bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Wahhabi Empire
Authors: Alshaer Atef 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
What has come to be known as Wahhabism has acquired a broader meaning than was originally conceived. Within the environment where Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al‐Wahhab emerged in Najd, he postulated that there was widespread corruption underpinned by deviation from the Islamic ethos as embedded within the Qur'an and the tradition of Prophet Muhammad. He claimed that there were innovations. These were concerned with practices of idolatry, intercession, and sanctification, which amounted to serious transgressions from the faith of Islam that emphasized monotheism. ‘Abd al‐Wahhab set himself the task of reforming the Muslim community. He managed to form an alliance with the significant political leader Muhammad ibn Saud. He preached his religious project of revival through return to the Islamic scriptures and bolstered it with political legitimacy. Saudi Arabia continued to be ruled by Wahhabi ideology, marked by archaism inside the kingdom but facilitated by political and economic pragmatism through alliance and cooperation with the West.
Chavin culture (pre‐Moche)
Authors: Rick John W. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract

Chavin culture refers to the 1200–500
bce
, middle and Late Formative periods societies of the central Andes of South America, as well as to the archetypical site of Chavín de Huantár in the north‐central highlands of Peru. This site and other contemporary monumental ritual centers established many of the cultural characteristics of pre‐Columbian societies of the Andes and thus was a major antecedent to the later Andean empires. Elaborate rituals helped build the credibility of emerging authorities, and participation in these cult‐based centers gave initiates access to iconic pottery and other material representations of these religions, as well as knowledge and experiences. Long‐distance interactions between cult centers and their followers distributed highly stylized cultural materials over most of the central Andes, creating the first prehistoric time period with strong regional commonalities.
Cities, imperial
Authors: Ginn Geoffrey , Spearritt Peter 
Published: January 2016

AbstractA major urban center can be considered an imperial city when it embodies the power relationships of empire. The entry discusses a range of historical examples, both modern and premodern, and highlights typical elements and spatial arrangements that relate to key imperial functions of governance and control. The importance of ideology and imperial display to the urban fabric of such cities is emphasized. The urban implications of imperial decline are considered, as are present‐day forms of corporate imperialism in the global cities of the 21st century.
Revolution and social change
Authors: Pizzo David 
Published: January 2016

AbstractSocial change and revolution exist in a classic dialectic: social change causes revolution, and revolutions often cause social change. Revolutions, meaning mass movements aimed at effecting fundamental political and social changes in their societies, have frequently broken out in empires or in semi‐colonial countries. At times, revolutions began in metropolitan societies in part due to social changes unleashed by their empires. Many revolutionary states have themselves been expansionist powers that attempted to spread their systems and/or ideologies. In many societies, the imposition and functioning of imperial rule led to both widespread mass discontent and the rise of a literate, nationalist elite. Cases in which these two converged often led to revolutions against empires or regimes viewed as overly subservient to foreign interests, as was the case in Cuba, China, and Iran.
Tourism and empire
Authors: Skwiot Christine 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The pleasures of imperialism and the politics of empire have long converged, variously stabilizing and destabilizing colonial and neo‐colonial rule. There certainly were travel accounts and pleasure travelers in the Ancient and Early Modern worlds, but imperial tourism in its modern sense began more recently, in the industrial age. In 1869, Thomas Cook & Son's first Middle Eastern tour coincided with the opening of the Suez Canal. The two events heralded the beginning of the age of “high” imperialism. They also engendered dynamic relationships between tourism and empire that helped produce the global south and persisted long beyond the formal end of empire in the late 20th century. Tourism has often proven capable of legitimating a variety of imperial economic, political, and racial regimes, but when they have become too corrupt, too repressive, or both, tourism has proved an equally effective foil for anti‐imperial and anti‐racist movements.
Wars of independence
Authors: Pizzo David 
Published: January 2016

