Imperial Inequalities: The Politics of Economic Governance Across European Empires

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Gurminder Bhambra Julia McClure

Imperial Inequalities

The Politics of Economic Governance Across European Empires

Gurminder Bhambra, Julia McClure

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Manchester University Press
01 July 2025

Social & cultural history; Colonialism & imperialism; Sociology; Welfare economics

Series: Postcolonial International Studies

Imperial Inequalities takes Western European empires and their legacies as the explicit starting point for discussion of issues of taxation and welfare.

In doing so, it addresses the institutional and fiscal processes involved in modes of extraction, taxation, and the hierarchies of welfare distribution across Europe's global empires. The idea of 'imperial inequalities' provides a conceptual frame for thinking about the long-standing colonial histories that are responsible, at least in part, for the shape of present inequalities.

This wide-ranging volume challenges existing historiographical accounts that present states and empires as separate categories. Instead, it views them as co-constitutive units by focusing upon the politics of economic governance across imperial spaces.

Authors examine the fiscal innovations that enabled European empires to finance their expansion, the politics of redistribution that were important to constructing the veneer of legitimacy of taxation, and the fiscal mechanisms that were established to ensure that the imperial contours of inequality continued to define the postcolonial world. These diverse contributions provide new resources for how we think about issues of taxation and welfare across the longue duree.

This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced inequalities.

Edited by: Gurminder Bhambra, Julia McClure
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781526191267
ISBN 10: 1526191261
Series: Postcolonial International Studies
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Historical Sociology in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. Julia McClure is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Modern Global History in the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow.