CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Parti WESTERN EUROPE AND THE WORLD

1. Ceuta, Bojador, and Beyond: Europeans on the Move 3

2. Why Did the Overseas Empires Rise, Persist, and Fall? 18

PartII PHASES OF IMPERIAL EXPANSION

AND CONTRACTION

3.

4. Phase 2: Contraction, 1775-1824 64

5. Phase 3: Expansion, 1824-1912 81

6. Phase 4: Unstable Equilibrium, 1914-39 104

7. Phase 5: Contraction, 1940-80 133

Partill ACCOUNTING FOR IMPERIAL EXPANSION

8. Western Europe as a Region: Shared Features 175

9. Western Europe as a System of Competing States 206

10. The Institutional Basis for the Triple Assault 225

11. Non-European Initiatives and Perceptions 254

PartIV CONSOLIDATING POWER

12. Sectoral Institutions and Techniques of Control 277

13. Sources of Colonial Weakness 300

PartV ACCOUNTING FOR IMPERIAL CONTRACTION

14. Colonialism as a Self-Defeating Enterprise 325

15. The International Dimension: War as the Catalyst

for Independence 345

PartVI CONSEQUENCES OF EUROPEAN OVERSEAS RULE

16. Legacies 363

17. The Moral Evaluation of Colonialism 387

Appendix. Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of the

Overseas Empires 409

Notes 417

Bibliography 463

Index 505