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Book Review
Comparative/World
David R. Abernethy. The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 14151980. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000. Pp. viii, 524. $35.00.
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It has been nearly four decades since any author has attempted a serious and systematic historical overview of the processes by which the states of Western Europe were transformed from peripheral regions flanking the great agrarian core civilizations of Afro-Eurasia into global hegemons. In view of the truly daunting number of first-rate studies on colonialism that have appeared since the British historian D. K. Fieldhouse published The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey in 1965, David B. Abernethy's extended exploration is both impressive in its ambitious coverage and path breaking in its rigorous, and much more fully comparative, analysis of some of the central themes in early modern and modern global history. Rather than being intimidated by the size, diversity, and complexity of the historiography on colonialism, Abernethy puts to good use the many fine surveys of each of the colonial empires and the wealth of more specialized, monographic studies on specific areas that have been produced since Fieldhouse wrote his at times polemicalbut largely narrativeaccount. |
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