Brings together in an innovative way two areas that are the focus of considerable current interest, late antique studies and silk road studies, offering new methodologies for integrated study.<P> Introduces the concept of 'Eurasian Late Antiquity', which is not based on the centrality of the Roman Mediterranean world, helping readers understand the commonalities, differences, and exchanges over a broad geographic area, including Rome, China, Iran, and the steppe lands between them.
Empires and Indigenes: Intercultural Alliance, Imperial Expansion, and Warfare in the Early Modern World (Warfare and Culture #1)
by Wayne E. LeeThe early modern period (c. 1500-1800) of world history is characterized by the establishment and aggressive expansion of European empires, and warfare between imperial powers and indigenous peoples was a central component of the quest for global dominance. From the Portuguese in Africa to the Russians and Ottomans in Central Asia, empire builders could not avoid military interactions with native populations, and many discovered that imperial expansion was impossible without the cooperation, and, in some cases, alliances with the natives they encountered in the new worlds they sought to rule.Empires and Indigenes is a sweeping examination of how intercultural interactions between Europeans and indigenous people influenced military choices and strategic action. Ranging from the Muscovites on the western steppe to the French and English in North America, it analyzes how diplomatic and military systems were designed to accommodate the demands and expectations of local peoples, who aided the imperial powers even as they often became subordinated to them. Contributors take on the analytical problem from a variety of levels, from the detailed case studies of the different ways indigenous peoples could be employed, to more comprehensive syntheses and theoretical examinations of diplomatic processes, ethnic soldier mobilization, and the interaction of culture and military technology.Warfare and Culture seriesContributors: Virginia Aksan, David R. Jones, Marjoleine Kars, Wayne E. Lee, Mark Meuwese, Douglas M. Peers, Geoffrey Plank, Jenny Hale Pulsipher, and John K. Thornton
Empires Apart
by Brian LandersA fresh, commanding, and thought-provoking history of the competing American and Russian empires The American road to empire started when the first English settlers landed in Virginia. Simultaneously, the first Russians crossed the Urals, and the two empires that would dominate the twentieth century were born. Empires Apart reveals how the two empires developed in parallel as they expanded to the Pacific and launched wars against the nations around them. Provocatively, Landers shows how the broad sweep of American history follows a consistent path from the first settlers to the present day and, by comparing this with Russia's imperial path, demonstrates the true nature of American global ambitions.
Empires Apart: A History of American and Russian Imperialism
by Brian LandersA fresh, commanding, and thought-provoking narrative history of the competing Russian and American empires. The American road to empire started when the first English settlers landed in Virginia. Simultaneously, the first Russians crossed the Urals and the two empires that would dominate the twentieth century were born. Empires Apart covers the history of the Americans and Russians from the Vikings to the present day. It shows the two empires developed in parallel as they expanded to the Pacific and launched wars against the nations around them. They both developed an imperial 'ideology' that was central to the way they perceived themselves. Soon after, the ideology of the Russian Empire also changed with the advent of Communism. The key argument of this book is that these changes did not alter the core imperial values of either nation; both Russians and Americans continued to believe in their manifest destiny. Corporatist and Communist imperialism changed only the mechanics of empire. Both nations have shown that they are still willing to use military force and clandestine intrigue to enforce imperial control. Uniquely, Landers shows how the broad sweep of American history follows a consistent path from the first settlers to the present day and, by comparing this with Russia's imperial path, demonstrates the true nature of American global ambitions.
Empire's Child: The One Year Trip Into Unknown Territory (Hispanic Literature Ser. #Vol. 14)
by Ramnik ShahThis is a unique and varied collection of writings, spread over a half century, on wide-ranging subjects under the banner of a child of the British Empire. On its metropolitan home front, the Empire is of course long gone, with little left by way of folk memory. While it does not figure in our national conversation much, its legacy still lives on in many forms. More to the point, its historical significance is now being increasingly invoked and revived by writers with an immigrant background. This selective compilation falls into that genre. It is not a fictional narrative of a singular journey from out there to here, as it were, but rather a kaleidoscopic overview of the postcolonial movement into Britain of the East African (EA) Asians from a variety of historical, legal and cultural perspectives. This is encompassed in a mix of articles, magazine columns and other material and in the numerous letters in The Times and other newspapers. All these deal with different aspects of the whole EA Asian and indeed global migration phenomenon. Buried in there are snippets of the author's own trajectory from birth in colonial Kenya to eventual settlement in the UK. The texts also delve into his broad hinterland through an eclectic array of book and film reviews, blogs, travelogues and academic papers. Empire's Child provides a fascinating glimpse into the making of Britain's multicultural society.
Empire's Children
by Ellen BoucherBetween 1869 and 1967, government-funded British charities sent nearly 100,000 British children to start new lives in the settler empire. This pioneering study tells the story of the rise and fall of child emigration to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Rhodesia. In the mid-Victorian period, the book reveals, the concept of a global British race had a profound impact on the practice of charity work, the evolution of child welfare, and the experiences of poor children. During the twentieth century, however, rising nationalism in the dominions, alongside the emergence of new, psychological theories of child welfare, eroded faith in the 'British world' and brought child emigration into question. Combining archival sources with original oral histories, Empire's Children not only explores the powerful influence of empire on child-centered social policy, it also uncovers how the lives of ordinary children and families were forever transformed by imperial forces and settler nationalism.
Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies
by Emmanuelle Saada Arthur GoldhammerEurope's imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers. When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina - the metis - she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the metis question: the educational, social, and civil issues surrounding the mixed population. Operating at the intersection of history, anthropology, and law, Empire's Children reveals the unacknowledged but central role of race in the definition of French nationality. Through extensive archival work in both France and Vietnam, and a close reading of primary and secondary material from the Pacific islands and sub-Saharan and North Africa, Saada has created in Empire's Children an original and compelling perspective on colonialism, law, race, and culture from the end of the nineteenth century until decolonization.
Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day
by Carrie Gibson“Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria onto what is today San Salvador, in the Bahamas, and announced that he had arrived in the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competition between world powers. In “Empire’s Crossroads”, British American historian Carrie Gibson traces the story of this coveted area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba, and from discovery through colonialism to today, offering a vivid, panoramic view of this complex region and its rich, important history. After that fateful landing in 1492, the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and even the Swedes, Scots, and Germans sought their fortunes in the islands for the next two centuries. Some failed spectacularly: a poorly executed settlement in Panama led the Scots to lose their own independence to England. The Spaniards were the first to find prosperity, in Mexico but also along the islands. In Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, they built grandiose cathedrals and extracted shipfuls of gold and silver, which English, French, and Dutch pirates were happy to seize. But precious metals weren’t a sustainable export the colonizers needed something that was, and they would need hordes of slaves to cultivate it. The Caribbean’s first cash crop, one indigenous to the New World, was tobacco, and it, along with sugar, spurred expensive new addictions back in Europe. Gibson argues that immaterial exports were just as important. No other region of the world has experienced such a vibrant mixing of cultures, religions, and peoples Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Amerindians created amazingly dynamic Creole societies that complicated traditional ideas about class and race. By the end of the eighteenth century, seventy thousand free blacks and mulattos lived in the British islands alone, and it was in the Caribbean that the world’s only successful slave revolt took place sparking the meteoric rise of Napoleon’s black counterpart, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and the Haitian Revolution. The Caribbean island of St. Eustatius had been the first to recognize the United States as a nation, but the Americans were soon vying for their own imperial stronghold in the West Indies, attempting to control Cuba and backing influential corporations, most notably United Fruit. In the twentieth century, most of the islands broke from the imperial traditions that had lorded over them for four centuries: this would be the explosive age of decolonization and banana republics,” of racial riots and négritude, of Cold War politics and tourist crowds. At every step of her expansive story, Gibson wields fascinating detail to combat the myths that have romanticized this region as one of uniform white sand beaches where the palm trees always sway. Evocatively written and featuring a whole cast of cosmopolitan characters, “Empire’s Crossroads” reinterprets five centuries of history that have been underappreciated for far too long.
Empire's Edge: American Society in Nome, Alaska, 1898-1934
by Preston JonesIn 1898, Nome, Alaska, burst into the American consciousness when one of the largest gold strikes in the world occurred on its shores. Over the next ten years, Nome’s population exploded as both men and women came north to seek their fortunes. Closer to Siberia than to New York, Nome’s citizens created their own version of small-town America on the northern frontier. Less than 150 miles from the Arctic Circle, they weathered the Great War and the diphtheria epidemic of 1925 as well as floods, fires, and the Great Depression. They enlivened the Alaska winters with pastimes such as high-school basketball and social clubs. Empire’s Edge is the story of how ordinary Americans made a life on the edge of a continent—a life both ordinary and extraordinary.
Empire's End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World
by Akiko Tsuchiya William G. Acree Jr.The fall of the Spanish Empire: that period in the nineteenth century when it lost its colonies in Spanish America and the Philippines. How did it happen? What did the process of the "end of empire" look like? Empire's End considers the nation's imperial legacy beyond this period, all the way up to the present moment. In addition to scrutinizing the political, economic, and social implications of this "end," these chapters emphasize the cultural impact of this process through an analysis of a wide range of representations—literature, literary histories, periodical publications, scientific texts, national symbols, museums, architectural monuments, and tourist routes—that formed the basis of transnational connections and exchange. The book breaks new ground by addressing the ramifications of Spain's imperial project in relation to its former colonies, not only in Spanish America, but also in North Africa and the Philippines, thus generating new insights into the circuits of cultural exchange that link these four geographical areas that are rarely considered together.Empire's End showcases the work of scholars of literature, cultural studies, and history, centering on four interrelated issues crucial to understanding the end of the Spanish empire: the mappings of the Hispanic Atlantic, race, human rights, and the legacies of empire.
Empire's End: A Novel
by Jerry JenkinsJerry Jenkins' surprising new novel is filled with adventure, drama, historic people and places, and even romance. Empire's End tells of a man who single-handedly turned the Roman Empire on-end. It will be the surprising, heart-stopping story of the year!