Kodiak Kreol

Download Kodiak Kreol PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501701401
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Kodiak Kreol by : Gwenn A. Miller

Download or read book Kodiak Kreol written by Gwenn A. Miller and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1780s to the 1820s, Kodiak Island, the first capital of Imperial Russia's only overseas colony, was inhabited by indigenous Alutiiq people and colonized by Russians. Together, they established an ethnically mixed "kreol" community. Against the backdrop of the fur trade, the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church, and competition among Pacific colonial powers, Gwenn A. Miller brings to light the social, political, and economic patterns of life in the settlement, making clear that Russia's modest colonial effort off the Alaskan coast fully depended on the assistance of Alutiiq people. In this context, Miller argues, the relationships that developed between Alutiiq women and Russian men were critical keys to the initial success of Russia's North Pacific venture. Although Russia's Alaskan enterprise began some two centuries after other European powers—Spain, England, Holland, and France—started to colonize North America, many aspects of the contacts between Russians and Alutiiq people mirror earlier colonial episodes: adaptation to alien environments, the "discovery" and exploitation of natural resources, complicated relations between indigenous peoples and colonizing Europeans, attempts by an imperial state to moderate those relations, and a web of Christianizing practices. Russia's Pacific colony, however, was founded on the cusp of modernity at the intersection of earlier New World forms of colonization and the bureaucratic age of high empire. Miller's attention to the coexisting intimacy and violence of human connections on Kodiak offers new insights into the nature of colonialism in a little-known American outpost of European imperial power.

Indigenous Cosmopolitans

Download Indigenous Cosmopolitans PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN 13 : 9781433101021
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (1 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Indigenous Cosmopolitans by : Maximilian Christian Forte

Download or read book Indigenous Cosmopolitans written by Maximilian Christian Forte and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Timely and original, this volume looks at indigenous peoples from the perspective of cosmopolitan theory and at cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the indigenous world. In doing so, it not only sheds new light on both, but also has something important to say about the complexities of identification in this shrinking, overheated world. Analysing ethnoqraphy from around the world, the authors demonstrate the universality of the local-indigeneity-and the particularity of the universal--cosmopolitanism. Anthropology doesn't get much better than this." --Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oslo; Author of Globalisation --Book Jacket.

Glorious Misadventures

Download Glorious Misadventures PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620402416
Total Pages : 540 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (24 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Glorious Misadventures by : Owen Matthews

Download or read book Glorious Misadventures written by Owen Matthews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two centuries ago, shortly after the U.S. was formed, a Russian expedition set its sights on the Pacific Northwest. It could have changed history. At the dawn of the nineteenth century two empires met on the far side of North America. Spain was the tired and hidebound colonial master of much of the Americas. Russia was the upstart, hungry for America's Pacific Northwest coast, a prize left unclaimed after the golden age of exploration. The dream of a Russian America became the goal of the Russian America Company, championed and led by Nikolai Rezanov, aristocratic adventurer and diplomat and courtier to Tsar Alexander I. At a time when John Jacob Astor was amassing his own fortune in the fur trade, Rezanov envisioned transforming fur-hunting stations on the Alaskan coast into the hub of a Pacific empire stretching from Siberia to California. The distances were vast-thousands of miles overland across the endless Russian steppes, thousands more by sea to Alaska and down to San Francisco bay. His men were unreliable-disorderly, dissolute, disease-ridden-and the dangers ever-present. Yet Rezanov persisted, and in 1806-just as Lewis and Clark were discovering the Columbia River to the north-he came close to realizing his dream. Had he done so, the history of the United States might have been very different. Owen Matthews brilliantly chronicles a hitherto untold story of adventure and colonial ambition, brought to life by vivid first-hand accounts and his own travels across Russia, recalling a time when dreams of glory pushed men to the limits of human endurance.

Our Way

Download Our Way PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Fulcrum Publishing
ISBN 13 : 168275460X
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (827 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Our Way by : Julie Cajune

