Intro -- Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500-1800 -- Copyright -- Contents -- General Editor's Foreword -- List of Figures and Tables -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- 1: The Evolution of Norms in Trade and Financial Networks in the First Global Age:...

Beyond empires' explores the complexity of empire building from the point of view of self-organized networks, rather than from the point of view of the central state. This focus takes readers into a world of cooperative strategies worldwide that emphasises the role played by individuals, rather...

Outline of European bloc imperialism -- Hemispheric settings for European bloc imperialism -- The anatomy of two imperialist regimes -- The rise of European and ACP blocs and US hegemony -- The emergence of European bloc imperialism -- The theoretical foundations of European bloc imperialism --...

The US forced the EU to liberalize the Lomé Conventions, but the EU fired back with the EPAs, characterized by supposedly free market policies but which in reality yokes the ACP countries trade to the EU and excludes the US.

How it began: Great Britain and the developing world. The East India company -- Informal empire: Argentina; Egypt; China -- Varieties of colonialism: India, Nigeria -- How it continues: the United States and the developing world. Seeking influence abroad: Caribbean, Pacific Asia -- Fighting...

"In the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. slavery was characterized by relentless expansion and unrelenting exportation, not only of commodities but also of ideas. Zach Sell traces U.S. slavery's significance to colonial land-based dispossessions on a global scale, showing how slavery molded the...

The cotton crisis: Lancashire, the American South, and the turn to "Empire Cotton" -- "The Black man's crop": The British Cotton Growing Association and Africa -- "The scientific redemption of Africa": Coercion and regulation in colonial agriculture -- "King Cotton's impoverished retinue":...

Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries, but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A colonial legacy must go back centuries...