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Publications
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- April 2022
- Case
The First Opium War and Global Free Trade
By: Jeremy Friedman and Allison Lazarus
The First Opium War (1839-1842) symbolized the peak of the era of European imperialism, with a political and cultural legacy that remains potent to this day. The British Empire, “acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness” as one observer famously claimed, seemed to be... View Details
Keywords: Imperialism; Narcotics; Importing; History; Globalized Markets and Industries; Trade; Social Issues
- 2022
- Book
Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire
Sprawling across a quarter of the world’s land mass and claiming nearly seven hundred million people, Britain’s twentieth-century empire was the largest empire in human history. For many Britons, it epitomized their nation’s cultural superiority, but what legacy did... View Details
Keywords: Imperialism; Violence; Colonialism; History; Government and Politics; Power and Influence; Race; Policy; United Kingdom
- 2022
- Chapter
Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule
By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
This chapter explores differences in the making of a ‘modern’ fiscal state under colonial and sovereign rule. Focusing on African and Asian colonies (1820–1970) and their respective European metropoles, it argues that while the introduction of ‘modern’... View Details
Keywords: Fiscal Modernization; Colonial Rule; Economic History; Sovereign Finance; History; Taxation; Africa; Asia
- Article
Small States in an Age of Empires: The Duchy of Parma's Colonial Moment, 1750–1770
By: Arnaud Orain and Sophus A. Reinert
Often thought of as the "Athens of Italy" during the Enlightenment, and as a microcosm of the Italian peninsula and of the eighteenth century alike, the Duchy of Parma played a unique role in the culture and politics of the age. This essay focuses on its "colonial... View Details
- 2020
- Article
Remaking the Imperial Presidency: The Mayaguez Incident of 1975 and the Contradictions of Credibility
By: Mattias Fibiger
This article argues that the Mayaguez incident of 1975 was a missed opportunity to establish a more democratic American foreign policy. President Gerald Ford managed the crisis with an eye toward domestic and international credibility. But his conception of credibility... View Details
- Spring 2018
- Article
The ‘Moral Effect’ of Legalized Lawlessness:: Violence in Britain’s Twentieth Century Empire
From 1930s Palestine to Kenya in the years following World War II, systematized violence shaped and defined much of Britain’s twentieth-century empire. Liberal authoritarianism, and with it the “moral effect” that coercion had upon colonial subjects, gave rise to the... View Details
- March 2018
- Article
Global Business over Time
By: Geoffrey Jones
This article explores how business enterprises have been powerful actors in the spread of global capitalism between 1840 and the present day. It also shows how global firms, emerging out of industrialized Western economies, created and co-created markets and ecosystems... View Details
- June 2017 (Revised August 2018)
- Case
Goodbye IMF Conditions, Hello Chinese Capital: Zambia's Copper Industry and Africa's Break with Its Colonial Past
By: Rafael Di Tella, Vincent Pons, Sarah Mehta and David Lane
Over the past several decades, rapid growth in Chinese investment and trade has created for Africa a new development partner. China represents an alternative to U.S. and European nations whose past imperialism, resource avarice, and economic dictates—through the... View Details
- 2015
- Article
Free at Last, Now What: The Soviet and Chinese Attempts to Offer a Roadmap for the Post-Colonial World
By: Jeremy Friedman
This article seeks to understand the motivations behind the People's Republic of China's attempt to present an alternative development model for the post-colonial world and challenge Soviet leadership in the international communist movement in mid-1960s. When the wave... View Details
- 2014
- Book
Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth
By: Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan
At the time of the American Revolution, China was the strongest, richest, and most powerful civilization in the world. The Great Qing Empire ruled China and dominated East Asia by a combination of power and cultural prestige. China's economy was the world's largest.... View Details
- 2013
- Book
The Political Economy of Empire in the Early Modern World
By: Sophus A. Reinert and Pernille Røge
This volume recasts our understanding of the practical and theoretical foundations and dynamic experiences of early modern imperialism. The imperial encounter with political economy was neither uniform across political, economic, cultural, and religious constellations... View Details
- December 2011
- Article
Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire, and the High Court of Justice
By: Caroline Elkins
Restorative justice in various forms is a phenomenon that has swept across the globe over the last three decades. Most recently, it is unfolding in the High Court of Justice in London where five Kenyans have filed a claim against the British government, alleging that... View Details
- 2011
- Book
Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy
Historians have traditionally used the discourses of free trade and laissez-faire to explain the development of political economy during the Enlightenment. But from Sophus Reinert's perspective, eighteenth-century political economy can be understood only in the context... View Details
- 2007
- Book
America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again
This book draws on the author's multiple research projects and field observations to analyze problems facing the United States in recent years and to create an agenda for renewing American strengths through returning to core American principles—but in new ways suitable... View Details
- 2005
- Book
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
In a groundbreaking and Pulitzer winning debut, Harvard historian and 1998 IDRF Fellow Caroline Elkins has recovered the lost history of the last days of British colonialism in Kenya. Elkins reveals for the first time what Britain so desperately tried to hide. In the... View Details
- September 1995 (Revised April 1999)
- Case
Exporting American Culture
By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Jerry Useem
A large entertainment company, extensively criticized for producing violent, offensive, and anti-social material, is considering whether to sell its material to a semi-illegal operation that is beaming satellite TV into Turkey. The opportunity raises many questions... View Details