Download or read book Our Way written by Julie Cajune and published by Fulcrum Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indigenous History Is American History Our Way: A Parallel History dispels the myths, stereotypes, and absence of information about American Indian, Native Alaskan, and Native Hawaiian people in the master narrative of US history. For most of American history, stories of the country's Indigenous Peoples were either ignored or told by outsiders. This book corrects these errors, exploring the ways in which Indigenous cultures from every corner of the nation have influenced American society from the past into the present, reminding the reader that they have both shaped the US and continue to play a vital role in its story. Significantly, Our Way: A Parallel History is a collaboration of Native scholars representing more than ten Indigenous nations, sharing their histories and their cultures. Each contributor, either an affiliate of an institution of higher education or a prominent Native leader, provides the reader with an inside account of tribal culture and heritage. The result is a comprehensive resource restoring the histories of Indigenous Peoples and their nations to their rightful place in the story of America. The book covers topics such as: -The Doctrine of Discovery -Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act -US American Indian Policy and Civil rights -Blood Quantum -Selling Hawaii -Lots More As Julie Cajune (Salish) notes in the preface, "I believe this collection of history, story, and reflection provokes and invites us to think and feel deeply about what it means for all of us to be human in our communities, nations, and beyond. After all, that is what a good story does.

Transoceanic America

Download Transoceanic America PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192577581
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Transoceanic America by : Michelle Burnham

Download or read book Transoceanic America written by Michelle Burnham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transoceanic America offers a new approach to American literature by emphasizing the material and conceptual interconnectedness of the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. These oceans were tied together economically, textually, and politically, through such genres as maritime travel writing, mathematical and navigational schoolbooks, and the relatively new genre of the novel. Especially during the age of revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, long-distance transoceanic travel required calculating and managing risk in the interest of profit. The result was the emergence of a newly suspenseful form of narrative that came to characterize capitalist investment, political revolution, and novelistic plot. The calculus of risk that drove this expectationist narrative also concealed violence against vulnerable bodies on ships and shorelines around the world. A transoceanic American literary and cultural history requires new non-linear narratives to tell the story of this global context and to recognize its often forgotten textual archive.

Historical Dictionary of the Inuit

Download Historical Dictionary of the Inuit PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 0810879123
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of the Inuit by : Pamela R. Stern

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Inuit written by Pamela R. Stern and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Inuit provides a history of the indigenous peoples of North Alaska, arctic Canada including Labrador, and Greenland. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, events, institutions, and aspects of culture, society, economy, and politics. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Inuits.

Reinterpreting Exploration

Download Reinterpreting Exploration PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0199755345
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reinterpreting Exploration by : Dane Keith Kennedy

Download or read book Reinterpreting Exploration written by Dane Keith Kennedy and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2014 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploration was a central and perhaps defining aspect of the West's encounters with other peoples and lands. Rather than reproduce celebratory narratives of individual heroism and national glory, this volume focuses on exploration's instrumental role in shaping a European sense of exceptionalism and its iconic importance in defining the terms of cultural engagement with other peoples. In chapters offering broad geographic range, the contributors address many of the key themes of recent research on exploration, including exploration's contribution to European imperial expansion, Western scientific knowledge, Enlightenment ideas and practices, and metropolitan print culture. They reassess indigenous peoples' responses upon first contacts with European explorers, their involvement as intermediaries in the operations of expeditions, and the complications that their prior knowledge posed for European claims of discovery. Underscoring that exploration must be seen as a process of mediation between representation and reality, this book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to the ongoing reinterpretation of exploration's role in the making of the modern world.

Empire of Extinction

Download Empire of Extinction PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190670819
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Empire of Extinction by : Ryan Tucker Jones

Download or read book Empire of Extinction written by Ryan Tucker Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Empire of Extinction examines the causes and consequences of environmental catastrophe resulting from Russia's imperial expansion into the North Pacific. Gathering a host of Siberian and Alaskan native peoples, from the early 1700s until 1867, the Russian empire organized a rapacious hunt for fur seals, sea otters, and other fur-bearing animals. The animals declined precipitously and Steller's sea cow went entirely extinct. This destruction, which took place in one of the most hotly-contested imperial arenas of the time, also drew the attention of natural historians, who played an important role in imperial expansion. Their observations of environmental change in the North Pacific caused Russians and other Europeans to recognize the threat of species extinction for the first time. Russians reacted by instituting some of the colonial world's most progressive conservationist policies. Empire of Extinction points to the importance of the North Pacific both for the Russian empire and for global environmental history"--

So, How Long Have You Been Native?

