“Empire” is defined in this encyclopaedia as the “dominion of one nation over others”. Through various eras, both vanquishers and vanquished have produced a huge body of literature informed by their experiences and attitudes towards the empire to which they belonged. This encyclopaedia attempts to collate this mass of information, from many different regions and centuries.
The encyclopaedia covers all empires from the early pre‐Christian eastern empires of Persia and Syria, the Ottoman empire, the Chinese dynasties, Napoleonic and Holy Roman empires up until the last days of the British, Spanish, South African and Nazi empires which dissolved during the twentieth century. Many writers are covered in this book including Tolstoy, Forster, Marie de France, Anna Leonowens, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell and Jamaica Kincaid. Other entries are about historical figures, belief systems, issues arising from imperialism (such as slavery or censorship) and kinds of literature produced during these regimes, such as prison literature or protest literature.
Entries range from half a page to around six pages, with many split into thematic subsections. The entry on Shakespeare, for example, is divided into sections according to different empires he utilised whilst writing: the Roman Empire for Anthony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and his first revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus; the Venetian Empire (Othello, The Merchant of Venice) and the Danish Empire (Hamlet). The entry offers analyses of the issues arising from cultural and geographical tensions in the plays as well as some information about film versions over the years. Rudyard Kipling's entry, on the other hand, is a much more straightforward biographical style article, split into subsections about the various phases of his life in Britain and India. References to other entries elsewhere in the dictionary are indicated using capital letters. Each entry ends with a short bibliography for further reading.
There are articles on frontier literature, prophecy, Charlemagne, the I Ching and Mary Seacole, the concept of “wisdom literature”, storytelling and feminism – all subjects examined from the angle of imperialism and colonialism. Elie Wiesel and his memoirs about his survival of Auschwitz and other concentration camps also has an entry, as does Roman historian Livy and colonial‐era Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. Although literary works are generally listed under the author and readers seeking information on specific books (e.g. Voltaire's Candide) are directed to the author entry, sometimes a book is given its own entry: for example, there is an entry devoted to the Tolstoy epic, War and Peace. Although I could see why this is – as a tale set against, and directly involved with, the Napoleonic wars – I wondered why other stand‐alone novels, such as A Passage to India, which also deals directly with the attitudes and consequences of colonialism, did not also have their own entries.
Despite this minor quibble, I enjoyed browsing this volume and found it useful both in a literary and historical context. Given the subject coverage, I think it would be a good addition to all humanities collections.
