{"product_id":"knowing-an-empire-mackenzie-cooley-9781643150765","title":"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue","description":"\u003ci\u003eKnowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue \u003c\/i\u003eunveils how these two vast empires, separated by thousands of miles, developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, officials in both empires compiled large quantities of structured data on the climate, topography, natural products, languages, religions, and more of their locales, creating a vision of their empires as diverse yet unified. Through a new methodology of \"juxtapositional comparison,\" the book reads the \u003ci\u003edifangzhi\u003c\/i\u003e 地方志 (local gazetteers) of China and the \u003ci\u003erelaciones geogr?ficas \u003c\/i\u003eof the Spanish world in parallel. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eKnowing an Empire \u003c\/i\u003edoes not see the conveyance of information across an empire as a top-down process with an active center as a knowledge-maker. Instead, it amplifies a blend of voices that speak as much to imperial bureaucracy as to the rich local and Indigenous cultures, revealing these two early modern empires as diverse polities whose equilibria were constantly rebalanced among local powers. Comprised of 18 chapters, this edited collection reflects on the historical evolution and inner structures of the imperial epistemologies, as well as the many ways historians today read \u003ci\u003edifangzhi \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003erelaciones geogr?ficas\u003c\/i\u003e to understand the spatial, natural, and social order in both the Chinese and the Spanish empires. At once a comparative and a connected history, it places Chinese and Spanish imperial knowledge in the globalizing early modern world, highlighting the migration of people, goods, and ideas and revealing how these wide-ranging influences are reflected--or not--in the \u003ci\u003edifangzhi \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003erelaciones\u003c\/i\u003e. The book concludes by broadening our scope beyond China and Spain to reflect how other early modern empires, such as the Portuguese, failed to develop such systematized imperial genres. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e With contributions from leading scholars across Latin American and Asian Studies, this book synthesizes political, environmental, and socio-economic history with historical anthropology to highlight parallel governance and knowledge structures. The contributors challenge conventional binaries of Western versus Eastern, and colonial versus non-colonial, presenting a nuanced perspective of early modern empires as dynamic, interconnected entities through the shared challenges of scale, diversity, and increasing globalization. Through these dialogues, \u003ci\u003eKnowing an Empire \u003c\/i\u003eilluminates the complex entanglement of ruling and understanding. This groundbreaking collection offers a highly innovative and dialogic approach to comparative studies of empires, with major implications for Asian, European, Latin American, transnational, and global history. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e MacKenzie Cooley\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1643150766\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781643150765\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Lever Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/12\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 600\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"MacKenzie Cooley","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46401662615807,"sku":"9781643150765","price":49.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_5c35a179-86b4-4d4a-9398-23720e1b4564.jpg?v=1733888279","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/knowing-an-empire-mackenzie-cooley-9781643150765","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}