E3W Literature | University of Texas

Empire

Edited by Samuel Baker

“Empire” features a set of books that consider particular empires and what consequences those empires have had for world literature and culture. Each review treats a book that traces the history of one specific imperial project. As a group, these reviews invite a comparative perspective on the effect of empire on the world beyond the metro¬pole, as well as on metropolitan represen¬tations of the periphery. How do the contemporary dilemmas facing Belgian exhibitors of artifacts from the Congo resonate with the ambitions of the first wave of European collectors of Egyptian objects? What did modern dreams of “black empire” derive from actually existing imperialism—from, say, the British imperial project—and how did they trans¬cend it? If the Spanish Inquisition in Peru was a “modern institution,” was the bureaucratic night¬mare of the British atrocities in Kenya an epitome of such modernity? Or did both events represent erran¬cies on the path toward a modernity someday to be freed from such injustice? These questions represent only the beginnings of what might be generated by thinking across the topics addressed by the books under review.