Empire to Nation

This broadly comparative collection comes from a specialized workshop held by several scholarly organizations at the University of California at San Diego in December 2002 and a research conference a year later. Focusing on how empires declined and fell and nations emerged in the last two hundred years, the ten comprehensive articles cover the Spanish empire in the Americas, including imagined communities and lived communities in Mexico from 1810 to 1821, the transformation of the public and the private in South America, and the transition from colonial subject to citizen; the Middle East and Europe in the idea of nations serving as prisons and the Ottoman and Hapsburg declines compared; the Chinese empire in how the Qing became China and Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism and nationalisms in China and inner Asia; and the Russian empire and the Soviet Union. The collection closes with an article on whether empire is returning. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Joseph W. Esherick is professor of history and Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Hasan Kayali is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Van Young is professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.