Secularisation is often presented as a Western model that was exported during decolonisation; but according to M. A. Meziane, it was in fact spread by colonialism itself as an instrument of domination.
Despite the black legend that surrounds her name, the Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife, was the embodiment of maternity and Christian virtues, even as she played a political and diplomatic role.
At the crossroads of ethnohistory, imperial history and U.S. history, Hämäläinen’s latest book sheds a new light on the Lakota people, arguing that they established a thriving nomadic empire in the heart of America, despite the growing presence of Europeans.
Can one write a history of colonization through plants? This is the challenge taken up by Samir Boumediene in a book devoted to the modern-age production of botanical knowledge on both sides of the Atlantic.
A new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh explores the changes undergone in Scotland in the fields of science, technology and literature over a century (1760-1860). It also offers a nuanced narrative of Scotland’s role in the British Empire.
“Parricide”, “tyrant”, “monster”: it would be an understatement to say that the last Julio-Claudian emperor is not highly regarded. Making use of some impressive documents, Donatien Grau analyses the image of the hated emperor from the first century AD to the present day. The story of Nero reads like a history of the West.
Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire in 27 BC, was a thoroughly ambiguous man: At once a republican and an autocrat, a conqueror and a peacemaker, he was the inventor of a tradition who governed like a sphinx. A biography has just come out that emphasizes the topicality of his reign.
Why do people migrate? How can they live in several worlds and many nations at once? Tracing the history of the Lebanese migration to West Africa, Andrew Arsan offers a brilliant reappraisal of diaspora, nation and empire in the first half of the twentieth century.
Denouncing the neglect of the independence era by African historians, Frederick Cooper asserts that a continent of nation-states was not the inevitable outcome of decolonization.
Winner of the 2013 David Pinkney Book Prize, Alice L. Conklin’s most recent book takes us on a journey leading to the establishment of ethnology in France and its colonies. Through a biographical approach, she shows how the “general science of man” evolved in the 19th century from the obsessive search for universal laws.
The challenge of going beyond the national narrative has occupied historians for decades. When applied to North America, it has turned our understanding of historical events such as the “Conquest of the West” upside down. Through an examination of the history of the Comanches, a Finnish historian is pushing this reversal of perspectives as far as it can go, in order to highlight the power that was in the hands of the indigenous people when they came face-to-face with the Europeans.
Alexander the Great has a special place in Enlightenment thinking. Pierre Briant shows that in the 18th century, Alexander was known less as a heroic warrior than as a conqueror who, by means of his empire, was able to extend the limits of the known world, thereby spurring the development of trade and the growth of knowledge.
Elizabeth C. Hoffman claims that America has never been an empire. From the era of the founders to the end of the Cold War, her book defends the notion of a self-interested but fair umpire in issues of foreign policy. Thomas Bender shows us why the notion of empire yet applies to America’s complex use of power.
Historian Pierre-Etienne Will decodes the current official reevaluation in China of some Qing dynasty officials as great patriots and paragons of bureaucratic ethics.It may be attributed to the resemblance between present-day political life and the context of fear and muffled political confrontations that characterize the Qing, contrary to the Ming.
Critics of Catalanism often reduce the movement to a reaction based on economic and fiscal selfishness. Jeanne Moisand shows how Catalanism originally identified itself with the defence of protectionism and the Spanish empire. It was only after the latter had been lost that the Catalan economic identity became opposed to the Spanish nation.
In this article derived from a conference given at Princeton University in November 2008, Pierre-Etienne Will discards culturalist arguments justifying the absence of a democratic regime in China and searches for “sprouts of democracy” in Chinese history.
Empires are not necessarily the obsolete political form that the historiography likes to condemn. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper offer a global and long term history that convincingly shows their relevance and complexity. Should not the European Union look at empires of the past to define its sovereignty?
In his new salvo, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison seeks to lay bare the imperial essence of the Third and Fourth Republics. His criticism of the myth of a benevolent French empire is achieved at a fairly high cost in terms of nuance and analytical value.
