Peter Crooks - Böcker

How did empires rule different peoples across vast expanses of space and time? And how did small numbers of imperial bureaucrats govern large numbers of subordinated peoples? Empires and Bureaucracy in World History seeks answers to these fundamental problems in imperial studies by exploring the power and limits of bureaucracy. The book is pioneering in bringing together historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages with scholars of post-medieval European empires, while a genuinely world-historical perspective is provided by chapters on China, the Incas and the Ottomans. The editors identify a paradox in how bureaucracy operated on the scale of empires and so help explain why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires fail almost before they begin. By adopting a cross-chronological and world-historical approach, the book challenges the abiding association of bureaucratic rationality with 'modernity' and the so-called 'Rise of the West'.

How did empires rule different peoples across vast expanses of space and time? And how did small numbers of imperial bureaucrats govern large numbers of subordinated peoples? Empires and Bureaucracy in World History seeks answers to these fundamental problems in imperial studies by exploring the power and limits of bureaucracy. The book is pioneering in bringing together historians of antiquity and the Middle Ages with scholars of post-medieval European empires, while a genuinely world-historical perspective is provided by chapters on China, the Incas and the Ottomans. The editors identify a paradox in how bureaucracy operated on the scale of empires and so help explain why some empires endured for centuries while, in the contemporary world, empires fail almost before they begin. By adopting a cross-chronological and world-historical approach, the book challenges the abiding association of bureaucratic rationality with 'modernity' and the so-called 'Rise of the West'.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Conference on Compactifications, Configurations, and Cohomology, held from October 22-24, 2021, at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Some of the most active and fruitful mathematical research occurs at the interface of algebraic geometry, representation theory, and topology. Noteworthy examples include the study of compactifications in three specific settings--algebraic group actions, configuration spaces, and hyperplane arrangements. These three types of compactifications enjoy common structural features, including relations to root systems, combinatorial descriptions of cohomology rings, the appearance of iterated blow-ups, the geometry of normal crossing divisors, and connections to mirror symmetry in physics. On the other hand, these compactifications are often studied independently of one another. The articles focus on new and existing connections between the aforementioned three types of compactifications, thereby setting the stage for further research. It draws on the discipline-specific expertise of all contributors, and at the same time gives a unified, self-contained reference for compactifications and related constructions in different contexts.