Unconquered States
Non-European Powers in the Imperial Age
H E Chehabi editor David Motadel editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Publishing:30th Dec '24
£143.00
This title is due to be published on 30th December, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
In the heyday of empire, most of the world was ruled, directly or indirectly, by the European powers. Unconquered States explores the struggles for sovereignty of the few nominally independent non-Western states in the imperial age. It examines the ways in which countries such as China, Ethiopia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Siam managed to keep European imperialism at bay, whereas others, such as Hawai'i, Korea, Madagascar, Morocco, and Tonga, long struggled, but ultimately failed, to maintain their sovereignty. The chapters in this book address four major aspects of the relations these countries had with the Western imperial powers: armed conflict and military reform, unequal treaties and capitulations, diplomatic encounters, and royal diplomacy. Bringing together scholars from five continents, this book provides the first comprehensive global history of the engagement of the independent non-European states with the European empires, reshaping our understanding of sovereignty, territoriality, and hierarchy in the modern world order.
This is an ingenious collection, a book on international history in the 19th and 20th centuries that really does, for once, "fill a gap". By countering our simple assumption that the West's imperial and colonial drives swallowed up all of Africa and Asia in the post-1850 period, Chehabi and Motadel's fine collection of case-studies of nations that managed to stay free—from Abyssinia to Siam, Japan to Persia—gives us a more rounded and complex view of the international Great-Power scene in those decades. This is really fine revisionist history. * Paul Kennedy, Yale University *
This is an excellent collection of scholars writing on an important set of states, which deserve to be considered together. * Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago *
Carefully curated and with an excellent introduction that provides an analytical frame, this book offers a global history of "unconquered" countries in the imperial age that is original in its perspective and composition. * Sebastian Conrad, Free University of Berlin *
The book offers an insightful comparative analysis of political forms and relationships in non-European countries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The "non-conquered states" of Asia and Africa are show as sometimes resisting and but often accommodating in innovative ways European political forms and military and diplomatic techniques. The particular appeal of the essays lies in their effort to bring to the surface and critically assess the indigenous histories and struggles that enabled these political formations, each in their own way, to respond to the challenges of modernization. This is global history at its kaleidoscopic best. * Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki *
ISBN: 9780198863298
Dimensions: 240mm x 160mm x 40mm
Weight: 1g
608 pages