A Cultural History of Western Empires

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From ancient times to our modern age western empires have shaped societies around the world. From trade patterns and migration to sexuality, race and the environment, empire has touched upon all aspects of human experience as well as the natural world. A Cultural History of Western Empires presents historians, and scholars and students of imperial history with a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of empire through six highly-illustrated volumes. Contributed to by 52 experts, each offering their overview of a theme applied to a period in history, each volume includes chapters on war, trade, natural worlds, labor, mobility, sexuality, resistance and race. The six volumes cover: 1-- Antiquity (500BCE-800CE); 2-- The Middle Ages (800-1450); 3-- The Renaissance (1450-1650); 4-- The Age of Enlightenment (1650-1800); 5-- The Age of Empire (1800-1920); 6-- the Modern Age (1920-2000+) Each volume opens with a series preface and introduction, then adopts the same thematic structure, enabling readers to trace one theme throughout history, as well as gaining a thorough overview of each individual period.

Reviews

Each volume could successfully stand alone as a reference work on an era: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Empire, and the Modern Age ... The introductory essay to each is a valuable resource for comparing traditional political and economic histories with the more critical and cultural works presented in subsequent chapters. Accompanying each volume is a list of illustrations, notes, further reading, and an index ... Overall, students seeking a comparative, interdisciplinary, and compelling account of the spread of Western empires will find much of interest here. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Antoinette Burton is Professor of History and Professor of Gender and Womens Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. She specialises in the history of the British empire, women and gender and world history. Her most recent publications include An ABC of Queen Victoria's Empire (2017), The First Anglo-African Wars: A Reader (2014) and Empires and the Reach of the Global (2012). She is also the co-editor of World Histories from Below (2016) with Tony Ballantyne, and How Empire Shaped Us (2016) with Dane Kennedy.