Contents

Volume 1

The Imperial Experience

List of Contributors ix

List of Figures, Tables and Maps xiii

Prolegomena xix

Peter Fibiger Bang

1. Empire—A World History: Anatomy and Concept, Theory

and Synthesis 1

Peter Fibiger Bang

SYSTEMS OF POWER: MILITARY, ECONOMY, ELITES

2.

Walter Scheidel

3. The Evolution of Geopolitics and Imperialism in Interpolity Systems 111 Christopher Chase-Dunn and Dmytro Khutkyy

4. Empire and Military Organization 155

Ian Morris

5. The Political Economy of Empire: “Imperial Capital” and

the Formation of Central and Regional Elites 179

John Haldon

CULTURES OF POWER: SYMBOLIC DISPLAY, KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, DISCOURSE

6. Imperial Monumentalism, Ceremony, and Forms of Pageantry:

The Inter-Imperial Obelisk in Istanbul 223

Cecily J. Hilsdale

7. Law, Bureaucracy, and the Practice of Government and Rule 266

Caroline Humfress

8. Mapping, Registering, and Ordering: Time, Space, and Knowledge 288 Laura Hostetler

9. Empire and Religion 318

Amira K. Bennison

10. Literature of Empire: Difference, Creativity, and Cosmopolitanism 342

Javed Majeed

DISPARITIES OF POWER: HIERARCHIES, RESISTANCE, RESOURCES

11. Empires and the Politics of Difference: Pathways of Incorporation

and Exclusion 375

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper

12. Resistance, Rebellion, and the Subaltern 416

Kim A. Wagner

13. Imperial Metabolism: Empire as a Process of Ecologically

Unequal Exchange 437

Alf Hornborg

14. Ecology: Environments and Empires in World History,

3000 BCE-ca. 1900 ce 460

James Beattie and Eugene Anderson

MEMORY AND DECLINE

15. Memories of Empire: Literature and Art, Nostalgia and Trauma 497 Phiroze Vasunia

16. The End of Empires 523

John A. Hall

Index of Places, Names, and Events

541