IAS Book Launch: (Dis)connected Empires

By scrutinising diplomacy, political letter-writing, translation practices, warfare, cartography, and art, Biedermann explores the imperial ideas that shaped the politics of Renaissance Iberia and sixteenth-century Sri Lanka. He argues that, whilst some of these ideas and the political idioms built around them were perceived as commensurate by the various parties involved, differences also emerged early on. This prepared the ground for a new kind of conquest politics, which changed the inter-imperial game at the end of the sixteenth century. The transition from suzerainty-driven to sovereignty-fixated empire-building changed the face of Lankan and Iberian politics forever, and is of relevance to global historians at large.

Running order:

• Introduction by Zoltán Biedermann 
• Comments by Giuseppe Marcocci and Mike Charney.
• Refreshments.

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