The Burdens of Empire
1539 to the Present

This book examines how modern Western history has been shaped by the rise and fall of the great European empires.

Anthony Pagden (Author)

9780521198271, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 March 2015

302 pages
23.1 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

'Scholars of empire, international relations, and human rights will learn a lot from the author's breathtaking knowledge of European legal, theoretical, and moral claims for and against empire in the early modern period.' Pernille Røge, Journal of World History

Despite the long history of debate and the recent resurgence of interest in empires and imperialism, no one seems very clear as to what exactly an empire is. The Burdens of Empire strives to offer not only a definition but also a working description. This book examines how empires were conceived by those who ruled them and lived under them; it looks at the relations, real or imagined, between the imperial metropolis (when one existed) and its outlying provinces or colonies; and it asks how the laws that governed the various parts and various ethnic groups, of which all empires were made, were conceived and interpreted. Anthony Pagden argues that the evolution of the modern concept of the relationship between states, and in particular the modern conception of international law, cannot be understood apart from the long history of European empire building.

1. Introduction
2. Defending empire: the 'school of Salamanca' and the 'affair of the Indies'
3. 'Making barbarians into gentle peoples': Alberico Gentili on the legitimacy of empire
4. The peopling of the New World: ethnos, race and empire in the early modern world
5. Conquest, settlement, purchase and concession: justifying the English occupation of the Americas
6. Occupying the ocean: Hugo Grotius and Serafim de Freitas on the rights of discovery and occupation
7. Cambiar su ser: reform to revolution in the political imaginary of the Ibero-American world
8. From the 'right of nations' to the 'cosmopolitan right': Immanuel Kant's law of continuity and the limits of empire
9. 'Savage impulse-civilised calculation': conquest, commerce and the Enlightenment critique of empire
10. Human rights, natural rights and Europe's imperial legacy.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], 21st century history: from c 2000 - [HBLX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]