Empires reconfigured

Abstract

This special issue presents global perspectives on empires and imperial constellations, which aim at feeding into the current lively discussion about the place of empires in world and global history as much as in the social sciences and history at large. This discussion reacts to a dual observation: On the one hand, and for a long time, social scientists and scholars from the humanities have taken for granted that the era of empire is over and done with and that historical development was a directed process “from na-tion-state to empire”. On the other hand, ‘empire’ was a frequently used trope in public debates about imperialist behaviour and in fact continues to be. Military interventions have been seen through this lens, and international organizations have been criticized for imperial(ist) politics while many one-to-one interstate relations also often appear as imperial in nature. The articles collected here somehow parallel the effort made by the authors in a book on empire and the social sciences recently edited by Jeremy Adelman (London: Bloomsbury 2019).

Biographical Note

Matthias Middell (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University, Germany)

Matthias Middell is a professor of cultural history at Leipzig University as well as a speaker of the SFB 1199 and director of the Global and European Studies Institute at Leipzig University. He studied history earning his PhD from Leipzig University with his research focusing on the French Revolution. Since 2013, he has served as the director of the Graduate School Global and Area Studies in Leipzig and is currently the head of the Erasmus Mundus Global Studies Consortium. He teaches regularly at partner universities and co-supervises PhD candidates with colleagues from France, South Africa, and Ethiopia. His current research interests include the history of the French Revolution from a global perspective, history of cultural transfers around the world, and the role of space in the understanding of the current world being the result of long-lasting global connections.

Alessandro Stanziani (Centre de recherches historiques, l’école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France)

Alessandrio Stanziani is the director of the center for historical studies as well as director of social sciences studies in Paris. His research interests are the following: History of markets, competition and forms of regulation, France, Russia, Western Europe in the 18th-20th centuries as well as the history of labor, forced labor; Serfs, slaves and servants and Russia, France, Asia in the 17th-20th centuries. From 2016 until 2019 he was the director of the Global Studies programm at Paris University of Sciences and Letters.