The Oxford World History of Empire

This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history.
Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.

Peter Fibiger Bang is Associate Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen.
C. A. Bayly was the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.
Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University.

- Vol. II - The History of Empires
- List of Contributors
- Prolegomena
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- Part 1. Bronze to Iron Age
- The Near-Eastern "Invention" of Empire (3rd Millennium to 300 BCE)
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 1. Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (2686-1069 BCE)
- JUAN CARLOS MORENO GARCÍA
- 2. The Sargonic and Ur III Empires
- PIOTR STEINKELLER
- 3. Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire
- GOJKO BARJAMOVIC
- 4. The Achaemenid Persian Empire: From the Medes to Alexander
- MATTHEW W. WATERS
- 5. Ancient Mediterranean City-State Empires: Athens, Carthage, Early Rome
- WALTER SCHEIDEL
- Part 2. The Classical Age
- The Formation of Large World Empires on the Margins of Eurasia: The Mediterranean and China (323 BCE-600 CE)
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 6. Hellenistic Empire: The Dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids
- CHRISTELLE FISCHER-BOVET
- 7. The Mauryan Empire
- HIMANSHU PRABHA RAY
- 8. The First East Asian Empires: Qin and Han
- MARK EDWARD LEWIS
- 9. The Roman Empire
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 10. The Parthian and Sasanian Empires
- MATTHEW P. CANEPA
- 11. The Kushan Empire
- CRAIG BENJAMIN
- Part 3. The Ecumenic Turn
- Eclipse of the Old World and the Rise of Islam (600-1200)
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 12. The Caliphate
- ANDREW MARSHAM
- 13. The Tang Empire
- MARK EDWARD LEWIS
- 14. Srivijaya
- JOHN N. MIKSIC
- 15. The Khmer Empire
- MICHAEL D. COE
- 16. The Byzantine Empire, 641-1453 AD
- ANTHONY KALDELLIS
- 17. Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire and Its Successors
- ROSAMOND McKITTERICK
- Part 4. The Mongol Moment
- The Rise of Ghenghis Khan and the Central Asian Steppe Followed by Regional Reassertion
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 18. The Mongol Empire and the Unification of Eurasia
- NIKOLAY KRADIN
- 19. The Ming Empire
- DAVID M. ROBINSON
- 20. The Delhi Sultanate as Empire
- SUNIL KUMAR
- 21. Caliphs, Popes, Emperors, Kings and Sultans: The Imperial Commonwealth of Medieval Islam and Western Christendom
- JACOB TULLBERG
- 22. The Venetian Empire
- LUCIANO PEZZOLO
- 23. The Mali and Songhay Empires
- BRUCE S. HALL
- Part 5. Another World
- The Separate but Parallel Path of Imperial Formations in the Precolonial Americas
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 24. The Aztec Empire
- MICHAEL E. SMITH AND MAËLLE SERGHERAERT
- 25. The Inca Empire
- R. ALAN COVEY
- Part 6. The Great Confluence
- The Culmination of Universal Empires and the Conquest of the New World: Agrarian Consolidation and the Rise of European Commercial and Colonial Empires (1450-1750)
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 26. The Ottoman Empire
- DARIUSZ KOLODZIEJCZYK
- 27. The Mughal Empire
- RAJEEV KINRA
- 28. The Habsburg Monarchy and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1757
- JOSEP M. DELGADO AND JOSEP M. FRADERA
- 29. The Qing Empire: Three Governments in One State and the Stability of Manchu Rule
- PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY
- 30. The Portuguese Empire (1415-1822)
- FRANCISCO BETHENCOURT
- 31. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: Qua Patet Orbis
- LEONARD BLUSSÉ
- 32. The First British Empire: Atlantic Empire and the Peoples of the British Monarchy, 1603-1815
- NICHOLAS CANNY
- Part 7. The Global Turn
- The Age of European Colonialism, Subjection of Old Agrarian Empires to the European-Led World Economy and Nationalist Secessions (1750-1914)
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 33. Deconstructing the British Empire: Between Repression and Reform
- C. A. BAYLY
- 34. An Imperial Nation-State: France and Its Empires
- DAVID TODD
- 35. The Russian Empire, 1453-1917
- DOMINIC LIEVEN
- 36. Late Spanish Empire: Reform and Crisis, 1762-1898
- JOSEP M. FRADERA
- 37. US Expansionism during the Nineteenth Century: "Manifest Destiny"
- AMY S. GREENBERG
- 38. The Kinetic Empires of Native American Nomads
- PEKKA HÄMÄLÄINEN
- 39. Ottoman Turkey and Qing China: Response and Decline, 1774-1937
- MICHAEL A. REYNOLDS AND RANA MITTER
- 40. The Sokoto Caliphate
- MURRAY LAST
- Part 8. The 20th Century
- The Collapse of Colonial Empires and the Rise of Super-Powers
- PETER FIBIGER BANG
- 41. The German and Japanese Empires: Great Power Competition and the World Wars
- DANIEL HEDINGER AND MORITZ VON BRESCIUS
- 42. Decolonization and Neocolonialism
- STUART WARD
- 43. The Soviet Union
- GEOFFREY HOSKING
- 44. "America's Global Imperium"
- ANDREW PRESTON
- 45. Epilogue: Beyond Empire?
- FREDERICK COOPER
- Index of Places, Names and Events