Empire Unbound

Abstract

European empires were typically represented in bright color-coded maps during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conveying to viewers the expanse of European power across the globe. Despite this familiar image of a world divided up into neat imperial territories, the reality of empire-building often told a different story. Empire Unbound argues that European empires were never the bounded, stable entities that imperialists imagined. In examining Mediterranean empire-building in a comparative context, this book argues that the era of “new imperialism” fostered connections and synergies between regional powers that influenced the trajectories of imperial states in fundamental ways. Breaking with conventional national approaches, Gavin Murray-Miller traces the development of France’s North African empire, noting how empire-building relied upon transnational networks and cooperation with Muslim elites across borders just as much as military conquest. By looking at the interconnected relationships linking the French, British, Italian, and Ottoman empires from the 1880s through the First World War, Empire Unbound proposes a new spatial framework for imperial studies, noting how migrations, extraterritorial legal regimes, and cross-border interactions both abetted and frustrated imperial designs at the turn of the century.