Unconquered States

Reviews / Votes

This is an ingenious collection, a book on international history in the 19th and 20th centuries that really does, for once, "fill a gap". By countering our simple assumption that the West's imperial and colonial drives swallowed up all of Africa and Asia in the post-1850 period, Chehabi and Motadel's fine collection of case-studies of nations that managed to stay free-from Abyssinia to Siam, Japan to Persia-gives us a more rounded and complex view of the international Great-Power scene in those decades. This is really fine revisionist history. * Paul Kennedy, Yale University * This is an excellent collection of scholars writing on an important set of states, which deserve to be considered together. * Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago * Carefully curated and with an excellent introduction that provides an analytical frame, this book offers a global history of "unconquered" countries in the imperial age that is original in its perspective and composition. * Sebastian Conrad, Free University of Berlin * The book offers an insightful comparative analysis of political forms and relationships in non-European countries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The "non-conquered states" of Asia and Africa are show as sometimes resisting and but often accommodating in innovative ways European political forms and military and diplomatic techniques. The particular appeal of the essays lies in their effort to bring to the surface and critically assess the indigenous histories and struggles that enabled these political formations, each in their own way, to respond to the challenges of modernization. This is global history at its kaleidoscopic best. * Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki * This is an ingenious collection, a book on international history in the 19th and 20th centuries that really does, for once, 'fill a gap'. By countering our simple assumption that the West's imperial and colonial drives swallowed up all of Africa and Asia in the post-1850 period, Chehabi and Motadel's fine collection of case-studies of nations that managed to stay free-from Abyssinia to Siam, Japan to Persia-gives us a more rounded and complex view of the international Great-Power scene in those decades. This is really fine revisionist history. * Paul Kennedy, Yale University * This is an excellent collection of scholars writing on an important set of states, which deserve to be considered together. * Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago * Carefully curated and with an excellent introduction that provides an analytical frame, this book offers a global history of 'unconquered' countries in the imperial age that is original in its perspective and composition. * Sebastian Conrad, Free University of Berlin * The book offers an insightful comparative analysis of political forms and relationships in non-European countries from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The 'non-conquered states' of Asia and Africa are show as sometimes resisting and but often accommodating in innovative ways European political forms and military and diplomatic techniques. The particular appeal of the essays lies in their effort to bring to the surface and critically assess the indigenous histories and struggles that enabled these political formations, each in their own way, to respond to the challenges of modernization. This is global history at its kaleidoscopic best. * Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki *