Workshop: The legacies of empire: contexts, cases and dynamics

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, with an emphasis on historical methods, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

This tutorial will expose students to the scholarship on modern empire from across the fields of anthropology, history, law, and political science. Students will be asked to consider the differences and commonalities in empires across space and time. They will also explore how relations of empire and colonialism were constituted through structures of law and of economic relations, as well as how notions of race and culture were shaped by imperial encounters. Finally, the readings for this tutorial will introduce students to a range of methodological approaches to the study of empire, and will invite them to consider the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches.

The present book is the result of the conference ‘Renovatio, inventio, absentia imperii. From the Roman Empire to Contemporary Imperialism’, held in Brussels at the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Academia Belgica in Rome (September 11-13, 2014). At the heart of the conference was the ‘reception’, ‘Nachleben’ or ‘permanence’ of the Roman Empire, of an idea and a historical paradigm which since classical Antiquity has supported the most widespread claims to obtain and consolidate power. The volume’s focus is on culture in a broad sense, i.e. including besides the arts, philosophy, religion and, most importantly, discourse. As such, a wide array of themes are subjected to academic scrutiny. Whereas the main focus is on Europe and North America, some contributors also reach out towards non-Western contexts, whether or not directly related to the Roman example. A theoretical and sociological dimension is also added thanks to the discussion on methodological issues. More specifically, the following question(s) receive particular attention: what is our position as researchers, embedded in a contemporary, often Western, democratic and capitalist context; what about the notion of empire itself, its constituent elements and the kind of ideological prerogatives to which it is generally subjected; in other words, apart from the many historical variants and instances of reception of empire, through which filters can, and inevitably do, we approach this topic? A question that has become ever more pregnant since the beginning of the twenty-first century, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the events of September 11, which have revivified what could be called American ‘imperialism’, and at a time when an essentially economic variant, driven by ‘emerging’ powers such as China, has increasingly contested existing power structures. In light of such meta-historical awareness, this book touches as much on the nature of the Roman Empire as it does on its historical legacy and, more importantly so, on who claims the latter inheritance throughout the most diverse epochs. By discussing some highly contrasting views upon this topic, participants explore issues that are of fundamental importance to the writing, not only of cultural history, but also of history itself.

Punishment & Society

The End of Empires, in Rechtsgeschichte, 26, 2018, 2018

in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto, eds., The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2015), pp. 1-11., 2015

This article reviews Jeanne Morefield's "Empire's Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection," and Andrew Fitzmaurice's "Sovereignty, Property, and Empire, 1500-2000." Both books are sterling representatives of the growing field of political theory and empire and ought to be of interest to scholars of political science, international relations, international law, political theory, intellectual history, empire, imperialism, and colonialism.