Anchored in the Russian Empire, but not limited to it, the eight studies in this volume explore the nineteenth-century imperial responses to the challenge of modernity, the dramatic disruptions of World War I, the radical scenarios of the interwar period and post-communist endgames at the different edges of Eurasia. The book continues and amplifies the historiographic momentum created by Alfred J. Rieber’s long and fruitful scholarly career. First, the volume addresses the attempts of Russian imperial rulers and elites to overcome the economic backwardness of the empire with respect to the West. The ensuing rivalry of several interest groups (entrepreneurs, engineers, economists) created new social forms in the subsequent rounds of modernization. The studies explore the dynamics of the metamorphoses of what Rieber famously conceptualized as a “sedimentary society” in the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet settings. Second, the volume also expands and dwells on the concept of frontier zones as dynamic, mutable, shifting areas, characterized by multi-ethnicity, religious diversity, unstable loyalties, overlapping and contradictory models of governance, and an uneasy balance between peaceful co-existence and bloody military clashes. In this connection, studies pay special attention to forced and spontaneous migrations, and population politics in modern Eurasia.

Since the age of Alexander the Great, waves of foreign armies have invaded the Middle East and South Asia to plunder their vast treasures. In Imperial Designs, Deepak Tripathi offers a powerful and unique analysis of how this volatile region has endured the manipulation and humiliation of war, especially since World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He argues that these foreign invasions and the consequent ignominy of the defeated peoples of the regions have had far reaching consequences. Over the centuries, again and again, the conquered peoples have been left helpless, their shame on display. The victims' collective frustration has strengthened their will to resist and avenge the wrongs done to themOCoall according to their own values and in their own time. Displaying a keen awareness of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, Tripathi argues that this enduring theme resonates throughout the region's history and informs the present. Referring to declassified official documents and scholarly works, this book should be read by scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens, for it tells us how the shame of defeat radicalizes nations and societies and often makes future conflict inevitable."

Since the age of Alexander the Great, waves of foreign armies have invaded the Middle East and South Asia to plunder their vast treasures. In Imperial Designs, Deepak Tripathi offers a powerful and unique analysis of how this volatile region has endured the manipulation and humiliation of war, especially since World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He argues that these foreign invasions and the consequent ignominy of the defeated peoples of the regions have had far reaching consequences. Over the centuries, again and again, the conquered peoples have been left helpless, their shame on display. The victims' collective frustration has strengthened their will to resist and avenge the wrongs done to them—all according to their own values and in their own time. Displaying a keen awareness of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures, Tripathi argues that this enduring theme resonates throughout the region's history and informs the present. Referring to declassified official documents and scholarly works, this book should be read by scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens, for it tells us how the shame of defeat radicalizes nations and societies and often makes future conflict inevitable.

This work argues that the influence of neoconservatives has been none too small and all too important in the shaping of this monumental doctrine and historic moment in American foreign policy. Through a fascinating account of the central figures in the neoconservative movement and their push for war with Iraq, he reveals the imperial designs that have guided them in their quest for the establishment of a global Pax Americana.

Imperial Designs is the first text in English to deal comprehensively with the subject of the Italian colonial experience in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recent scholarship on both the Liberal and Fascist Italian colonial enterprises centers on the Mediterranean and Northern Africa: expeditions, wars, ultimate occupation of territories, and their effect on Italy. This study looks at three Italian enclaves on the other side of the globe: Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. These present both a window into the Italian experience in the Far East and confirmation of imperial policy. Their very presence confirms the rhetoric of conquest. Journalist Luigi Barzini, Sr.; diplomats Salvago Raggi, Varè, and Ciano; various military personnel; and other foreign nationals tell the story through letters and diaries. They all interact with the local metropolitan and rural poor and cultivate a generalized colonial white man’s detachment from their surroundings. A brief summary of the presence of chinoiserie in the Italian imaginary shows how the Celestial Empire has continued to function in the construction of Italian identity as part of the dichotomy between self and other.

In the eyes of both contemporaries and historians, the United States became an empire in 1898. By taking possession of Cuba and the Philippines, the nation seemed to have reached a watershed moment in its rise to power—spurring arguments over whether it should be a colonial power at all. However, the questions that emerged in the wake of 1898 built on long-standing and far-reaching debates over America’s place in the world. Andrew Priest offers a new understanding of the roots of American empire that foregrounds the longer history of perceptions of European powers. He traces the development of American thinking about European imperialism in the years after the Civil War, before the United States embarked on its own overseas colonial projects. Designs on Empire examines responses to Napoleon III’s intervention in Mexico, Spain and the Ten Years’ War in Cuba, Britain’s occupation of Egypt, and the carving up of Africa at the Berlin Conference. Priest shows how observing and interacting with other empires shaped American understandings of the international environment and their own burgeoning power. He highlights ambivalence among American elites regarding empire as well as the prevalence of notions of racial hierarchy. While many deplored the way powerful nations dominated others, others saw imperial projects as the advance of civilization, and even critics often felt a closer affinity with European imperialists than colonized peoples. A wide-ranging book that blends intellectual, political, and diplomatic history, Designs on Empire sheds new light on the foundations of American power.

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquerors at the beginning of the colonial period, Cuba has been hugely influenced by international migration. Between 1791 and 1810, for instance, many French people migrated to Cuba in the wake of the purchase of Louisiana by the United States and turmoil in Saint-Domingue. Between 1847 and 1874, Cuba was the main recipient of Chinese indentured laborers in Latin America. During the nineteenth century as a whole, more Spanish people migrated to Cuba than anywhere else in the Americas, and hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken to the island. The first decades of the twentieth century saw large numbers of immigrants and temporary workers from various societies arrive in Cuba. And since the revolution of 1959, a continuous outflow of Cubans toward many countries has taken place—with lasting consequences. In this book, the most comprehensive study of international migration in Cuba ever undertaken, Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez aims to elucidate the forces that have shaped international migration and the involvement of the migrants in transnational social fields since the beginning of the colonial period. Drawing on Fernand Braudel’s concept of longue durée, transnational studies, perspectives on power, and other theoretical frameworks, the author places her analysis in a much wider historical and theoretical perspective than has previously been applied to the study of international migration in Cuba, making this a work of substantial interest to social scientists as well as historians.

This book relates the untold story of how Australia's first diplomatic mission was conceived, designed and built. Commenced in 1913, Australia House was opened in 1918 while the Great War still raged. Being London's first purpose-built Dominion embassy building, it defined London as an Imperial capital. It is a story of ambitions and achievements - global, imperial, local and personal.

"Although Thomas gives original readings of famous English texts by Chaucer and Shakespeare, this is also a book about Czech writers and travelers; one Czech expatriate, Anne of Bohemia, became Queen of England. For both countries these were decades of religious and dynastic turbulence, and Thomas's analyses of the relations between Wyclif and Hus, Lollards and Hussites, help us to understand why Bohemia was viewed as an almost utopian land of refuge ("a blessed shore" on which a ship might wash up) for persecuted English men and women. Of particular interest is his analysis of the ways in which English court culture emulated that of Prague, which was an imperial seat at a time when England was still a peripheral place with little influence on the heart of Europe.