Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-px5tt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-10T02:02:24.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Problem(s) of Empire

Review products

PETER FIBIGER BANG, †C. A. BAYLY AND WALTER SCHEIDEL (EDS), THE OXFORD WORLD HISTORY OF EMPIRE: VOLUME ONE: THE IMPERIAL EXPERIENCE; VOLUME TWO: THE HISTORY OF EMPIRES. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xxvii + 551 (Vol. 1), xxxiv + 1318 (Vol. 2). isbn 9780197533970 (2-volume set). £265.00/$355.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2025

Carlos F. Noreña
Carlos F. Noreña*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It has been in continuous operation since 1586, making it the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press (1534). From its imposing complex in Jericho, the stylish suburb of Oxford, and its many satellite offices around the world, including Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Karachi, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Melbourne, Toronto and New York — the overlap with former territories of the British Empire is conspicuous — it produces an unparalleled number of academic publications every year and occupies a dominant position in the authentication of knowledge and its dissemination across the globe. In 2022–23, for example, the press published no fewer than 1,777 new academic titles, available in 193 countries and translated into 45 languages (including Somali and Quechua, as the press's 2022–23 Annual Report breathlessly announces). And revenues are substantial: £825,000,000 in sales last year alone. A bastion of prestige, global in reach but with a clear centre, and sitting comfortably within the inner citadel of a hierarchical, worldwide ecosystem of knowledge-making, Oxford University Press can be seen as a quasi-imperial operation in its own right.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 114 , November 2024 , pp. 125 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

With many thanks to Myles Lavan, who first commissioned this piece, and to Neville Morley, who has seen it through to publication, for their sage advice (and for their patience), and with thanks, too, to the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu-Lughod, J. 1989: Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ando, C. (ed.) 2016: Citizenship and Empire in Europe 200–1900: The Antonine Constitution after 1800 Years, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Ando, C. 2017: ‘Territoriality and infrastructural power in ancient Rome’, in Ando, C. and Richardson, S. (eds), Ancient States and Infrastructural Power: Europe, Asia and America, Philadelphia, 115–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ando, C. 2021: ‘The ambitions of government: sovereignty and control in the ancient countryside’, in Flower, H. (ed.), Empire and Religion in the Ancient World, Cambridge, 71–93.Google Scholar
Bang, P. and Scheidel, W. (eds) 2013: The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaujard, P. 2019: The Worlds of the Indian Ocean: A Global History (trans. Loring, T., Meadows, F. and Tait, A.), 2 vols, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1953: The Historian's Craft (trans. Putnam, P.), New York.Google Scholar
Boatwright, M. T. 2021: Imperial Women of Rome: Power, Gender, Context, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulvert, G. 1970: Esclaves et affranchis impériaux sous le Haut-Empire romain: rôle politique et administratif, Naples.Google Scholar
Brodka, D. 1998: Die Romideologie in der römischen Literatur der Spätantike, Berlin.Google Scholar
Burbank, J. and Cooper, F. 2010: Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D. 2021: The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G. 2018: ‘Imperium and the City of God: Augustine on church and empire’, Studies in Church History 54, 46–70.Google Scholar
Cooper, F. 2004: ‘Empire multiplied: a review essay’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 247–72.Google Scholar
Cornwell, H. and Woolf, G. (eds) 2022: Gendering Roman Imperialism, Leiden.Google Scholar
Doyle, M. 1986: Empires, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Eck, W. 2021: Gesellschaft und Administration im römischen Reich: aktualisierte Schriften in Auswahl, Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstadt, S. 1963: The Political Systems of Empires, New York.Google Scholar
Eliot, S., Gadd, I. and Louis, W. R. (eds) 2013–17: The History of Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Flemming, R. 2023: ‘Biography, women and power’, Journal of Roman Studies 113, 171–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flower, H. and Osgood, J. (eds) 2024: Women in Republican Rome: Space, Religion, and Influence, special issue of American Journal of Philology 145, 1–180.Google Scholar
Gehler, M. and Rollinger, R. (eds) 2014: Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte: epochenübergreifende und globalhistorische Vergleiche, 2 vols, Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Gellner, E. 1983: Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca, NY.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1987: The Nation State and Violence: Volume Two of a Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gorski, P. 2006: ‘Mann's theory of ideological power: sources, applications and elaborations’, in Hall and Schroeder 2006, 101–34.Google Scholar
Gouguenheim, S. 2023: Review of OWHE, Le Moyen Age 129, 215–37.Google Scholar
Hall, J. and Schroeder, R. (eds.) 2006: An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. 2000: Empire, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Heather, P. and Rapley, J. 2023: Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West, New Haven.Google Scholar
Hemelrijk, E. 2015: Hidden Lives, Public Personae: Women and Civic Life in the Roman West, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hemelrijk, E. 2020: Women and Society in the Roman World: A Sourcebook of Inscriptions from the Roman West, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herz, Z. forthcoming: The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories.Google Scholar
Hopkins, K. 2009: ‘The political economy of the Roman empire’, in Morris, I. and Scheidel, W. (eds), The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, Oxford, 178–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horesh, N. 2023: ‘Tracing the cutting edge of a field within world history’, in Explorations in World History: The Knowing of Globalization, Singapore, 23–39.Google Scholar
Howe, S. 2002: Empires: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joska, S. 2023: ‘Female patronage and the reuse of imperial iconography in the Antonine Age’, in Cornwell and Woolf 2023, 185–202.Google Scholar
Kaldellis, A. 2019: Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Kana, S. 2022: Review of OWHE, Journal of the Historical Association 107, 611–16.Google Scholar
Lavan, M. and Ando, C. (eds) 2021: Roman and Local Citizenship in the Long Second Century CE, Oxford.Google Scholar
Lupher, D. 2003: Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
MacCormack, S. 2006: On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru, Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maier, C. 2023: The Project-State and its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Mann, M. 1986–2012: The Sources of Social Power, 4 vols, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, M. 2006: ‘The sources of social power revisited: a response to criticism’, in Hall and Schroeder 2006, 343–96.Google Scholar
Mantonavi, D. 2009: ‘Lex “regia” de imperio Vespasiani: il vagum imperium e la legge costante’, in Colognesi, L. Capogrossi and Scandone, E. Tassi (eds), La Lex de Imperio Vespasiani e la Roma dei Flavii, Rome, 125–55.Google Scholar
Markus, R. 1988: Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (2nd edn), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Merola, D. 2001: Autonomia locale, governo imperiale: fiscalità e amministrazione nelle province asiane, Bari.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B. 2016: Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B. forthcoming: ‘How rich were the rich? An empirically-based taxonomy of pre-industrial bases of wealth’, Explorations in Economic History.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B., Lindert, P. and Williamson, J. 2011: ‘Pre-industrial inequality’, Economic Journal 121, 255–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Münkler, H. 2007. Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (trans. Camiller, P.), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Nielsen, T. 2008: Urban Life and Local Politics in Roman Bithynia, Aarhus.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noreña, C. 2018: ‘Introduction’, in Noreña, C. (ed.), A Cultural History of Western Empires in Antiquity, London, 1–37.Google Scholar
North, D., Wallis, J. J. and Weingast, B. 2009: Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osterhammel, J. 2022: ‘“Imperiologie”? Neues nach der New Imperial History’, Neue Politische Literatur 67, 229–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parodo, C. 2016: ‘Roma antica e l'archeologia dei simboli nell'Italia fascista’, Medea 2, 1–27.Google Scholar
Pereira, E. 2022: Review of OWHE, Revista de História da Sociedade e da Cultura 22, 279–85.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 2023: The State, Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pines, Y. 2012: The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and its Imperial Legacy, Princeton.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A. 1975: The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton.Google Scholar
