Imperial Projections

, Martin M. Winkler, and Maria Wyke--Peter Bondanella, Indiana University "Classical Outlook"

The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.

Tracing our current preoccupation with nationalist, ethnic, and religious conflict to the “cultural Modernist” revolutions of the early twentieth century, this volume draws on cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis to offer a radical reinterpretation of contemporary international law’s origins.

The role and economic power of corporations that dominate the world economy has generated considerable controversy. The most heated debate and the most critical questions surrounding the role of multinational corporations relate to foreign direct investment (FDI). This key volume offers an entirely fresh perspective of the role of multinationals and the development impact of FDI. Contrary to prevailing opinion, it examines whether imperialism is a much more useful concept for describing and explaining the dynamics of world development than globalization. FDI is a mechanism for empire-centred capital accumulation, a powerful lever for political control and for re-ordering the world economy. This is a much needed analysis of global capitalism and its impact around the world, resulting in an excellent resource for students, academics and activists.

Cicero was one of classical antiquity's most prolific, varied and self-revealing authors. His letters, speeches, treatises and poetry chart a political career marked by personal struggle and failure and the collapse of the republican system of government to which he was intellectually and emotionally committed. They were read, studied and imitated throughout antiquity and subsequently became seminal texts in political theory and in the reception and study of the Classics. This Companion discusses the whole range of Cicero's writings, with particular emphasis on their links with the literary culture of the late Republic, their significance to Cicero's public career and their reception in later periods.

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia , the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis. Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule.

Beginning as a junior clerk in 1823, John Stuart Mill spent thirty-five years as an administrator in India House, the London headquarters of the East India Company, which dominated the Indian subcontinent. In his Autobiography, Mill paid scant attention to his long imperial career, and following his lead, later commentators have concluded that Indian administration was insignificant for Mill's intellectual development. Based upon extensive investigation of Mill's dispatches to India, this book rejects the long-accepted interpretation and suggests that important parallels exist between Mill's development as a thinker and his neglected India House career. It shows that at each step of Mill's intellectual maturation - rigorous early training at his father's side, youthful rebellion accompanied by a searching out of alternative opinions, and mature retreat from the extreme positions of his rebellious phase - Mill took up or abandoned administrative ideas that have much in common with the more abstract concepts that he was absorbing or shedding. For example, Mill's fascination with Romantic doctrines during the time of his mental crisis is shown to have had an Indian dimension. At the same time Mill concluded that Romantic doctrines were useful for amending Utilitarian ideas, he fell under the influences of key imperial administrators who advanced pragmatic policies for India that reinforced many Romantic ideas. Consequently, Mill modified his father's naive plans for reforming India, just as he altered Utilitarian doctrine in general, in favor of more complex notions about reform and progress. The author explores other parallels in Mill's evolving intellectual and administrative priorities and concludes that at his India House desk Mill found not only plenty of supporting evidence for his shifting intellectual positions but also ample opportunity to apply the abstract ideas that mattered most to him at different times of his life. In this way, the author challenges the picture of Mill's imperial career - as a dull and unimportant part of his life - that Mill painted for posterity in his Autobiography. He further suggests that Mill belittled his long India House experience because it did not fit the narrative structure he wanted to impose on his past. Since the essential story of Mill's Autobiography is one of a great mind being formed by interacting with other great minds, the banal concerns of Indian administration could hardly play a large role. The author also examines Mill's intellectual relationship with imperialism in the light of recent colonial discourse theory. He concludes that Mill altered his general social and political views as a result of the British experience in India and that his mature views of radical reform in Ireland and Great Britain owed much to the years that he spent as an imperial administrator.

The essays collected in this book present the first comprehensive appreciation of The Fall of the Roman Empire from historical, historiographical, and cinematic perspectives. The book also provides the principal classical sources on the period. It is a companion to Gladiator: Film and History (Blackwell, 2004) and Spartacus: Film and History (Blackwell, 2007) and completes a triad of scholarly studies on Hollywood’s greatest films about Roman history. A critical re-evaluation of the 1964 epic film The Fall of the Roman Empire, directed by Anthony Mann, from historical, film-historical, and contemporary points of view Presents a collection of scholarly essays and classical sources on the period of Roman history that ancient and modern historians have considered to be the turning point toward the eventual fall of Rome Contains a short essay by director Anthony Mann Includes a map of the Roman Empire and film stills, as well as translations of the principal ancient sources, an extensive bibliography, and a chronology of events