Age of Empires

Robert Aldrich

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780500775295
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Empires evoke potent images: Stanley, Livingstone and the colonial gallery of great explorers; the Spanish Conquistadors quest for gold and silver; and the Dutch heritage of trade in the East Indies. For over 500 years empires have been a feature of the political landscape and a generation or more after the final collapse of most of the European Empires the subject is still a major issue for historians. For some countries Germany and Italy overseas dreams were short-lived; for others the United States and the Soviet Union imperialist activity existed but was never accepted as an official state policy; and the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires has obscured some of the imperial dimensions of these states. This book shows how the maps of explorations, the chronologies of conquests, the records of settlers and administrators, the balance sheets of commerce and all else that made up the Age of Empires play a key role in explaining the global civilization of today.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Other Titles of Interest
• Contents
• Introduction: Imperial Overview
• The Ottoman Empire: A Resilient Polity
• Spain: The Genealogy of Modern Colonialism
• Portugal: Empire-building in the Old World and the New
• Plate Section I
• The Netherlands: A Small Country with Imperial Ambitions
• Scandinavia: An Outsider in European Imperialism
• Britain: Ruling the Waves
• France: Empire and the Mère-Patrie
• Plate Section II
• Russia: The Two Empires
• Austria-Hungary: The Making of Central Europe
• Belgium: The Single-Colony Empire
• Germany: The Latecomer
• Plate Section III
• Italy: The Last Empire
• The United States: Empire as a Way of Life?
• Notes and bibliographies
• Sources of illustrations
• Contributors
• Index
• Copyright