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Endless Empire

Spain's Retreat, Europe's Eclipse, America's Decline

Stephen Jacobson editor Alfred McCoy editor Josep Fradera editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Wisconsin Press

Published:15th Aug '96

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Endless Empire cover

Throughout four millennia of recorded history there has been no end to empire, but instead an endless succession of empires. After five centuries of sustained expansion, the half-dozen European powers that ruled half of humanity collapsed with stunning speed after World War II, creating a hundred emerging nations in Asia and Africa. Amid this imperial transition, the United States became the new global hegemon, dominating this world order with an array of power that closely resembled that of its European predecessors.

As Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the European Union now rise in global influence, twenty leading historians from four continents take a timely look backward and forward to discover patterns of eclipse in past empires that are already shaping a decline in U.S. global power, including:

  • erosion of economic and fiscal strength needed for military power on a global scale
  • misuse of military power through micro-military misadventures
  • breakdown of alliances among major powers
  • weakened controls over the subordinate elites critical for any empire’s exercise of global power
  • insufficient technological innovation to sustain global force projection.

“A rich combination of historical expertise, comparative perspective, and engagement with contemporary trends at the outset of the twenty-first century. It should be a foundational text and point of reference for teaching and scholarship on imperial histories and on American power in today’s world.”- John Sidel, London School of Economics;

“An exceptionally comprehensive look at empire in a genuinely global context. The scope and sophistication of these essays are unequaled anywhere.”- Franklin W. Knight, Johns Hopkins University;

“Without doubt an important contribution to world diplomacy and a credit to the University of Wisconsin Press for publishing it.”- Red Wing Republican Eagle;

“A rich, globally vast portrait of imperial decline that should interest scholars engaged in any aspect of history touched by empire’s receding, relentlessly grasping tendrils.”- H-Net Reviews

ISBN: 9780299290245

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 738g

440 pages