Protection and Empire
A Global History

This book situates protection at the centre of the global history of empires, thus advancing a new perspective on world history.

Lauren Benton (Edited by), Adam Clulow (Edited by), Bain Attwood (Edited by)

9781108417860, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 November 2017

284 pages, 2 maps
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

For five centuries protection has provided a basic currency for organising relations between polities. Protection underpinned sprawling tributary systems, permeated networks of long-distance trade, reinforced claims of royal authority in distant colonies and structured treaties. Empires made routine use of protection as they extended their influence, projecting authority over old and new subjects, forcing weaker parties to pay them for safe conduct and, sometimes, paying for it themselves. The result was a fluid politics that absorbed both the powerful and the weak while giving rise to institutions and jurisdictional arrangements with broad geographic scope and influence. This volume brings together leading scholars to trace the long history of protection across empires in Asia, Africa, Australasia, Europe and the Americas. Employing a global lens, it offers an innovative way of understanding the formation and growth of empires and uncovers new dimensions of the relation of empires to regional and global order.

Introduction
Part I. Protecting Subjects, Projecting Power: 1. Protection and the chanelling of movement on the margins of the Holy Roman Empire Luca Scholz
2. Containing law within the walls: the protection of customary law in Santiago Del Cercado, Peru Karen B. Graubart
Part II. Conquest Reconsidered: 3 Webs of protection and interpolity zones in the Early Modern World Lauren Benton and Adam Clulow
4. Plunder and profit in the name of protection: royal Iberian armadas in the early Atlantic Gabriel De Avilez Rocha
Part III. Protection and Languages of Political Authority: 5. Protection as a political concept in English political thought, 1603–51 Annabel Brett
6. Limited liabilities: the corporation and the political economy of protection in the British Empire Philip J. Stern
7. From nurturing to protection in nineteenth-century Japan David L. Howell
Part IV. Protection and Colonial Governance: 8. Protection claims: the British, Maori and the islands of New Zealand, 1800–40 Bain Attwood
9. Protecting the peace on the edges of empire: commissioners of crown lands in New South Wales Lisa Ford
10. British protection, extraterritoriality and protectorates in West Africa, 1807–80 Inge Van Hulle
Part V. Protection in an Inter-Imperial World: 11. Between imperial subjects and political partners: Bedouin borders and protection in Ottoman Palestine, 1900–17 Ahmad Amara
12. Protection by proxy: the Hausa-Fulani as agents of British Colonial rule in Northern Nigeria Moses E. Ochono
13. The problem of protectorates in an age of decolonisation: Britain and West Africa, 1955–60 Barnaby Crowcroft.

Subject Areas: International maritime law [LBDM], International law of territory & statehood [LBBJ], Jurisdiction & immunities [LBBF], Treaties & other sources of international law [LBBC], Public international law [LBB], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Maritime history [HBTM]