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Introduction

Empires and Their Space*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2021

Yuri Pines
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Michal Biran
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jörg Rüpke
Affiliation:
Universität Erfurt, Germany
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Summary

The Introduction to our volume starts by delineating changing attitudes towards the word “empire” in Western scholarship from the 20th to the 21st century. It then explains our concept of an empire as an entity with strongly pronounced aspirations to attain universal rule and with clear hegemonic position in its macro-region. We continue with a brief outline of the three waves of the empires’ formation in five Eurasian macro-regions (Near East, South Asia, Europe, East Asia, and the Inner Asian steppe belt). The second half of the Introduction deals with the factors that influenced spatial dimensions of Eurasian empires — from ideological and religious commitment to attaining universal rule to a variety of ecological, military, economic, and administrative considerations that prevented the empires’ leaders from realizing this goal. The multiplicity of these factors suffices to caution against any attempt to create a neat uniform scheme that would explain the empires’ expansion and contraction.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Limits of Universal Rule
Eurasian Empires Compared
, pp. 1 - 48
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

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Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

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