Outsourcing Empire

How Company-States Made the Modern World

Professor Andrew Phillips, J. C. Sharman

$34.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Princeton University Press
24 May 2022

General & world history; Colonialism & imperialism; International relations; Economic history

How chartered company-states spearheaded European expansion and helped create the world's first genuinely global order.

From Spanish conquistadors to British colonialists, the prevailing story of European empire-building has focused on the rival ambitions of competing states. But as Outsourcing Empire shows, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, company-states - not sovereign states - drove European expansion, building the world's first genuinely international system. Company-states were hybrid ventures: pioneering multinational trading firms run for profit, with founding charters that granted them sovereign powers of war, peace, and rule. Those like the English and Dutch East India Companies carved out corporate empires in Asia, while other company-states pushed forward European expansion through North America, Africa, and the South Pacific. In this comparative exploration, Andrew Phillips and J. C. Sharman explain the rise and fall of company-states, why some succeeded while others failed, and their role as vanguards of capitalism and imperialism.

In dealing with alien civilisations to the East and West, Europeans relied primarily on company-states to mediate geographic and cultural distances in trade and diplomacy. Emerging as improvised solutions to bridge the gap between European rulers' expansive geopolitical ambitions and their scarce means, company-states succeeded best where they could balance the twin imperatives of power and profit. Yet as European states strengthened from the late eighteenth century onward, and a sense of separate public and private spheres grew, the company-states lost their usefulness and legitimacy.

Bringing a fresh understanding to the ways cross-cultural relations were handled across the oceans, Outsourcing Empire examines the significance of company-states as key progenitors of the globalised world.

By: Professor Andrew Phillips, J. C. Sharman
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 156mm, Width: 235mm,
ISBN: 9780691206196
ISBN 10: 0691206198
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 24 May 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Andrew Phillips is Associate Professor of International Relations and Strategy at the University of Queensland. He is the author of War, Religion and Empire. J. C. Sharman is the Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge, where he is a fellow of King's College. His books include Empires of the Weak (Princeton) and The Despot's Guide to Wealth Management. Phillips and Sharman are the coauthors of International Order in Diversity.

Reviews for Outsourcing Empire: How Company-States Made the Modern World

Phillips and Sharman's achievement is to pull together myriad literatures over three centuries and most of the globe, to find patterns only a synthetic treatment can reveal. . . . Lucid, sweeping, and economical ---David Armitage, Times Literary Supplement Outsourcing Empire serves as an up-to-date survey of an essential topic for world historians. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History * A welcome addition to a fast-growing literature on the corporate origins of European empire in the early modern world. . . . Outsourcing Empire is a highly accessible work of scholarship that will appeal particularly to students of international history. ---David Veevers, Journal of British Studies