Around 1800 the world was dominated by a number of predominant empires at different stages of development: Britain, France, Austria, Russia, the Ottomans, Spain, and the Qing.

This lecture will discuss each of these empires, the resistance against them, and how the future looked from the perspective of each.

Meet our speaker and chair

Odd Arne Westad is the Engelsberg Chair for 2020/21 at LSE IDEAS. He is currently the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale, and is a former director of LSE IDEAS.

Michael Cox was appointed to a Chair at LSE in 2002, having previously held positions in the UK at The Queen's University of Belfast and the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth. He helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre at LSE in 2004 and later co-founded LSE IDEAS in 2008 with Arne Westad.

More about this event

In this series of four lectures, the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale, Odd Arne Westad, will discuss the concept of empire and why it is still relevant today. This event is the second in the series.

A podcast of the first lecture can be found at Empires Past & Present: the idea of empire.

The third lecture, Empires Past and Present: empire around 1900, will take place on Tuesday 30 March.

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEEngelsberg

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Empires Past and Present: empire around 1800.

A video of this event is available to watch at Empires Past and Present: empire around 1800.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.