1The past few decades have seen no lessening in the intensity of debates and discussions concerning the place of empires in the early modern and modern worlds. These debates have if anything been aggravated, and at times grown more confused in their conceptual terms, partly because of the advent of the current known as ‘post-colonial studies’, in which historians of India have played a quite significant part. Three issues seem to be
central in these debates, and I shall address each of them in turn, in the hope of allowing a possible dialogue to emerge between historians of different parts of the world (and more particularly Latin America and South Asia) who work on the period between the late fifteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. The three issues that I shall consider in turn are as follows. Show
2 3 4 How were the European empires of the nineteenth century similar to earlier European empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?Military defeat shook confidence in the old gods and local practices. How were the European empires of the nineteenth century similar to earlier European empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Both enlisted the cooperation of the colonized population.
How were European colonial empires of the nineteenth century different from earlier forms of empire?The nineteenth-century European colonial empires differed from earlier empires in several important ways, including the prominence of race in distinguishing between rulers and ruled. Also distinctive was the extent to which colonial states were able to penetrate the societies they governed.
In what way was the nineteenth century European notion of empire distinctive from earlier empires in world history?in what way was the nineteenth-century European notion of empire distinctive from earlier empires in world history? It included much greater penetration into the daily lives of subject peoples.
Why did European countries build empires in the 19th century?In the late 1800's, economic, political and religious motives prompted European nations to expand their rule over other regions with the goal to make the empire bigger. The Industrial Revolution of the 1800's created a need for natural resources to fuel the newly invented machinery and transportation.
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