This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history.

Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.

Peter Fibiger Bang is Associate Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen.

C. A. Bayly was the Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.

Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University.

Vol. II - The History of Empires
List of Contributors
Prolegomena
PETER FIBIGER BANG

Part 1. Bronze to Iron Age
The Near-Eastern "Invention" of Empire (3rd Millennium to 300 BCE)
PETER FIBIGER BANG

1. Egypt, Old to New Kingdom (2686-1069 BCE)
JUAN CARLOS MORENO GARC?A
2. The Sargonic and Ur III Empires
PIOTR STEINKELLER
3. Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire
GOJKO BARJAMOVIC
4. The Achaemenid Persian Empire: From the Medes to Alexander
MATTHEW W. WATERS
5. Ancient Mediterranean City-State Empires: Athens, Carthage, Early Rome
WALTER SCHEIDEL

Part 2. The Classical Age
The Formation of Large World Empires on the Margins of Eurasia: The Mediterranean and China (323 BCE-600 CE)
PETER FIBIGER BANG

6. Hellenistic Empire: The Dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids
CHRISTELLE FISCHER-BOVET
7. The Mauryan Empire
HIMANSHU PRABHA RAY
8. The First East Asian Empires: Qin and Han
MARK EDWARD LEWIS
9. The Roman Empire
PETER FIBIGER BANG
10. The Parthian and Sasanian Empires
MATTHEW P. CANEPA
11. The Kushan Empire
CRAIG BENJAMIN

Part 3. The Ecumenic Turn
Eclipse of the Old World and the Rise of Islam (600-1200)
PETER FIBIGER BANG

12. The Caliphate
ANDREW MARSHAM
13. The Tang Empire
MARK EDWARD LEWIS
14. Srivijaya
JOHN N. MIKSIC
15. The Khmer Empire
MICHAEL D. COE
16. The Byzantine Empire, 641-1453 AD
ANTHONY KALDELLIS
17. Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire and Its Successors
ROSAMOND McKITTERICK

Part 4. The Mongol Moment
The Rise of Ghenghis Khan and the Central Asian Steppe Followed by Regional Reassertion
PETER FIBIGER BANG

18. The Mongol Empire and the Unification of Eurasia
NIKOLAY KRADIN
19. The Ming Empire
DAVID M. ROBINSON
20. The Delhi Sultanate as Empire
SUNIL KUMAR
21. Caliphs, Popes, Emperors, Kings and Sultans: The Imperial Commonwealth of Medieval Islam and Western Christendom
JACOB TULLBERG
22. The Venetian Empire
LUCIANO PEZZOLO
23. The Mali and Songhay Empires
BRUCE S. HALL

Part 5. Another World
The Separate but Parallel Path of Imperial Formations in the Precolonial Americas
PETER FIBIGER BANG

24. The Aztec Empire
MICHAEL E. SMITH AND MA?LLE SERGHERAERT
25. The Inca Empire
R. ALAN COVEY

Part 6. The Great Confluence
The Culmination of Universal Empires and the Conquest of the New World: Agrarian Consolidation and the Rise of European Commercial and Colonial Empires (1450-1750)
PETER FIBIGER BANG

26. The Ottoman Empire
DARIUSZ KOLODZIEJCZYK
27. The Mughal Empire
RAJEEV KINRA
28. The Habsburg Monarchy and the Spanish Empire, 1492-1757
JOSEP M. DELGADO AND JOSEP M. FRADERA
29. The Qing Empire: Three Governments in One State and the Stability of Manchu Rule
PAMELA KYLE CROSSLEY
30. The Portuguese Empire (1415-1822)
FRANCISCO BETHENCOURT
31. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: Qua Patet Orbis
LEONARD BLUSS?
32. The First British Empire: Atlantic Empire and the Peoples of the British Monarchy, 1603-1815
NICHOLAS CANNY

Part 7. The Global Turn
The Age of European Colonialism, Subjection of Old Agrarian Empires to the European-Led World Economy and Nationalist Secessions (1750-1914)
PETER FIBIGER BANG

33. Deconstructing the British Empire: Between Repression and Reform
C. A. BAYLY
34. An Imperial Nation-State: France and Its Empires
DAVID TODD
35. The Russian Empire, 1453-1917
DOMINIC LIEVEN
36. Late Spanish Empire: Reform and Crisis, 1762-1898
JOSEP M. FRADERA
37. US Expansionism during the Nineteenth Century: "Manifest Destiny"
AMY S. GREENBERG
38. The Kinetic Empires of Native American Nomads
PEKKA H?M?L?INEN
39. Ottoman Turkey and Qing China: Response and Decline, 1774-1937
MICHAEL A. REYNOLDS AND RANA MITTER
40. The Sokoto Caliphate
MURRAY LAST

Part 8. The 20th Century
The Collapse of Colonial Empires and the Rise of Super-Powers
PETER FIBIGER BANG

41. The German and Japanese Empires: Great Power Competition and the World Wars
DANIEL HEDINGER AND MORITZ VON BRESCIUS
42. Decolonization and Neocolonialism
STUART WARD
43. The Soviet Union
GEOFFREY HOSKING
44. "America's Global Imperium"
ANDREW PRESTON
45. Epilogue: Beyond Empire?
FREDERICK COOPER

Index of Places, Names and Events