Joseph Schumpeter was not a member of the Austrian School, but he was an enormously creative classical liberal, and this 1919 book shows him at his best. He presents a theory of how states become empires and applies his insight to explaining many historical episodes. His account of the foreign policy of Imperial Rome reads like a critique of the US today. The second essay examines class mobility and political dynamics within a capitalistic society. Overall, a very important contribution to the literature of political economy.

This is a comprehensive study examining the changing concepts of Empire and Imperialism from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the 1960s. This study is not simply the biography of a word, but a history of political consciousness, important to historians and political scientists alike.