Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 draws upon published and unpublished work by leading scholars in the history of European expansion and the history of political thought. It covers the whole span of imperial theories from ancient Rome to the American founding, and includes a series of essays which address the theoretical underpinnings of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British and Dutch empires in both the Americas and in Asia. The volume is unprecedented in its attention to the wider intellectual contexts within which those empires were situated - particularly the discourses of universal monarchy, millenarianism, mercantalism, and federalism - and in its mapping of the shift from Roman conceptions of imperium to the modern idea of imperialism.

David Armitage is Professor of History, Harvard University, USA

Contents: Introduction; Imperium Romanum: empire and the language of power, J. S. Richardson; Empire and union: two concepts of the early modern European political order, John Robertson; The Habsburg world empire and the revival of Ghibellinism, John M. Headley; The European debate on universal monarchy, Franz Bosbach; Imperio particular e imperio universal en las Cartas de relación de Hernán Cortés, Victor Frankl; The seizure of overseas territories by the European powers, John H. Elliott; Dispossessing the Barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians, Anthony Pagden; The ideology of English colonization: from Ireland to America, Nicholas P. Canny; Sovereignty-association, 1500-1783, W. J. Eccles; Freitas versus Grotius, C. H. Alexandrowicz; Millenarianism and Empire: Portuguese Asian decline and the 'Crise de Conscience' of the missionaries, G. D. Winius; Power versus plenty as objectives of foreign policy in the 17th and 18th centuries, Jacob Viner; New wine in old skins? American definitions of empire and the emergence of a new concept, Norbert Kilian; Spain and the breakdown of the imperial ethos: the problem of equality, Timothy E. Anna; Aboriginal property and western theory: recovering a middle ground, James Tully; Index.