Rollinger,Robert, Julian Degen & Michael Gehler (eds.). 2020. Short-term empires in world history. Wiesbaden: Springer.
The volume will focus on a comparative level on a specific group of states that are commonly labelled as “empires” and that we encounter through all historical periods. Although they are very successful at the very beginning, like most empires are, this success is very ephemeral and transient. The era of conquest is never followed by a period of consolidation. Collapse and/or reduction to much smaller dimension run as fast as the process of wide-ranging conquest and expansion. The volume singles out a series of such “short-term empires” and aims to provide a methodologically clearly structured as well as a uniform and consistent approach by developing a general set of questions that guarantee the possibility to compare and distinguish. This way it intends to examine not only already well established empires but also to illuminate forgotten ones.
Table of contents:
- Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen, Michael Gehler: Approaching Short-Term Empires in World History, a First Attempt
- Michael Gehler: The European Union: A Short-Term Empire?
- Peter Heather: The Hunnic Empire of Attila
- Beatrice F. Manz: The Timurid Empire
- Ekaterini Mitsiou: The Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204–1261): Rise and Fall of a Short-Term State in the Romania
- Sabine Müller: Mithradates VI and the Pontic Empire
- Lucian Reinfandt: The Ghaznavids of Eastern Iran, a Postcolonial Muslim Empire
- Seth Richardson: Because Empire Means Forever: Babylon and Imperial Disposition
- Robert Rollinger: The Medes of the 7th and 6th c. BCE: A Short-Term Empire or Rather a Short-Term Confederacy?
- Giorgio Rota: In a League of Its Own? Nāder Šāh and His Empire
- Kai Ruffing: The Barcids and Hannibal
- Christoph Schäfer: Theoderic and the Ostrogoths—a Short-Term Empire? Decapitated or Defective?
- Arnold Suppan: The Rise of Hitler’s Empire and Its Apex (1933–1942)
- Marc Van De Mieroop: From Warlord to Emperor: The Careers of Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi
- Josef Wiesehöfer, Robert Rollinger: The ‘Empire’ of the Hephthalites