Despite the urging of classical sociologists such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, history and sociology have largely followed different professional and institutional tracks. The result has been detrimental to both disciplines. The loss is especially apparent in the study of empires. Historians have made great contributions to the study of individual empires but have been reluctant to theorize and generalize about them. Sociologists for their part have followed their founders in largely ignoring empires, though there has been a new interest more recently. A rapprochement, or perhaps a synthesis, between history and sociology is urgently needed if the study of empires is to progress. Especially important is the need for a comparative approach, which sociologists are particularly well placed to offer.
AbramsP. (1982). Historical sociology. Open Books.
2.
AdamsJ.ClemensE. S.OrloffA. S. (Eds.). (2005). Remaking modernity: Politics, history, and sociology. Duke University Press.
3.
AllenK. (2017). Weber: Sociologist of empire. Pluto Press.
4.
BarkeyK. (2008). Empire of differences: The Ottomans in comparative perspective. Cambridge University Press.
5.
BartlettR. (1994). The making of Europe: Conquest, colonization and cultural change 950-1350. Penguin Books.
6.
BellD. (2007). The idea of greater Britain: Empire and the future of world order, 1860-1900. Princeton University Press.
7.
BellahR. (1965). Durkheim and history. In NisbetR. A. (Ed.), Emile Durkheim, with selected essays (pp. 153–176). Prentice-Hall.
8.
BreuillyJ. (2017). Modern empires and nation-states. Thesis Eleven, 139(1), 11–29.
9.
BuettnerE. (2016). Europe after empire: Decolonization, society, and culture. Cambridge University Press.
10.
BurbankJ.CooperF. (2010). Empires in world history: Power and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press.
11.
CésaireA. (2000). Discourse on Colonialism (PinkhamJ., Trans.) Monthly Review Press. (Original work published 1950)
12.
ClemensE. S. (2007). Toward a historicized sociology: Theorizing events, processes, and emergence. Annual Review of Sociology, 33, 527–549.
13.
ConradS. (2017). What is global history?Princeton University Press.
14.
CrossleyP. K. (2008). What is global history?Polity Press.
15.
DarwinJ. (2009). The empire project: The rise and fall of the British world system 1830-1970. Cambridge University Press.
16.
DoyleM. (1986). Empires. Cornell University Press.
17.
DurkheimE. (1972). Selected writings (with an introduction byGiddensA.. Cambridge University Press.
18.
FanonF. (1967). The wretched of the earth (FarringtonC. Trans., preface bySartreJ.-P. ).Penguin Books. (Original work published 1961)
19.
FinerS. E. (1999). The history of government (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press.
20.
GellnerE. (2006). Nations and nationalism (2nd ed.). Blackwell.
21.
GoJ. (2011). Patterns of empire: The British and American empires, 1688 to the present. Cambridge University Press.
22.
GoJ. (2017). Myths of nation and empire: The logic of America’s liberal empire-state. Thesis Eleven, 139(1), 69–83.
23.
HallJ. (1986). Powers and liberties: The causes and consequences of the rise of the west. Penguin Books.
24.
HansenP.JonssonS. (2015). Building Eurafrica: Reviving colonialism through European integration 1920-1960. In NicolaidisK.SebeB.MaasG. (Eds.), Echoes of empire: Memory, identity and colonial legacies (pp. 209–226). I.B. Tauris.
25.
IsaacB. (2006). The invention of racism in classical antiquity. Princeton University Press.
26.
KennyM.PearceN. (2018). Shadows of empire: The Anglosphere in British politics. Polity Press.
27.
KumarK. (1978). Prophecy and progress: The sociology of industrial and post-industrial society. Allen Lane.
28.
KumarK. (2010). Nation-states as empires, empires as nation-states: Two principles, one practice?Theory and Society, 39(2), 119–143.
29.
KumarK. (2015a). Sociology and the Englishness of English social theory. In KumarK. (Ed.), The idea of Englishness: English culture, national identity and social thought (pp. 165–197). Routledge.
30.
KumarK. (2015b). The past in the present: Mills, Tocqueville and the necessity of history. Journal of Historical Sociology, 28(3), 265–290.
31.
KumarK. (2017a). Visions of empire: How five imperial regimes shaped the world. Princeton University Press.
32.
KumarK. (2017b). The time of empire: Temporality and genealogy in the development of European empires. Thesis Eleven, 139(1), 113–128.
33.
KumarK. (2018). Empire and Eurasia: In the footsteps of Alexander. Comparativ, 28(4), 28–48.
34.
KumarK. (2021a). Empires: A historical and political sociology. Polity Press.
