The 2020 Annual Nicolai Rubinstein Lecture
Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Distinguished Professor and Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, UCLA) delivers the 2020 Annual Nicolai Rubinstein Lecture entitled “Sceptical Views of Early Modern Empire in Europe and Beyond”
Historians of western political thought are well aware that empire-building had its critics in the early modern period, notably among eighteenth-century Enlightenment authors from Smith to Von Justi, as well as figures of proto-nationalism.
In this lecture, attention will be devoted to an earlier period, namely the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when a number of different intellectual resources, from casuistry to Islamic theology, were deployed against projects of empire. While these may eventually have been in a losing cause, they did have some significant long-term implications.
Location: Arts 2 Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End, London