Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World

Description

The fall of empires and the rise of nation-states was a defining political transition in the making of the modern world. As United States imperialism becomes a popular focus of debate, we must understand how empire, the nineteenth century's dominant form of large-scale political organization, had disappeared by the end of the twentieth century. Here, ten prominent specialists discuss the empire-to-nation transition in comparative perspective. Chapters on Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Russia, and China illustrate both the common features and the diversity of the transition. Questioning the sharpness of the break implied by the empire/nation binary, the contributors explore the many ways in which empires were often nation-like and nations behaved imperially. While previous studies have focused on the rise and fall of empires or on nationalism and the process of nation-building, this intriguing volume concentrates on the empire-to-nation transition itself. Understanding this transition allows us to better interpret the contemporary political order and new forms of global hegemony. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction Joseph W. Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young Part I: The Spanish Empire in the Americas 2 The Limits of Atlantic-World Nationalism in a Revolutionary Age: Imagined Communities and Lived Communities in Mexico, 1810–1821 Eric Van Young 3 The Great Transformation of Law and Legal Culture:"The Public" and the “Private" in the Transition from Empire to Nation in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, 1750–1850 Victor M. Uribe- Uran 4 Selfhood and Nationhood in Latin America: From Colonial Subject to Democratic Citizen Carlos A. Forment Part II: The Middle East and Eastern Europe 5 Empires as Prisons of Nations versus Empires as Political Opportunity Structures: An Exploration of the Role of Nationalism in Imperial Dissolutions in Europe Ellen Comisso 6 Changing Modalities of Empire: A Comparative Study of Ottoman and Habsburg Decline Karen Barkey 7 Dreams of Empire, Dreams of Nations Reşat Kasaba Part III: The Chinese Empire 8 How the Qing Became China Joseph W. Esherick 9 Going Imperial: Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhismand Nationalisms in China and Inner Asia Uradyn E. Bulag Part IV: The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union 10 The Long Road from Empire: Legacies of Nation Building in the Soviet Successor States Edward W. Walker 11 Setting the Political Agenda: Cultural Discourse in the Estonian Transition Cynthia S. Kaplan 12 Afterword: The Return of Empire? Joseph W. Esherick Selected Bibliography Index About the Contributors