Poggi, G. 2006: ‘Political power un-manned: a defence of the Holy Trinity from Mann's military attack’, in Hall and Schroeder 2006, 135–49.Google Scholar
Pollock, S. 2006: ‘Empire and imitation’, in Calhoun, C., Cooper, F. and Moore, K. (eds), Lessons of Empire, New York, 175–88.Google Scholar
Riggsby, A. 2019: Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohr Vio, F. 2022: Powerful Matrons: New Political Actors in the Late Roman Republic, Zaragoza and Seville.Google Scholar
Rosillo-López, C. and Lacorte, S. (eds) 2024: Cives Romanae: Roman Women as Citizens during the Republic, Zaragoza and Seville.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheidel, W. 2013: ‘Studying the state’, in Bang and Scheidel 2013, 5–57.Google Scholar
Scheidel, W. 2014: ‘The shape of the Roman world: modelling imperial connectivity’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 27, 7–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheidel, W. 2018: The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, Princeton.Google Scholar
Schultz, C. 2021: Fulvia: Playing for Power at the End of the Roman Republic, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. 1998: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. Jr 2005: ‘Three temporalities: toward an eventful sociology’, in Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation, Chicago, 81–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, B. 2022: ‘Global empires and the Roman imperium’, American Journal of Philology 143.3, 505–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, T. 1985: ‘Bringing the state back in: strategies of analysis in current research’, in Evans, P., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge, 3–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, J. 2006: ‘Networks and ideologies: the fusion of “is” and “ought” as a means to social power’, in Hall and Schroeder 2006, 306–27.Google Scholar
Steel, C. and Webb, L. (eds) forthcoming: Women, Wealth and Power in the Roman Republic.Google Scholar
Stolper, M. 1985: Entrepeneurs and Empire: The Muraša Archive, The Murašu Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia, Istanbul.Google Scholar
Taagepera, R. 1978a: ‘Size and duration of empires: systematics of size’, Social Science Research 7, 108–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taagepera, R. 1978b: ‘Size and duration of empires: growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 B.C.’, Social Science Research 7, 180–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taagepera, R. 1979: ‘Size and duration of empires: growth-decline curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D.’, Social Science History 3, 115–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarquini, A. 2017: ‘Il mito di Roma nella cultura e nella politica del regime fascista: dalla diffusione del fascio littorio alla costruzione di una nuova città (1922–1943)’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée 95, 139–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vance, N. 2000: ‘Imperial Rome and Britain's language of empire 1600–1837’, History of European Ideas 26, 211–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vance, W. 1989. America's Rome, 2 vols, New Haven.Google Scholar
Vasunia, P. 2011: ‘The comparative study of empires’, Journal of Roman Studies 101, 222–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasunia, P. 2013: The Classics and Colonial India, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallerstein, I. 1974–88: The Modern World System, 4 vols, New York.Google Scholar
Weaver, P. R. C. 1972: Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor's Freedmen and Slaves, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, L. 2022: ‘Female interventions in politics in the libera res publica: structures and practices’, in Burden-Strevens, C. and Frolov, R. (eds), Leadership and Initiative in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome, Leiden.Google Scholar
Webb, L. and Brännstedt, L. 2023: ‘Gendering the Roman triumph: elite women and the triumph in the Republic and early empire’, in Cornwell and Woolf 2023, 58–95.Google Scholar
Weisweiler, J. 2021: ‘Capital accumulation, supply networks and the composition of the Roman Senate, 14–235 CE’, Past & Present 253, 3–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisweiler, J. forthcoming: From Republican Empire to Universal State: Reinterpreting the Roman Imperial Élite, 14–400 CE.Google Scholar
Wilker, J. 2023: ‘Sociae et amicae populi Romani: women and the institution of client kingship’, in Cornwell and Woolf 2023, 165–84.Google Scholar