It is well known that Renaissance culture gave an empowering role to the individual and thereby to agency. But how does race factor into this culture of empowerment? Canonical French authors like Rabelais and Montaigne have been celebrated for their flexible worldviews and interest in the difference of non-French cultures both inside and outside of Europe. As a result, this period in French cultural history has come to be valued as an exceptional era of cultural opening toward others. Agents without Empire shows that such a celebration is, at the very least, problematic. Szabari argues that before the rise of the French colonial empire, medieval categories of race based on the redemption story were recast through accounts of the Ottoman Empire that were made accessible, in a sudden and unprecedented manner, to agents of the French crown. Spying performed by Frenchmen in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century permeated French culture in large part because those who spied also worked as knowledge producers, propagandists, and artists. The practice changed what it meant to be cultured and elite by creating new avenues of race- and gender-specific consumption for French and European men that affected all areas of sophisticated culture including literature, politics, prints, dressing, personal hygiene, and leisure. Agents without Empire explores race making in this period of European history in the context of diplomatic reposts, travel accounts, natural history, propaganda, religious literature, poetry, theater, fiction, and cheap print. It intervenes in conversations in whiteness studies, race theory, theories of agency and matter, and the history of diplomacy and spying to offer a new account of race making in early modern Europe.

The story of a Venetian-Albanian family in the late sixteenth century forms the basis of a sweeping account of the interaction between East and West Europe and the Ottoman Empire at a pivotal moment in history.

To understand the foundations of American political institutions, it's necessary to understand the rationale for British colonial institutions that survived the empire. Political institutions in England's American colonies were neither direct imports from England, nor home-grown creations of autonomous colonists. Instead, they emerged from efforts of the English Crown to assert control over their colonies amid limited English state and military capacity. Agents of Empire explores the strategic dilemmas facing a constrained crown in its attempts to assert control. The study argues that colonial institutions emerged from the crown's management of authority delegated to agents-first companies and proprietors establishing colonies; then imperial officials governing the polities they created. The institutions remaining from these strategic dynamics form the building blocks of federalism, legislative power, separation of powers, judicial review, and other institutions that comprise the American polity today.

At the heart of our ongoing interest in Walker, says Harrison, is the need to understand the ever-shifting ambitions and arguments that have driven American economic, military, and paramilitary ventures around the globe for the past 150 years.".

Throughout history, a large portion of the world’s population has lived under imperial rule. Although scholars do not always agree on when and where the roots of imperialism lie, most would agree that imperial configurations have affected human history so profoundly that the legacy of ancient empires continues to structure the modern world in many ways. Empires are best described as heterogeneous and dynamic patchworks of imperial configurations in which imperial power was the outcome of the complex interaction between evolving colonial structures and various types of agents in highly contingent relationships. The goal of this volume is to harness the work of the “next generation” of empire scholars in order to foster new theoretical and methodological perspectives that are of relevance within and beyond archaeology and to foreground empires as a cross-cultural category. This book demonstrates how archaeological research can contribute to our conceptualization of empires across disciplinary boundaries.

Historians have long held that during the decades from the end of the Habsburg-Valois Wars in 1559 until the outbreak in 1618 of the Thirty Years' War, Spanish domination of Italy was so complete that one can refer to the period as a "pax hispanica." In this book, based on extensive research in the papers of the ambassadors who represented Charles V and Philip II, Michael J. Levin instead reveals the true fragility of Spanish control and the ambiguous nature of its impact on Italian political and cultural life.While exploring the nature and weaknesses of Spanish imperialism in the sixteenth century, Levin focuses on the activities of Spain's emissaries in Rome and Venice, drawing us into a world of intrigue and occasional violence as the Spaniards attempted to manipulate the crosscurrents of Italian and papal politics to serve their own ends. Levin's often-colorful account uncovers the vibrant world of late Renaissance diplomacy in which popes were forced to flee down secret staircases and ambassadors too often only narrowly avoided assassination. An important contribution to our understanding of the nature and limits of the Spanish imperial system, Agents of Empire more broadly highlights the centrality of diplomatic history to any consideration of the politics of empire.

According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire. Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence. In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional history: the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.

This book situates protection at the centre of the global history of empires, thus advancing a new perspective on world history.

The European Union’s stalled expansion, the Euro deficit and emerging crises of economic and political sovereignty in Greece, Italy and Spain have significantly altered the image of the EU as a model of progressive civilization. However, despite recent events the EU maintains its international image as the paragon of European politics and global governance. This book unites leading scholars on Europe and Empire to revisit the view of the European Union as an ‘imperial’ power. It offers a re-appraisal of the EU as empire in response to geopolitical and economic developments since 2007 and asks if the policies, practices, and priorities of the Union exhibit characteristics of a modern empire. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of the EU, European studies, history, sociology, international relations, and economics.