“All this to say, please please please don’t let Gaza be a one-off in terms of your opposition to the imperial machine. Keep your eyes fiercely trained on its actions after this is over, and help bring as much attention to its crimes as possible. If you’re not sure about a particular conflict that’s in the news there are many great resources available for helping you sort out fact from fiction with regard to the empire and its propaganda spin.
The empire didn’t just start getting crazy and evil with Gaza. It’s always doing things like this. It always lies about them. The mass media always help it lie. Gaza isn’t some aberration in its usual behavior, it’s just more obvious.”
Our Research Training Group has just published the proceedings of the lectures held during the first three years of our project (2020–2023). The volume is edited by Ronald G. Asch, Peter Eich and Elisabeth M. Piller. The contributions cover various topics regarding imperial temporality, the visualisations of imperial power, and post-imperial orders.
The PhD students in our Research Training Group just launched the website “Imperial Moments. An Anthology”. Professor Elisabeth Piller planned and coordinated the whole project.
The website gives an overview of the various research projects in our RTG.
We would be excited if some of you took the time to browse and discover our research.
The internal organization of overseas empires influenced the choice of ship technology & contributed to Portugal’s decline & the 17th century ascendancy of the Dutch, according to Claudia Rei in an exciting Social Science History paper. OA https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2024.7
The Making and Unmaking of a Presidency: Envisioning Empire in British Bencoolen, 1685–1825
“The effort to transform Sumatra into a productive constituent of a larger imperial nexus depended on many of the same processes that were to shape modern capitalism. Not only did British officials in Bencoolen deploy coerced and enslaved labor, they did so with the intent of wresting control of the production, consumption, and circulation of valuable commodities such as pepper and sugar. Practices of slavery, transplantation, and agrarian change typically associated with British colonies in the Atlantic world fundamentally shaped Bencoolen.”
Bains, T. (2024) ‘The Making and Unmaking of a Presidency: Envisioning Empire in British Bencoolen, 1685–1825’, Journal of British Studies, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2023.142.
“He and his only son venture forth on the 7th Portuguese Armada to establish the worlds first trade empire. However the challenges that await them will test them to their core.”
"As we can discern from Plutarch and Appian, beyond the socio-economic impacts, the ancient historians equated the displacement of the family-run smallholdings with the slave-dependent Latifundia with a concurrent moral decline that degraded the Roman Republic."
Discussing Teb Tengri and the Religious Views of Chinggis Khan
"Included is discussions of historical sources (Juvaini, Rashid al-Din, the Secret History of the Mongols) letters written by Hulegu Khan and Chinggis Khan's views (or lack there of?) towards Buddhism."