Download So, How Long Have You Been Native? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803269773
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis So, How Long Have You Been Native? by : Alexis C. Bunten

Download or read book So, How Long Have You Been Native? written by Alexis C. Bunten and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So, How Long Have You Been Native? is Alexis C. Bunten's firsthand account of what it is like to work in the Alaska cultural tourism industry. An Alaska Native and anthropologist, she spent two seasons working for a tribally owned tourism business that markets the Tlingit culture in Sitka. Bunten's narrative takes readers through the summer tour season as she is hired and trained and eventually becomes a guide. A multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, cultural tourism provides one of the most ubiquitous face-to-face interactions between peoples of different cultures and is arguably one of the primary means by which knowledge about other cultures is disseminated. Bunten goes beyond debates about who owns Native culture and has the right to "sell" it to tourists. Through a series of anecdotes, she examines issues such as how and why Natives choose to sell their culture, the cutthroat politics of business in a small town, how the cruise industry maintains its bottom line, the impact of colonization on contemporary Native peoples, the ways that traditional cultural values play a role in everyday life for contemporary Alaska Natives, and how Indigenous peoples are engaging in global enterprises on their own terms. Bunten's bottom-up approach provides a fascinating and informative look at the cultural tourism industry in Alaska.

100 Places that Can Change Your Child's Life

Download 100 Places that Can Change Your Child's Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 1426208596
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (262 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis 100 Places that Can Change Your Child's Life by : Keith Bellows

Download or read book 100 Places that Can Change Your Child's Life written by Keith Bellows and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Showcases one hundred different places to visit on vacation that will provide an unforgettable experience that will enrich and change a child's life forever.

Married to the Empire

Download Married to the Empire PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Alaska Press
ISBN 13 : 1602232652
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Married to the Empire by : Susanna Rabow-Edling

Download or read book Married to the Empire written by Susanna Rabow-Edling and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Russian Empire had a problem. While they had established successful colonies in their territory of Alaska, life in the settlements was anything but civilized. The settlers of the Russian-America Company were drunk, disorderly, and corrupt. Worst of all, they were terrible role models for the Natives, whom the empire saw as in desperate need of moral enlightenment. The empire’s solution? Send in women. In 1829, the Company decreed that any governor appointed after that date had to have a wife, in the hopes that these more pious women would serve as glowing examples of domesticity and bring charm to a brutish territory. Elisabeth von Wrangell, Margaretha Etholén, and Anna Furuhjelm were three of eight governors' wives who took up this domestic mantle. Married to the Empire tells their stories using their own words and though extraordinary research by Susanna Rabow-Edling. All three were young and newly wed when they left Russia for the furthest outpost of the empire, and all three went through personal and cultural struggles as they worked to adjust to life in the colony. Their trials offer a little-heard female history of Russian Alaska, while illuminating the issues that arose while trying to reconcile expectations of womanhood with the realities of frontier life.

Gaining Daylight

Download Gaining Daylight PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Alaska Press
ISBN 13 : 1602231990
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Gaining Daylight by : Sara Loewen

Download or read book Gaining Daylight written by Sara Loewen and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many the idea of living off the land is a romantic notion left to stories of olden days or wistful dreams at the office. But for Sara Loewen it becomes her way of life each summer as her family settles into their remote cabin on Uyak Bay for the height of salmon season. With this connection to thousands of years of fishing and gathering at its core, Gaining Daylight explores what it means to balance lives on two islands, living within both an ancient way of life and the modern world. Her personal essays integrate natural and island history with her experiences of fishing and family life, as well as the challenges of living at the northern edge of the Pacific. Loewen’s writing is richly descriptive; readers can almost feel heat from wood stoves, smell smoking salmon, and spot the ways the ocean blues change with the season. With honesty and humor, Loewen easily draws readers into her world, sharing the rewards of subsistence living and the peace brought by miles of crisp solitude.

The World the Plague Made

Download The World the Plague Made PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691215669
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The World the Plague Made by : James Belich

Download or read book The World the Plague Made written by James Belich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused untold suffering, but it also brought about a cultural and economic renewal on a scale never before witnessed. The World the Plague Made is a panoramic history of how the bubonic plague revolutionized labour, trade, and technology and set the stage for Europe’s global expansion. James Belich takes readers across centuries and continents to shed new light on one of history’s greatest paradoxes. Why did Europe’s dramatic rise begin in the wake of the Black Death? Belich shows how plague doubled the per capita endowment of everything even as it decimated the population. Many more people had disposable incomes. Demand grew for silks, sugar, spices, furs, gold, and slaves. Europe expanded to satisfy that demand—and plague provided the means. Labour scarcity drove more use of waterpower, wind power, and gunpowder. Technologies like water-powered blast furnaces, heavily gunned galleons, and musketry were fast-tracked by plague. A new “crew culture” of “disposable males” emerged to man the guns and galleons. Setting the rise of Western Europe in global context, Belich demonstrates how the mighty empires of the Middle East and Russia also flourished after the plague, and how European expansion was deeply entangled with the Chinese and other peoples throughout the world.

