Imperial Meridian

Part 1 Political and social change in the Muslim Empires 1600-1800: stages of change in Muslim Asia and North Africa; the nature of "decline"; population, consumption and commercialization; Asian routes to commercial agriculture; the rise of the provincial elites. Part 2 Crisis and reorganization in Muslim Asia: imperial dissolution and tribal "breakout"; the new states of the mid 18th century; building regional identities; Asian "mercantilism"; the Asian crisis and European power; wars of "monopoly" in southeast Asia; southeast Asia - a frontier for European and Chinese expansion; the fall of Mataram and the rise of the Companies; port kings and merchants - Malaysia and south India; monopoly and state-building in Ceylon; "proto-capitalism" in Asia and European imperialism. Part 3 War, empire and the colonies of settlement to 1790: the "British Empire in Europe"; inverted patriotism - the case of Scotland; aborted integration - Ireland in the 18th century; the Atlantic Empire; the imperial crisis and international war 1776-1783. Part 4 Britain's new imperial age: crown and nation at home and abroad; an imperial revolution in government?; "agrarian patriotism" and the "British Empire in Europe"; an imperial army and police. Part 5 Imperial Britain - personnel and ideas: the imperial elite and gentry resurgence; the Church militant, race and law; racial hierarchy and benevolence; agrarian patriotism and freehold. Part 6 The world crisis, 1780-1820: ideologies and ethnicities; liberty, equality, fraternity; Christian revivalism and the "wreck of nations"; Islam in contest; economic disruption and world crisis. Part 7 Proconsular despotism - the British Empire, 1800-1840: the proconsular regimes; Ireland and the Mediterranean; Southern Africa; Canada, Australia and the Caribbean; the "Regency Empire in the East" - India, Indonesia and Ceylon. Part 8 Colonial society in the early 19th century: land, labour and trade; social involution and the reconstruction of bondage; new fields for indigenous capital; the new states alongside the British colonial world; the decline of the second British empire, 1830-1860.