Varieties of Empire: Extraction, Incorporation, and the Political Economy of Colonial Rule

Department seminar with speaker Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra, University of Sussex.

Across the social sciences, empires – despite their different characteristics – are consistently defined in terms of their commonalities across time and place. In contrast, I argue for more attention to be given to the colonial histories constitutive of European overseas empires as developing a distinct type of empire – what I call “empires of extraction” in contrast to “empires of incorporation”. In this talk, I set out the differences between these empires by examining the ways in which famine was addressed during the period of European overseas empires in Asia, in contrast to other imperial formations in the region such as the Mughal Empire and the Chinese Empire. I move from the different treatment of famine to construct a sociological understanding of the distinctiveness of modern European empire.

All members of the Department of Sociology and research staff from across the faculty are invited to attend.