AbstractThis entry focuses on wars of independence against imperial powers from the ancient world to the late 20th century. Wars of independence generally begin as revolts or rebellions against colonial rule. In the event that they are successful and lead to the creation of a new, independent sovereign state, they are then referred to as wars of independence rather than as “insurrections” or “uprisings.” The term originally applied to the (US) American War of Independence of 1775–1783, and it was subsequently used to describe the Haitian Revolution, the uprisings in the Spanish American colonies, and the numerous insurrections against modern colonial empires in the second half of the 20th century. Even when wars of independence did not end in a military victory for the insurgents, the political costs incurred by imperial states in crushing them often resulted in independence in any case after a brief period of delay.
Nazi Empire
Authors: Fischer Conan 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The Nazi Empire (Third Reich, 1933–1945) grew explosively through annexation and conquest to embrace most of continental Europe by late 1942. Its total collapse by 1945 was equally sudden. It was a hierarchical racialist empire where Germanic peoples were deemed to enjoy pre‐emptive rights to land and resources, whilst other peoples were consigned to subordinate, often slave‐like roles. The Jews were held to pose a mortal biological threat to the empire and were systematically murdered in their millions. Governance in the Third Reich centered on the unchallenged personal authority of its dictator, Adolf Hitler, with any coherent administrative and executive procedure sorely wanting. The brutality and unbridled ambition of the Nazi Empire created enemies of all the major powers (Japan excepted) and provoked widespread popular resistance in occupied territories. Militarily and economically overwhelmed, the collapse of this grotesque regime was marked by the suicide of Hitler himself.
China, imperial: 5. Song dynasty period, 960–1279
Authors: Wyatt Don J. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
Despite the militaristic origins it shares with nearly all prior and subsequent dynasties, the Song marks a watershed China's imperial history because of its uniquely civil character. Owing largely to the perfection of an elaborate system of state‐sponsored civil service examinations during its centuries, the Song is remembered as a meritocratic age when a classless bureaucracy ascended over a disappearing hereditary aristocracy and when educated commoners became empowered to exert themselves for the first time as a political force. However, this same ultra‐civilianized ethos of the Song is often cited foremost among those factors that precipitated its decline and demise.
Gao Empire
Authors: McIntosh Susan Keech 
Published: January 2016

AbstractFrom the 9th to the 13th centuriesce, the eastern Niger Bend was dominated by a trading state known to Arab chroniclers as Kawkaw with its royal capital, Gao, strategically located on the Niger River at the mouth of a fossil valley leading north to the Sahara. Through control of distant salt sources and trade routes, Songhai rulers created a far‐reaching kingdom that had elements of empire. Historical sources unfortunately provide little information on the military or larger political configuration of Kawkaw.
Missions and missionaries
Authors: Carey Hilary M. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
Missions and missionaries have been major players in the history of world empires and especially in relation to Europe and the history of Christianity. This entry provides an account of missions from the early Christians to the post‐colonial era. It considers the role played by missions and missionaries in some other world religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. Missionaries ensured that Christianity spread across Europe in the Middle Ages and then to the New World. Consideration is given to the symbiotic relationship between missionaries and empire. Older themes have concerned the extent to which missionaries were implicated in the advance of colonialism, acting as surrogates for empire and promoting commerce along with Christianity. New themes in mission history include the role of women and indigenous Christians as well as missionaries as educators, linguists, scientists, and creators of imperial networks. In the post‐colonial period, missions have helped transform European missions into national churches and Christianity into a world religion.
Sikh Empire
Authors: Singh Pashaura 
Published: January 2016

Abstract

The end of the 18th century saw the beginning of the process of unification of Sikh confederacies (
misls
) in the Punjab, leading to the establishment of an empire by Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) in the early decades of the 19th century. Strategically, he made use of an efficient army, marriages, alliances, and suzerain–vassal polity to establish his political control over a domain extending from the Khyber Pass in the west to the River Satluj in the east, from the northern boundary of Kashmir to the deserts of Sindh in the South, comprising the provinces of Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, and Kashmir. It covered an area of 100 436 square miles with an estimated population of 12 million people. Designated as the
Sarkar Khalsa Ji
it was an absolute centralized monarchy, but a liberal and benevolent one that included Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims in the ruling class.
Photography and empire
Authors: Ryan James R. 
Published: January 2016

AbstractThe invention, development, and mass popularization of photography in the 19th century coincided with an intense and extensive period of European colonialism. Photography proved a significant means by which distant colonial territories could be explored, mapped, and controlled. New photographic technology profoundly affected ways in which the world was visualized as well as the ways in which empires were conceptualized and administered. Used in a range of ways across European and American colonial enterprises from the mid‐19th century, photography did not simply reflect empire; it actively constructed it. Yet, despite its undoubted power to shape colonial ways of seeing the world, photography was not always or inevitably the handmaid of colonial power. Photographs made in the service of empire could, in different hands, become persuasive testimony against imperial domination. Colonialized peoples also adapted photography for their own cultural and political purposes, employing it to shape new national and post‐colonial identities.
Material cultures of empire
Authors: Charney Michael W. , MacKenzie John M. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The material culture of empires involves aspects of the cultural reciprocities of imperial rule. The concept can cover the material items used in the course of the establishment and administration of imperial rule. It could include technology, weaponry, statuary, monuments, and tombs. It can also embrace the items that are adopted by subordinate peoples and are sometimes turned against their rulers. It can additionally refer to the manner in which dominant powers have a tendency to collect the materials of subordinate peoples, in modern times placing them in museums. This process underwent significant change as Britain and others, notably France, shifted their imperial interests from the settler colonies of North America to the non‐Western world, in particular India and Africa. Collecting and representing cultural objects became an important part of empire‐building and of imperial identity.
Enlightenment and empire
Authors: Kontler László 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement and a set of sociocultural practices aimed at the improvement of humanity through useful knowledge, coincided with crucial developments in the exploration and penetration of overseas territories by Europeans, including colonial expansion. In taking account of this new experience, 18th‐century thinkers also looked back to indigenous traditions in formulating important theoretical positions both in favor of and against the growth of empire, and ones designed to provide for efficient imperial governance. Enlightenment social science and natural history supplied taxonomies of human and natural diversity, some of which underpinned while others questioned hierarchies of empire, and thanks to their infiltration of the domestic contemplation of empire via the forums of the 18th‐century public sphere, were instrumental in the shaping of contemporary imperial identities.
Ceremonial and court culture
Authors: Osborne Toby 
Published: January 2016

