Empire is one of the oldest forms of political organisation and has dominated societies in all parts of the world. Yet, despite the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the apparent end of empire with the breakup of European colonial regimes and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, empire remains powerful in the modern world. The EU s accession policies, the United States War on Terror, China s economic developments in Africa, among others, draw accusations of imperial agendas. Empire is no stranger to crisis but, in recent years, the effects of...