Empires and Bureaucracy in World History: From Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century

Description

How did empires rule different peoples across vast expanses of space and time? And how did small numbers of imperial bureaucrats govern large numbers of subordinated peoples? Empires and Bureaucracy in World History seeks answers to these fundamental problems in imperial studies by exploring the power and limits of bureaucracy. The book is pioneering in bringing together historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages with scholars of post-medieval European empires, while a genuinely world-historical perspective is provided by chapters on China, the Incas and the Ottomans. The editors identify a paradox in how bureaucracy operated on the scale of empires and so help explain why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires fail almost before they begin. By adopting a cross-chronological and world-historical approach, the book challenges the abiding association of bureaucratic rationality with 'modernity' and the so-called 'Rise of the West'.

Peter Crooks is Lecturer in Medieval History at Trinity College, Dublin. His primary research interest is in Ireland in the period 1171-1541 and, arising from that, in the wider 'English world' or 'Plantagenet empire' of which Ireland formed an important part. He is editor of Government, War and Society in Medieval Ireland (2008) and, with David Green and W. Mark Ormrod, The Plantagenet Empire, 1259-1453. He is also principal editor of 'Circle' (https://chancery.tcd.ie/), a reconstruction of the Irish chancery rolls destroyed in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office, Dublin. His articles have appeared in Past and Present and the English Historical Review. Timothy H. Parsons holds a joint appointment as a Professor of African History in the history department and the African and African-American Studies Program at Washington University, St Louis. His publications include The Second British Empire: In the Crucible of the Twentieth Century (2014), The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall (2010), Race, Resistance and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa (2004), The 1964 Army Mutinies and the Making of Modern East Africa (2003) and The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902-1964 (1999).

'Crooks and Parsons have taken an unfashionable subject and crafted a sparkling set of essays that demonstrate the importance of bureaucracy to the founding and maintaining of a diverse array of empires. Speaking across a huge temporal divide, this collection is sensitive to newer histories of colonialism, takes nothing for granted, and rethinks comparative history in important and productive ways. An impressive contribution that belongs on the shelves of historians of empire from every era and every region.' Philippa Levine, University of Texas, Austin 'This book studies the links between the hugely important but complicated realities of empire and bureaucracy in a way that is extremely wide-ranging, of great conceptual clarity but also full of detailed knowledge. Given the enormous scale of the project and the different perspectives of the many specialists involved in writing the individual chapters, the coherence of this fascinating work is a great tribute to the two editors. Dominic Lieven, University of Cambridge 'A distinguished array of the most important and innovative historians in their respective fields has been brought together here. The resulting debates and discoveries are wide-ranging, penetrating, often genuinely groundbreaking.' Stephen Howe, University of Bristol 'In this rich collection of essays edited by Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons, historians working on diverse regions and eras examine the relationship between the establishment and running of empires and bureaucracy.' Prachi Deshpande, H-Asia