The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820

Download The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108317812
Total Pages : 1073 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (83 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 by : Eliga Gould

Download or read book The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1, 1500–1820 written by Eliga Gould and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 1073 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.

The World of Colonial America

Download The World of Colonial America PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1317662148
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The World of Colonial America by : Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

Download or read book The World of Colonial America written by Ignacio Gallup-Diaz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World of Colonial America: An Atlantic Handbook offers a comprehensive and in-depth survey of cutting-edge research into the communities, cultures, and colonies that comprised colonial America, with a focus on the processes through which communities were created, destroyed, and recreated that were at the heart of the Atlantic experience. With contributions written by leading scholars from a variety of viewpoints, the book explores key topics such as -- The Spanish, French, and Dutch Atlantic empires -- The role of the indigenous people, as imperial allies, trade partners, and opponents of expansion -- Puritanism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the role of religion in colonization -- The importance of slavery in the development of the colonial economies -- The evolution of core areas, and their relationship to frontier zones -- The emergence of the English imperial state as a hegemonic world power after 1688 -- Regional developments in colonial North America. Bringing together leading scholars in the field to explain the latest research on Colonial America and its place in the Atlantic World, this is an important reference for all advanced students, researchers, and professionals working in the field of early American history or the age of empires.

Across Currents: Connections Between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies

Download Across Currents: Connections Between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429821506
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (298 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Across Currents: Connections Between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies by : Nicole Poppenhagen

Download or read book Across Currents: Connections Between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies written by Nicole Poppenhagen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores connections between Atlantic studies and (trans)Pacific studies, including the potential discursive, topical, and historical overlaps of the two fields. It carves out mutual concerns and theoretical affinities, but also divergent approaches and differences. While acknowledging the fundamental differences that characterize the individual fields, the essays in this volume examine how both Atlantic and (trans)Pacific studies are part of global currents of political, activist, artistic, economic, and academic exchange. This volume brings together voices from Europe, North America, and the Pacific with disciplinary backgrounds in history, culture, and literature. Directed at scholars with a background in (trans)Pacific and/or Atlantic studies, this collection is an attempt to stimulate exchange between the two fields, to intensify their impact within the current transnational focus of literary and cultural studies, to encourage the questioning of well-mapped paths of inquiry, and to outline new theoretical approaches to both fields. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Atlantic Studies.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories

Download The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317042522
Total Pages : 758 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories by : John Marriott

Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories written by John Marriott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 758 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by leading scholars, this collection provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of modern empires. Spanning the era of modern imperial history from the early sixteenth century to the present, it challenges both the rather insular focuses on specific experiences, and gives due attention to imperial formations outside the West including the Russian, Japanese, Mughal, Ottoman and Chinese. The companion is divided into three broad sections. Part I - Times - surveys the three main eras of modern imperialism. The first was that dominated by the settlement impulse, with migrants - many voluntarily and many more by force - making new lives in the colonies. This impulse gave way, most especially in the nineteenth century, to a period of busy and rapid expansion which was less likely to promote new settlement, and in which colonists more frequently saw their sojourn in colonial lands as temporary and related to the business mostly of governance and trade. Lastly, in the twentieth century in particular, empires began to fail and to fall. Part II - Spaces - studies the principal imperial formations of the modern world. Each chapter charts the experience of a specific empire while at the same time placing it within the complex patterns of wider imperial constellations. The individual chapters thus survey the broad dynamics of change within the empires themselves and their relationships with other imperial formations, and reflect critically on the ways in which these topics have been approached in the literature. In Part III - Themes - scholars think critically about some of the key features of imperial expansion and decline. These chapters are brief and many are provocative. They reflect the current state of the field, and suggest new lines of inquiry which may follow from more comparative perspectives on empire. The broad range of themes captures the vitality and diversity of contemporary scholarship on questions of empire and colonialism, encompassing political, economic and cultural processes central to the formation and maintenance of empires as well as institutions, ideologies and social categories that shaped the lives both of those implementing and those experiencing the force of empire. In these pages the reader will find the slave and the criminal, the merchant and the maid, the scientist and the artist alongside the structures which sustained their lives and their livelihoods. Overall, the companion emphasises the diversity of imperial experience and process. Comprehensive in its scope, it draws attention to the particularities of individual empires, rather than over-generalising as if all empires, at all times, and in all places, behaved in a similar manner. It is this contingent and historical specificity that enables us to explore in expansive ways precisely what constituted the modern empire.