Empire and Emancipation

"History, philosophy, a whole sweep of ideas, come together in Empire and Emancipation in an analysis that both illuminates and provokes" A Sivanandan Marxist perspectives equate imperialism with capitalism. Preoccupation with the economics of empire over the last century has obscured the politics of empire. While there are many regional or period studies on the subject of emanicipation, they lack the wide-angled approach necessary for a global understanding of the forces at work. In Empire and Emancipation Jan Nederveen Pieterse breaks with traditional approaches to imperialism to present a more balanced view of history, one that examines the logic of liberation as well as the logic of imperialism. As the author points out in his interoduction, 'We appear to know more and to think more about domination than about liberation. Does this indicate that in our general perception history is chiefly made from above?' He identifies several continuities and discontinuities of imperial history: between European and non-European dimensions of empire, between aristocratic and capitalist modes, between 'race' within Europe, and beyond, between the British Empire and United States' hegemony. Nederveen Pietersee examines class struggles in the Western world, the Irish struggle, the struggles of American Indians, and of the African diaspora, to bring together in one historical perspective the experiences and projects of the world's most powerful and most powerless. Empire and Emanicipation is the first theoretically developed study of both domination and liberation as the shaping forces of world history.