AbstractCeremonial culture was central to court life in Early Modern Europe, and focused on the prince and his identity. Ceremonies had a performative role in visualizing and displaying the princely character to the court and the wider realm. At the same time, ceremonies sought to ensure that life at court was conducted in orderly ways, though the very power that the prince embodied meant that those ceremonies were also subject to competition and negotiation among those who wanted access to him. Power was understood in personalized terms, and this too had consequences for the ways ceremonies functioned in contexts of imperial power, as the examples of the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish monarchy suggest.
Subaltern Studies
Authors: Ludden David 
Published: January 2016

AbstractSubaltern Studies broke new ground in the study of subordinate groups in India, but its approach to empire recycled the standard national historiography of a purely top‐down production of imperial tiers separating alien British elites from Indian national subalterns. It therefore concealed the role of Indians in the creation of British India and of subaltern multitudes in struggles that complicated all anti‐imperial movements. In South Asia, transitions to British rule were always transitions from one imperial regime to another, and British policy tended to maintain old imperial ranks, as did nationalism. Empire remained a many‐layered cake from which nations were cut. Imperial ranks organized understandings and strategies of social mobility for people at every level, where subaltern responses to changing imperial conditions varied depending on circumstances. The subaltern was thus a multitude whose diversity of conscious activities shaped empire from beginning to end, and still shapes the nation today.
Sport: 1. Ancient empires
Authors: Owens Edwin J. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
Sport played an important role in ancient society, providing opportunities for the elite to display individual prowess and reinforce their political and military dominance, until the introduction of cash prizes allowed other members of society to participate. The range of sports was diverse. Many sports originally reflected warfare and hunting skills and allowed individuals to display their physical and technical superiority. In the context of state and religious ceremonies, sport offered entertainment and recreation and fostered communal identity. Sporting occasions also allowed states to show their military and cultural supremacy.
Georgia, Kingdom of
Authors: Chkhartishvili Mariam 
Published: January 2016