KumarK. (2022a). What can the Chinese experience of empire tell us about the Belt and Road Initiative?Theory and Society, 51(5), 729–760.
37.
KumarK. (2022b). The legacy of empire in East-Central Europe: Fractured nations and divided loyalties. In LewisS.OlickJ.WawrzyniakJ.PakierM. (Eds.), Regions of memory: Transnational formations (pp. 71–98). Palgrave Macmillan.
38.
KumarK. (forthcoming). Empires: Comparative and historical perspectives. In EmighR. J.LachmannnR.McCourtD. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative and historical sociology. Oxford University Press.
39.
LachmannR. (2013). What is historical sociology?Polity Press.
40.
LawsonG. (2005). Negotiated revolutions: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile. Routledge.
41.
MackenzieJ. M. (2010). Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English worlds? The historiography of a four-nations approach to the history of the British empire. In HallC.McClellandK. (Eds.), Race, nation, empire: Making histories, 1750 to the present (pp. 133–153). Manchester University Press.
42.
MalesevicS. (2019). Grounded nationalisms: A sociological analysis. Cambridge University Press.
43.
MannM. (1986–2013). The sources of social power (Vol. 4). Cambridge University Press.
44.
MannM. (1986). The sources of social power, volume 1: A history of power from the beginning to A. D. 1760. Cambridge University Press.
45.
MannM. (2012). The sources of social power, volume 3: Global empires and revolution, 1890-1945. Cambridge University Press.
46.
MannM. (2003). Incoherent empire. Verso.
47.
MannM. (2023). On wars. Yale University Press.
48.
MarxK.EngelsF. (1963). The German ideology (PascalR., Ed.). International. (Original work published 1846)
49.
MünklerH. (2007). Empires: The logic of world domination from ancient Rome to the United States (CamillerP., Trans.). Polity Press.
50.
New York Times. (2023, November1). King Charles faces growing pressure to address British abuses in Kenya. A8.
51.
OsterhammelJ. (2016). Global history and historical sociology. In BelichJ.DarwinJ.FrenzM.WickhamC. (Eds.), The prospect of global history (pp. 23–43). Oxford University Press.
52.
PagdenA. (2015). The peopling of the new world: Ethnos, race, and empire in the early-modern world. In PagdenA.The burdens of Empire: 1539 to the present (pp. 97–119). Cambridge University Press.
53.
PerdueP. C. (2007). Erasing the empire, re-racing the nation: Racialism and culturalism in imperial China. In StolerA. L.McGranahanC.PerdueP. C. (Eds.), Imperial formations (pp. 141–169). School for Advanced Research Press.
54.
PerdueP. C. (2017). Reflections on the transnational and comparative imperial history of Asia: Its promises, perils, and prospects. Thesis Eleven, 139(1), 129–144.
55.
PozziL. (2022). China, the Maritime Silk Road, and the memory of colonialism in the Asia region. In LewisS.OlickJ.WawrzyniakJ.PakierM. (Eds.), Regions of memory: Transnational formations (pp. 139–160). Palgrave Macmillan.
56.
SaidE. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage Books.
57.
SchwarzB. (2013). Memories of empire, vol. 1: The white man’s world. Oxford University Press.
58.
SmithD. (1991). The rise of historical sociology. Polity Press.
59.
SteinmetzG. (2007). The devil’s handwriting: Precoloniality and the German colonial state in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. University of Chicago Press.
60.
SteinmetzG. (Ed.). (2013). Sociology and empire: The imperial entanglement of the discipline. Duke University Press.
61.
WallersteinI. (1974–2011). The modern world system (Vol. 4). Academic Press.
62.
WallersteinI. (1974). The modern world system, vol. 1: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Academic Press.
63.
WallersteinI. (2000). From sociology to historical social science: Prospects and obstacles. British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 25–35.
64.
WardS. (2023). Untied Kingdom: A global history of the end of Britain. Cambridge University Press.
65.
WeberM. (1958). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (GerthH. H.MillsC. W., Eds.). Oxford University Press.
66.
WeberM. (1978). Economy and society (RothG.Wittich, EdsC.., Vol. 2). University of California Press.
67.
WellingsB. (2019). English nationalism, Brexit and the Anglosphere: Wider still and wider. Manchester University Press.
68.
ZarakolA. (2022). Before the West: The rise and fall of Eastern world orders. Cambridge University Press.
69.
ZhaoD. (2015). The Confucian-Legalist state: A new theory of Chinese history. Oxford University Press.
70.
ZielonkaJ. (2007). Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union. Oxford University Press.
