“Authored by eminent and distinguished scholars in the field, the essays brought together in this volume offer a rich and nuanced set of contributions to contemporary debates on intellectual influences that shaped European empires and their progeny, the post-colonial nation. The sustained attention paid here to questions of empire and colonial rule in the works of particular European thinkers will be of great interest to students of political theory, imperial history, and post-colonial criticism.” – Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago“It was sometimes said that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind. This was never exactly true, but certainly the European nations that acquired overseas empires from the 15th to the 20th century were often puzzled to know quite what they had done, how it was to be justified, how their new empires did, or more often did not, resemble those of the ancient world, and how they were to be governed. These thirteen essays, written by some of the most interesting recent writers on the theory and practice of empire, range from the anxieties of Spanish scholastic writers in the 16th century to those of French and British liberals in the 18th and 19th centuries. Everyone is at the top of their form; the result wears its formidable scholarship with a wonderful lightness of touch, and is deeply engrossing from start to finish.” – Alan Ryan, Princeton University“The entanglement between empire and political theory has been the site of some of the most exciting work in political theory in the last decade. Given the challenges of contemporary global politics, it has never been more important to have careful and historically rigorous treatments of the relationship between empire and political thought, - and this volume delivers exactly that, bringing together some of the leading lights in the field to address this complex issue in a superb set of essays.” – Duncan Ivison, University of Sydney