Dynasties

Global history can be conceived of in various different ways: as the study of connections and exchange between continents or, alternatively, as large-scale comparative history. Jeroen Duindam’s lively new book falls squarely into this second category—global history as comparative history in maximalist style, at its most ambitious and most colourful. As the author himself tells us, this book ‘pioneers a form of worldwide comparison centred on concrete settings and specific questions rather than on predetermined typologies of scale, development or contingency’ (p. 318). The object of Duindam’s comparison is princely regimes (‘family based networks of power’) in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Polynesia, the Near East, South Asia and the Far East, over the five centuries from 1300 to 1800, albeit with a particular focus on the period post-1550. Royal systems of government lend themselves well to this kind of world-comparison, Duindam explains, because kingship is an ancient, near-universal form of rule in the pre-modern world, with observable common features across time and space

Ancient history · Archaeology · Cartography · Contingency · Epistemology · Geography · Government (linguistics · Linguistics · Monarchy · Object (grammar · Political science · Power (physics · Scale (ratio · Space (punctuation) · Style (visual arts · World history · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Philosophy