Abstract

The period from the 12th century to the first decade of the 13th century is a milestone in the history of Georgian statehood. If before and after this date Georgia was at the edge of empires, in this short interval the Georgian Kingdom was itself transformed into a pan‐Caucasus empire. Georgian identity reached a high point in its development and Georgians saw themselves as God's chosen people. The epoch is distinguished by a unique cultural legacy in which two features are especially important:
The History of Georgia
and a poem by Rustaveli,
The Knight in the Panther's Skin
. The first was a historiographical monument and contributed to the forming of Georgians’ collective memory; the latter was literary fiction and praised universal human ideals. The Georgian Kingdom acquired the function of an identity marker: in 19th‐century Georgian nationalism, the period including the reigns of King David the Builder (1089–1125) and his great‐granddaughter King (not Queen) Tamar (1184–1210) was represented as a Golden Age of Georgian history.
Thalassocracies
Authors: Gorski Richard 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
Thalassocracy, meaning “rule from the sea” or “rule of the sea,” is most naturally associated with the ancient Mediterranean world where a number of societies used the sea very effectively to expand and project their influence. It has since been applied more widely to sea‐facing societies and maritime empires of different regions and periods. Athens and Carthage stand out from the ancient world, while the British Empire is probably the archetypal modern example. Empire is an important lens through which to study the broader role of seas and oceans in historical development.
Food and famine
Authors: Wheatcroft Stephen G. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
This entry investigates the relationships between famine, food problems, and imperialism and how they changed over time. It begins by providing a basic definition of the main concepts, which shows the problematic nature of the word famine. This is followed by a short review of how this subject has been treated in the available literature. It then proceeds to give a more comprehensive account of the relationships between famine, food problems, and imperialism at different times. The subject is divided into four periods: (i) primitive military imperialism in the Classical and medieval world; (ii) the rise of military mercantile imperialism from the medieval period through to world war; (iii) the collapse of military imperialism in two world wars; and (iv) internal imperialism, as underdeveloped states try to escape poverty through communist transitions.
al‐Andalus (Muslim Iberia)
Authors: Clarke Nicola 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
Between the Muslim conquest of much of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and the fall of Granada in 1492, the history of al‐Andalus (Muslim Iberia) bears many of the hallmarks of the classic rise, decline, and fall narrative. It went from being an outpost of a much larger empire to an imperial seat in its own right, before crumbling, under pressure of civil war and external assaults from both the Christian north and the Muslim south, into an ever‐decreasing array of vulnerable city‐states. But the multicultural reality of this vibrant and turbulent medieval polity was more complex than it first appears.
China, imperial: 7. Ming dynasty period, 1368–1644
Authors: Lee Cheuk Yin , Chan Ying‐kit 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The Ming dynasty, also known as Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol regime Yuan dynasty. The founder Zhu Yuanzhang was from humble origins and founded his capital in Nanjing, Jiangsu. However, most historians believed that the power of Chinese monarchical absolutism reached its peak in the Ming dynasty because of Zhu Yuanzhang's authoritarian rule. To secure his power, he resolutely and unprecedentedly abolished the position of prime minister and had direct control over the six ministries. As a result, the government was controlled by powerful Grand Secretaries and subsequently by domineering eunuchs when the succeeding emperors were not as capable as the founding emperors. Declining governmental effectiveness came to a climax in the reign of Emperors Shizong and Shenzong when eunuch factions and the Donglin Party fought internecine struggles at the Ming court. During the same period of time, Ming China suffered from a series of crises, in particular the invasion of the Manchus from the north in Liaodong Province and peasant rebellions in the south. Eventually, the domestic rebel Li Zicheng captured Beijing in 1644, the frontier general Wu Sangui invited the Manchus to crush the rebels, and the Manchus seized the opportunity to take the throne and occupy China.
Khwarazmian Empire
Authors: Mitchell Colin P. 
Published: January 2016

Abstract
The Khwarazmian Empire grew from a regional dynasty of Turkic military governors – based in the arid plains and deserts east of the Caspian Sea – who first served the Great Seljuks in the 11th century. The Khwarazmshahs emerged as a successor state that held dominion over most of the eastern Islamic world in the 12th century, until the devastating Mongol invasions of the early 13th century. From traditional power bases like Urganj in the region of Khwarazm, the Khwarazmshahs ultimately grew to control major Islamic cosmopolitan centers like Bukhara, Samarkand, Nishapur, Herat, and Rayy, while at the same time patronizing religious and scientific scholarship.
Minoan civilization
Authors: Bennet John 
Published: January 2016

Abstract

Study of the Minoan civilization of Crete effectively began in 1900 with Arthur Evans’ excavations at the site of Knossos. The “Minoan” civilization crystallized at the turn of the 3rd/2nd millennia
bce
and seems to have exercised a profound influence on the Aegean islands, the Dodecanese, and coastal southwestern Turkey. This increased from the Middle (c.1900–1700
bce
) to the Late Bronze Age (c.1700–1450
bce
), when Crete may have been dominated by Knossos. The presence of Minoan material culture and practices at sites in the Aegean might support the Ancient Greek tradition of a “thalassocracy” of Minos, or a Minoan “empire,” but recent interpretations see this phenomenon as a product of local power strategies. After a major destruction horizon on Crete c.1450
bce
, Aegean engagement seems to have shifted to the emergent mainland (“Mycenaean”) polities, whose material culture becomes prevalent in the period 1400–1200
bce
.
Roman Empire: 2. 96–180
Authors: Pollard Nigel 
Published: January 2016

Abstract

From a number of perspectives, the period from 96
ce
(the death of the emperor Domitian and the accession of Nerva) to 180
ce
(the death of Marcus Aurelius) represents the high point of the Roman Empire. It reached its greatest territorial extent in the reign of Trajan (98–117
ce
), and its population peaked before the empire‐wide plague of 165
ce
. The imperial succession functioned smoothly through a process of adoption that prevented civil wars like those of 69
ce
and 193–197
ce
, and for the most part emperors of this period both sought and received the support of the traditional ruling class. Perhaps more importantly, while the actual and ideological roles of the emperor and the imperial capital remained paramount, and exploitation of provincial territory remained a key component of Roman imperialism, the period was characterized by crucial shifts in the relationship between center and peripheries. The Roman Empire was no longer just its capital and its subject territories, but for the first time, in some senses at least, a substantially integrated polity.