Nations, States and Empires

by John A. Hall

In his new book John A. Hall traces the interactions between nations, states and empires in the making of the modern world.

It is commonly assumed that nation states succeeded and replaced empires, relegating empires to the past: Hall argues that this is not the case. Empires have continued alongside nation states, shadowing them and overseeing them in the industrial era. The two world wars were imperial wars, rather than wars between nation states. Even after rapid decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, empires persisted in the USA and the USSR. Furthermore, empires are not finished: the USA retains enormous power, while Russia and China increasingly show imperial dispositions. Empires and nation states do not exist in separate compartments – rather, they often overlap. Consider the USA – both strongly nationalist and the greatest empire in the history of the world.

This highly original book will be essential reading for students and scholars in sociology and politics and for anyone interested in the political forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, the modern world.

244 pages, Hardcover

Published September 18, 2024

Reviews

[MJ Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my World Politics class at university. It was educational but I did find that it is already dated (a risk of writing a book on politics in the modern world) despite being published in 2023. This book is not particularly engaging but it is informative, and does a decent job of laying out the current geopolitical state that we face. 2.5 stars rounded up.

[Matt]

Hall makes a realist argument about the transformation of empires into nation-states — deviating from the idea that the latter replaced the former but that the former integrated into the latter. He isn't arguing about neoimperialism per se but instead the continued existence of an unbroken chain. His focus on the creation a Russian state in the Soviet and Post Soviet context is the most compelling material here.