Empires and Bureaucracy in World History
Empires and Bureaucracy in World History
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How did empires rule different peoples across vast expanses of space and time? And how did small numbers of imperial bureaucrats govern large numbers of subordinated peoples? Empires and Bureaucracy in World History seeks answers to these fundamental problems in imperial studies by exploring the power and limits of bureaucracy. The book is pioneering in bringing together historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages with scholars of post-medieval European empires, while a genuinely world-historical perspective is provided by chapters on China, the Incas and the Ottomans. The editors identify a paradox in how bureaucracy operated on the scale of empires and so help explain why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires fail almost before they begin. By adopting a cross-chronological and world-historical approach, the book challenges the abiding association of bureaucratic rationality with 'modernity' and the so-called 'Rise of the West'.
- Proposes a new view of historical empires as a form of power, explaining how real empires actually ran and challenging popular conceptions that empires were supremely powerful
- Explains why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires seem set to fail almost before they begin
- Adopts a cross-chronological and world-historical approach
Reviews & endorsements
'Crooks and Parsons have taken an unfashionable subject and crafted a sparkling set of essays that demonstrate the importance of bureaucracy to the founding and maintaining of a diverse array of empires. Speaking across a huge temporal divide, this collection is sensitive to newer histories of colonialism, takes nothing for granted, and rethinks comparative history in important and productive ways. An impressive contribution that belongs on the shelves of historians of empire from every era and every region.' Philippa Levine, University of Texas, Austin
'This book studies the links between the hugely important but complicated realities of empire and bureaucracy in a way that is extremely wide-ranging, of great conceptual clarity but also full of detailed knowledge. Given the enormous scale of the project and the different perspectives of the many specialists involved in writing the individual chapters, the coherence of this fascinating work is a great tribute to the two editors. Dominic Lieven, University of Cambridge
'A distinguished array of the most important and innovative historians in their respective fields has been brought together here. The resulting debates and discoveries are wide-ranging, penetrating, often genuinely groundbreaking.' Stephen Howe, University of Bristol
'In this rich collection of essays edited by Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons, historians working on diverse regions and eras examine the relationship between the establishment and running of empires and bureaucracy.' Prachi Deshpande, H-Asia
Product details
August 2016Hardback
9781107166035
494 pages
235 × 158 × 25 mm
0.89kg
8 b/w illus. 17 maps 4 tables
Temporarily unavailable - available from TBC
Table of Contents
- Part I. Introduction:
- 1. Empires, bureaucracy and the paradox of power Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons
- Part II. Empires and Bureaucracy in World-Historical Perspective:
- 2. China as a contrasting case: bureaucracy and empire in Song China Patricia Ebrey
- 3. Conflict and cooperation between Arab rulers and Persian administrators in the formative period of Islamdom, c.600–950 CE I. T. Kristó-Nagy
- 4. Bureaucracy without alphabetic writing: governing the Inca empire, c.1438–1532 Chris Given-Wilson
- 5. The Ottoman empire (1299–1923): the bureaucratization of patrimonial authority Karen Barkey
- Part III. From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages:
- 6. 'The late Roman empire was before all things a bureaucratic state.' Michael Whitby
- 7. Bureaucracies, elites and clans: the case of Byzantium, c.600–1100 John Haldon
- 8. Charlemagne and Carolingian military administration Bernard S. Bachrach
- 9. Bureaucracy, the English state and the crisis of the Angevin empire, 1199–1205 John Gillingham
- 10. The parchment imperialists: texts, scribes, and the medieval western Empire, c.1250–c.1440 Len Scales
- 11. Before Humpty Dumpty: the first English empire and the brittleness of bureaucracy, 1259–1453 Peter Crooks
- Part IV. From the Age of European Expansion to the End of Empires:
- 12. Magistrates to administrators, composite monarchy to fiscal-military empire: empire and bureaucracy in the Spanish monarchy, c.1492–1825 Christopher Storrs
- 13. Britain's overseas empire before 1780: overwhelmingly successful and bureaucratically challenged Jack P. Greene
- 14. 'Les enfants du siècle': an empire of young professionals and the creation of bureaucratic, imperial ethos in Napoleonic Europe Michael Broers
- 15. Bureaucracy, power and violence in colonial India: the role of Indian subalterns Deana Heath
- 16. From chief to technocrat: labour and colonial authority in post-World War II Africa Frederick Cooper
- 17. The unintended consequences of bureaucratic 'modernization' in post-World War II British Africa Timothy H. Parsons
- Part V. Afterword:
- 18. Empires and bureaucracy: means of appropriation and media of communication Sam Whimster.
