About the Author

Anthony Pagden was educated in Santiago de Chile, London, Barcelona, and Oxford. Over the past two decades, he has been the Reader in Intellectual History at Cambridge, a fellow of King’s College, a visiting professor at Harvard, and Harry C. Black Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Currently a professor of political science at UCLA, he is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, and The New York Times.

Reviews

“Two thousand years of empire compressed into two hundred pages, without sacrifice of detail or lucidity. The breadth of vision is phenomenal.” —Roy Porter

“Masterly . . . Pagden has an unerring sense of evidence, a gift of lucidity, an eye for a good story, a sharp taste for argument, and a vivid, pithy way with words. . . . He combines without obvious contrivance a survey and a story, with broad horizons and a perfect pace.” —Felipe Fernández-Armesto

“Without condescension, [Pagden] writes lucidly for the educated non-expert. Sketching a huge territory of knowledge, his compact essay belongs to a series . . . which on the strength of this volume is an admirable publishing venture indeed.” —Chicago Tribune

This addition to the Modern Library Chronicles series is described by the author as "a very short book on a very big subject." Happily, Pagden handles the topic with skill, learning, wit and balance. A professor of history at Johns Hopkins, Pagden has written extensively on empires, imperialism and human migration. His new offering is an overview summarizing the influence of empires on the development of civilization. Beginning with the first empire in European history, that of Alexander the Great, which was also the first empire to claim a universal scope, Pagden goes on to examine the land-based empires of Rome and the Hapsburgs that gave way to the seagoing empires of England and the Netherlands. The author makes much of the fact that these last two commercial empires were founded to be "empires of liberty," but derived much of their wealth and power from the exploitation of slave labor. Pagden has not written a screed against European hegemony, though. He knows full well the good and the bad of these institutions ("Most empires have offered their subject peoples a combination of opportunities and restraints"), and he impressively illustrates the ways in which the history of empire has for many centuries past been in fact the history of the human race. (on sale Apr. 24) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

"Two thousand years of empire compressed into two hundred pages, without sacrifice of detail or lucidity. The breadth of vision is phenomenal." -Roy Porter

"Masterly . . . Pagden has an unerring sense of evidence, a gift of lucidity, an eye for a good story, a sharp taste for argument, and a vivid, pithy way with words. . . . He combines without obvious contrivance a survey and a story, with broad horizons and a perfect pace." -Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

"Without condescension, [Pagden] writes lucidly for the educated non-expert. Sketching a huge territory of knowledge, his compact essay belongs to a series . . . which on the strength of this volume is an admirable publishing venture indeed." -Chicago Tribune