Download or read book Apogee of Empire written by Stanley J. Stein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once Europe's supreme maritime power, Spain by the mid-eighteenth century was facing fierce competition from England and France. England, in particular, had successfully mustered the financial resources necessary to confront its Atlantic rivals by mobilizing both aristocracy and merchant bourgeoisie in support of its imperial ambitions. Spain, meanwhile, remained overly dependent on the profits of its New World silver mines to finance both metropolitan and colonial imperatives, and England's naval superiority constantly threatened the vital flow of specie. When Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, then, after a quarter-century as ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Spain and its colonial empire were seriously imperiled. Two hundred years of Hapsburg rule, followed by a half-century of ineffectual Bourbon "reforms," had done little to modernize Spain's increasingly antiquated political, social, economic, and intellectual institutions. Charles III, recognizing the pressing need to renovate these institutions, set his Italian staff—notably the Marqués de Esquilache, who became Secretary of the Consejo de Hacienda (the Exchequer)—to this formidable task. In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein trace the attempt, initially under Esquilache's direction, to reform the Spanish establishment and, later, to modify and modernize the relationship between the metropole and its colonies. Within Spain, Charles and his architects of reform had to be mindful of determining what adjustments could be made that would help Spain confront its enemies without also radically altering the Hapsburg inheritance. As described in impressive detail by the authors, the bitter, seven-year conflict that ensued between reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup in 1766 that forced Charles to send Esquilache back to Italy. After this setback at home, Charles still hoped to effect constructive change in Spain's imperial system, primarily through the incremental implementation of a policy of comercio libre (free-trade). These reforms, made half-heartedly at best, failed as well, and by 1789 Spain would find itself ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America. An in-depth study of incremental response by an old imperial order to challenges at home and abroad, Apogee of Empire is also a sweeping account of the personalities, places, and policies that helped to shape the modern Atlantic world.
Download or read book Crisis in an Atlantic Empire written by Barbara H. Stein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The capstone of a research endeavor begun by Barbara Stein and Stanley Stein nearly sixty years ago, this volume concludes their masterful tetralogy on Spanish economic and Atlantic history. With a compelling narrative that weaves together story and thesis and brings to life immense archival research and empirical data, Crisis in an Atlantic Empire is a finely grained historical tour of the period covering 1808 to 1810, which is often called “the age of revolutions.” The study examines an accumulation of countervailing elements in a spasm of imperial crisis, as Spain and its major colony New Spain struggled to preserve traditional structures of exchange—Spain's transatlantic trade system—with Caribbean ports at Veracruz and Havana in wartime after 1804. Rooted in the struggle between businessmen seeking to expand their economic reach and the ruling class seeking to maintain its hegemonic control, the crisis sheds light on the contest between free trade and monopoly trade and the politics of preservation among an enduring and influential interest group: merchants. Reflecting the authors’ masterful use of archival sources and their magisterial knowledge of the era’s complex metropolitan and colonial institutions, this volume is the capstone of a research endeavor spanning nearly sixty years.
Download or read book The Expansion and Apogee of the Ottoman Empire written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-11 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity's greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century. Naturally, the Ottoman Empire would also use Constantinople as the capital of its empire after their conquest effectively ended the Byzantine Empire, and thanks to its strategic location, it has been a trading center for years and remains one today under the Turkish name of Istanbul. The end of the Byzantine Empire had a profound effect not only on the Middle East but Europe as well. Constantinople had played a crucial part in the Crusades, and the fall of the Byzantines meant that the Ottomans now shared a border with Europe. The Islamic empire was viewed as a threat by the predominantly Christian continent to their west, and it took little time for different European nations to start clashing with the powerful Turks. In fact, the Ottomans would clash with Russians, Austrians, Venetians, Polish, and more before collapsing as a result of World War I, when they were part of the Central powers. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also played a decisive role in fostering the Renaissance in Western Europe. The Byzantine Empire's influence had helped ensure that it was the custodian of various ancient texts, most notably from the ancient Greeks, and when Constantinople fell, Byzantine refugees flocked west to seek refuge in Europe. Those refugees brought books that helped spark an interest in antiquity that fueled the Italian Renaissance and essentially put an end to the Middle Ages altogether. In the wake of taking Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire would spend the next few centuries expanding its size, power, and influence, bumping up against Eastern Europe and becoming one of the world's most important geopolitical players. It was a rise that would not truly start to wane until the 19th century. The Expansion and Apogee of the Ottoman Empire: The History of the Turkish Empire at the Height of Its Power examines what made the Turks' empire and power grow. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the apogee of the Ottoman Empire like never before.
