After Empire: Multiethnic Societies And Nation-building: The Soviet Union And The Russian, Ottoman, And Habsburg Empires

by Mark Von Hagen (Editor), Karen Barkley (Editor)

The Soviet Union was hardly the first large, continuous, land-based, multinational empire to collapse in modern times. The USSR itself was, ironically, the direct result of one such demise, that of imperial Russia, which in turn was but one of several other such empires that did not survive the stresses of the times: the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire.This ambitious and important volume brings together a group of some of the most outstanding scholars in political science, history, and historical sociology to examine the causes of imperial decline and collapse. While they warn against facile comparisons, they also urge us to step back from the immediacy of current events to consider the possible significance of historical precedents.Is imperial decline inevitable, or can a kind of imperial stasis be maintained indefinitely? What role, if any, does the growth of bureaucracies needed to run large and complex political systems of this type play in economic and political stagnation? What is the “balance of power” between the center and the peripheries, between the dominant nationality and minorities? What coping mechanisms do empires tend to develop and what influence do these have? Is modernization the inexorable source of imperial decline and ultimate collapse? And what resources, including the imperial legacy, are available for political, social, and economic reconstruction in the aftermath of collapse? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions addressed by the contributors to this fascinating and timely volume.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 1997

About the author

Mark von Hagen was an American military historian who taught Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian history at Arizona State University.

Reviews

[Tolga Yonetsel · Rating 3 out of 5]

At Part Two, "Thinking About Consequences of Empire," builds a comparative framework for examining the process of post-imperial nation-state building. But sociologist writer of Ottoman part who was concentrated on 1950’s instead of post imperial period was a failure. An Islamic and political sociologist writer criticised secular Republic without any concrete material, instead of concentrating many other sociological situations like ending of Caliph or huge numbers of immigrants of Turks, Muslims, Armenians, non-Muslim Turks, Muslim Greeks, etc and their very important effects to all social dimensions of all countries around after Ottoman. If this book was about an aproach to Islam, sects and social Islam during 1940’s this article of Şerif Mardin is much more interesting and relevant.

[Duncan Maccoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book required to study for UK Open University's A326 'Empire: 1492-1975'