This book analyzes the nineteenth-century American fascination with what the author calls "narratives of imperial eclipse," texts that depict the surpassing of

The middle decades of the twentieth century witnessed the great dramas of the ending of Western imperial rule in Africa and Asia. A series of nationalist onslau

When J. H. Elliott published Spain and Its World, 1500?1700 some twenty years ago, one of many enthusiasts declared, ?For anyone interested in the history of em