Download or read book Empire in Retreat written by Victor Bulmer-Thomas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of the United States through the lens of empire—and an incisive look forward as the nation retreats from the global stage A respected authority on international relations and foreign policy, Victor Bulmer-Thomas offers a grand survey of the United States as an empire. From its territorial expansion after independence, through hegemonic rule following World War II, to the nation’s current imperial retreat, the United States has had an uneasy relationship with the idea of itself as an empire. In this book Bulmer-Thomas offers three definitions of empire—territorial, informal, and institutional—that help to explain the nation’s past and forecast a future in which the United States will cease to play an imperial role. Arguing that the move toward diminished geopolitical dominance reflects the aspirations of most U.S. citizens, he asserts that imperial retreat does not necessarily mean national decline and may ultimately strengthen the nation-state. At this pivotal juncture in American history, Bulmer-Thomas’s uniquely global perspective will be widely read and discussed across a range of fields.
Download or read book The Colours of the Empire written by Patrícia Ferraz de Matos and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Portuguese Colonial Empire established its base in Africa in the fifteenth century and would not be dissolved until 1975. This book investigates how the different populations under Portuguese rule were represented within the context of the Colonial Empire by examining the relationship between these representations and the meanings attached to the notion of ‘race’. Colour, for example, an apparently objective criterion of classification, became a synonym or near-synonym for ‘race’, a more abstract notion for which attempts were made to establish scientific credibility. Through her analysis of government documents, colonial propaganda materials and interviews, the author employs an anthropological perspective to examine how the existence of racist theories, originating in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, went on to inform the policy of the Estado Novo (Second Republic, 1933–1974) and the production of academic literature on ‘race’ in Portugal. This study provides insight into the relationship between the racist formulations disseminated in Portugal and the racist theories produced from the eighteenth century onward in Europe and beyond.
Download or read book Protecting the Empire s Humanity written by Zoë Laidlaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laidlaw lays bare the contradictions of mid-nineteenth-century imperial Britain. Missionaries, scientists and imperial officials all claimed an interest in 'protecting' and 'civilizing' indigenous peoples, but this study of Quaker activist Thomas Hodgkin and the Aborigines' Protection Society reveals the fatal flaws in imperial 'humanitarianism'.
Download or read book The Reign of Emperor Gallienus written by Ilkka Syvänne and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An unusual history of an unusual soldier of Rome who rose to Emperor . . . an engaging history of a fascinating subject—Very Highly Recommended.” —Firetrench This is the only fully illustrated military life of the Emperor Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus (253-268). Considered the most blatantly military man of all of the soldier emperors of the third century, Gallienus is the emperor in Harry Sidebottom’s bestselling Warrior of Rome novels. Gallienus faced more simultaneous usurpations and foreign invasions than any other emperor, but somehow he managed to survive. Dr. Ilkka Syvanne explains how this was possible. It was largely thanks to the untiring efforts of Gallienus that the Roman Empire survived for another 1,200 years. Gallienus was a notorious libertarian, womanizer, and cross-dresser, but he was also a fearless warrior, duelist and general all at the same time. This monograph explains why he was loved by the soldiers, yet so intensely hated by some officers that they killed him in a conspiracy. The year 2018 was the 1,800th anniversary of Gallienus’ date of birth and the 1,750th anniversary of his date of death. The Reign of Gallienus celebrates the life and times of this great man. “A beautiful book that investigates the life and works of an emperor undervalued by the ‘general public’ but who deserves to be known for his military and historical legacy.” —Old Barbed Wire Blog
Download or read book Empire Statesman written by Robert A. Slayton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born to Irish immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Al Smith was the earliest champion of immigrant Americans. In 1928, Smith became the first Catholic to run for the presidency but his candidacy was fiercely opposed by the KKK, and his campaign was wiped out by a tidal wave of anti-Catholic hatred. After years of hardship, Smith reconciled his soured relationships with political bigwigs and once again became a generous, heroic figure. Photos.
Download or read book The Reckoning written by Robin Blackburn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Revolution (1776-1848) destroyed the main slave regimes of the Caribbean but a 'Second Slavery' surged in the US South, Cuba and Brazil, powered by demand for plantation produce and a system of financial credit that leveraged the value of the slaves. By 1860, more than 6 million captives of African descent toiled to produce the cotton, sugar and coffee craved by global consumers. This 'Second Slavery' mimicked capitalist disciplines, intensified slavery's racial character and launched half a century of headlong economic growth. On the eve of the American Civil War, the Slave Power seemed invincible. The slaveholding elite entrenched their 'peculiar institution' in the fabric of the Union only to risk everything on secession. Nobody solicited the slaves' wishes until it became clear that, wherever they could, they were deserting the plantations and joining the Union forces. Abolition radicals destroyed the Second Slavery and victory for the North also spelled defeat for slavery in Cuba and Brazil. But in each of these societies racial oppression was to be reconfigured by 'Black Codes', Jim Crow and toxic doctrines of racial destiny. Slavery leaves an indelible mark on many Atlantic nations. The Reckoning charts the historic impact of slavery and anti-slavery, of black and white activists, of fugitive slaves, feminists, writers, clerics and soldiers. Notwithstanding much unfinished business, the anti-slavery struggle retains its capacity to illuminate and inspire.
Download or read book Mali written by Ross Velton and published by Bradt Travel Guides. This book was released on 2004 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A second edition of the first English-language travel guide to Mali, full of practical information and cultural background for the independent traveler.
Download or read book Entangled Empires written by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic as a hemispheric system? : English merchants navigating the Iberian Atlantic / Mark Sheaves -- Agents of empire : Africans and the origins of English colonialism in the Americas / Michael Guasco -- Empires on drugs : pharmaceutical go-betweens and the Anglo-Portuguese alliance / Benjamin Breen -- Marrying utopia : Mary and Philip, Richard Eden, and the English alchemy of Spanish Peru / Christopher Heaney -- The pegs of a wider frame : Jewish merchants in Anglo-Iberian trade / Holly Snyder -- Entangled Irishman : George Dawson Flinter and Anglo-Spanish imperial rivalry / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara -- Planters and powerbrokers : George J.F. Clarke, Interracial Love, and allegiance in the revolutionary circum-Caribbean / Cameron B. Strang -- The "Iberian" justifications of territorial possession by pilgrims and Puritans in the colonization of America / Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra -- "As the Spaniards have always done" : the legacy of Florida's missions for Carolina Indian relations and the origins of the Yamasee War / Bradley Dixon -- Reluctant petitioners : English officials and the Spanish Caribbean / April Hatfield -- Enabling, implementing, experiencing entanglement : empires, sailors, and coastal peoples in the British-Spanish Caribbean / Ernesto Bassi -- The Seven Years' War and the globalization of Anglo-Iberian imperial entanglement : the view from Manila / Kristie Flannery
Download or read book The End of Empire written by Karen Dawisha and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1997 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.
Download or read book The Spanish Empire 2 volumes written by H. Micheal Tarver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through reference entries and primary documents, this book surveys a wide range of topics related to the history of the Spanish Empire, including past events and individuals as well as the Iberian kingdom's imperial legacy. The Spanish Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia provides students as well as anyone interested in Spain, Latin America, or empires in general the necessary materials to explore and better understand the centuries-long empire of the Iberian kingdom. The work is organized around eight themes to allow the reader the ability to explore each theme through an overview essay and several selected encyclopedic entries. This two-volume set includes some 180 entries that cover such topics as the caste system, dynastic rivalries, economics, major political events and players, and wars of independence. The entries provide students with essential information about the people, things, institutions, places, and events central to the history of the empire. Many of the entries also include short sidebars that highlight key facts or present fascinating and relevant trivia. Additional resources include an introductory overview, chronology, extended bibliography, and extensive collection of primary source documents.
Download or read book Irresistible Empire written by Victoria De Grazia and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most significant conquest of the twentieth century may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over Europe's bourgeois civilization. It is this little-understood but world-shaking campaign that unfolds in Irresistible Empire, Victoria de Grazia's brilliant account of how the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today. De Grazia describes how, as America's market empire advanced with confidence through Europe, spreading consumer-oriented capitalism, all alternative strategies fell before it--first the bourgeois lifestyle, then the Third Reich's command consumption, and finally the grand experiment of Soviet-style socialist planning. Tracing the peculiar alliance that arrayed New World salesmanship, statecraft, and standardized goods against the Old World's values of status, craft, and good taste, Victoria de Grazia follows the United States' market-driven imperialism through a vivid series of cross-Atlantic incursions by the great inventions of American consumer society. We see Rotarians from Duluth in the company of the high bourgeoisie of Dresden; working-class spectators in ramshackle French theaters conversing with Garbo and Bogart; Stetson-hatted entrepreneurs from Kansas in the midst of fussy Milanese shoppers; and, against the backdrop of Rome's Spanish Steps and Paris's Opera Comique, Fast Food in a showdown with advocates for Slow Food. Demonstrating the intricacies of America's advance, de Grazia offers an intimate and historical dimension to debates over America's exercise of soft power and the process known as Americanization. She raises provocative questions about the quality of the good life, democracy, and peace that issue from the vaunted victory of mass consumer culture.
Download or read book Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic written by Jeremy Adelman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes a bold new look at both Spain's and Portugal's New World empires in a trans-Atlantic context. It argues that modern notions of sovereignty in the Atlantic world have been unstable, contested, and equivocal from the start. It shows how much contemporary notions of sovereignty emerged in the Americas as a response to European imperial crises in the age of revolutions. Jeremy Adelman reveals how many modern-day uncertainties about property, citizenship, and human rights were forged in an epic contest over the very nature of state power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic offers a new understanding of Latin American and Atlantic history, one that blurs traditional distinctions between the "imperial" and the "colonial." It shows how the Spanish and Portuguese empires responded to the pressures of rival states and merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. As empires adapted, the ties between colonies and mother countries transformed, recreating trans-Atlantic bonds of loyalty and interests. In the end, colonies repudiated their Iberian loyalties not so much because they sought independent nationhood. Rather, as European conflicts and revolutions swept across the Atlantic, empires were no longer viable models of sovereignty--and there was less to be loyal to. The Old Regimes collapsed before subjects began to imagine new ones in their place. The emergence of Latin American nations--indeed many of our contemporary notions of sovereignty--was the effect, and not the cause, of the breakdown of European empires.
Download or read book Mexico City 1808 written by John Tutino and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1800 Mexico City was the largest, richest, most powerful city in the Americas, its vibrant silver economy an engine of world trade. Then Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, desperate to gain New Spain’s silver. He broke Spain’s monarchy, setting off a summer of ferment in Mexico City. People took to the streets, dreaming of an absent king, seeking popular sovereignty, and imagining that the wealth of silver should serve New Spain and its people—until a military coup closed public debate. Political ferment continued while drought and famine stalked the land. Together they fueled the political and popular risings that exploded north of the capital in 1810. Tutino offers a new vision of the political violence and social conflicts that led to the fall of silver capitalism and Mexican independence in 1821. People demanding rights faced military defenders of power and privilege—the legacy of 1808 that shaped Mexican history.
Download or read book Britain s Informal Empire in Spain 1830 1950 written by Nick Sharman and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-25 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on five years of archival research, this book offers a radical reinterpretation of Britain and Spain’s relationship during the growth, apogee and decline of the British Empire. It shows that from the early nineteenth century Britain turned Spain into an ‘informal’ colony, using its economic and military dominance to achieve its strategic and economic ends. Britain’s free trade campaign, which aimed to tear down the legal barriers to its explosive trade and investment expansion, undermined Spain’s attempts to achieve industrial take-off, demonstrating that the relationship between the two countries was imperial in nature, and not simply one of unequal national power. Exploring five key moments of crisis in their relations, from the First Carlist War in the 1830s to the Second World War, the author analyses Britain’s use of military force in achieving its goals, and the consequences that this had for economic and political policy-making in Spain. Ultimately, the Anglo-Spanish relationship was an early example of the interaction between industrial power and colonies, formal and informal, that characterised the post-World War Two period. An insightful read for anyone researching the British Empire and its colonies, this book offers an innovative perspective by closely examining the volatile relationship between two European powers.
