When did the Mali Empire disintegrate? What does the Sunjata heritage demonstrate about the political situation after 1600?

The 2012 crisis in Mali, where the state collapsed and terrorist groups took over the north, came as a surprise to many. Mali had been considered a poster-child for democracy and was judged as considerably more stable than its neighbors by leading quantitative indices of state fragility. This article…

This dissertation provides a description of the language Tadaksahak as it is spoken by the Idaksahak, a people group of about 30,000 living in the most eastern part of Mali and several isolated places in western Niger.

Throughout history, a large portion of the world's population has lived under imperial rule. Although scholars do not always agree on when and where the roots of imperialism lie, most would agree that imperial configurations have affected human history so profoundly that the legacy of ancient empires…

Reconstructing Hegemonic Practices of the Middle Assyrian Empire at the Late Bronze Age Fortified Estate of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, ca. 1230 – 1180 BC

This volume was edited by Jeroen Duindam, Jill Harries, Caroline Humfress, and Nimrod Hurvitz.

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

Does the nature and extent of political communication networks, measured through the frequency and multiplexity of information exchange ties, play a critical role in the reconstitution and maintenance of the Chinese Empire?

Dr. Cátia Antunes and prof. Jos Gommans both edited and contributed to this interesting book, that consists of articles that offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia.

Liesbeth van der Heide, Education and Research Staff Member at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), wrote on 20 April in the American news publication, Foreign Policy about the March’s deadly massacre in Mali, which exposed the lack of progress since the country’s peace accords. Furthermore,…

What holds people together and what makes them willing to fit within larger political structures? Our project examines this question in the practices of dynastic rulership in Eurasia ca. 1300-1800.

How did free agents in the Dutch Republic react to the creation of colonial monopolies (VOC and WIC) by the States-General? This project answers this question by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of an informal global empire parallel to the institutional empire devised by the…

The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires.

How geographical and institutional openness in Dutch Guiana fostered a unique colonial economy. This publication is part of the Early American Places Series.

The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman Empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration.

How did the Dutch Empire compare with other imperial enterprises? And how was it experienced by the indigenous peoples who became part of this colonial power?

The Dutch empire fulfilled the goals, interests and necessities of the central state, of the local elites and of the common man. This thematic issue of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis goes beyond traditional views of the Empire as a ‘trading enterprise’, and argues that the Dutch empire, like all other…

This book explores the intellectual history of the Dutch empire from the sixteenth century to the postcolonial era, going beyond systemic thinkers to understand how empire was perceived in day-to-day life. It takes a transnational and transimperial approach to the Dutch empire, connecting European,…

Global Challenges is the research programme of the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Essays dedicated to Frans Wiggermann

The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire assembles a series of papers on key themes in the study of Roman mobility and migration.

An interdisciplinary and innovative research group combining History, underwater archaeology, GIS and wood provenancing methods.

Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire by Luuk de Ligt and Laurens E. Tacoma (Eds.)

Yearbook of Women's History.

This book brings together a collection of emergent research that moves the debate on desistance beyond a general consideration of individual and social structural influences.

In 'Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800', Gert Oostindie and Jessica V. Roitman, both of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and also affiliated with the History Institute of Leiden University, assemble an internationally acclaimed selection of authors,…

The emergence of the Köprülü household that imprinted its stamp on the latter half of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is the power struggle they carried out against Ottoman dynastic power?

In this thesis, "culture" refers to the collection of subjective human traits, such as preferences an opinions, that a given, geographically bounded population has at a given moment in time.

Resilient Diversity: the Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800

Bringing together scholars from Russia, the United States and Europe, this collection of essays is the first to explore the slippery phenomenon of post-Soviet nostalgia by studying it as a discursive practice serving a wide variety of ideological agendas.

An interdisciplinary study of the Persian Period

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. This territorial sweep is both a source of fascination…

Muge Özoglu defended her dissertation on 5 December 2018

Beyond Empires explores the complexity of empire building from the point of view of self-organized networks, rather than from the point of view of the central state.

In The Agency of Empire: Connections and Strategies in French Expansion (1686-1746) Elisabeth Heijmans places directors and their connections at the centre of the developments and operations of French overseas companies.

This omnibus brings together some old and some recent works by Jos Gommans on the warhorse and its impact on medieval and early modern state-formation in South Asia.

Promotores: J. Kok, M. Chaudron (Chalmers University)

The Horizon programme 'Eurasian Empires: integration processes and identity formations' started September 1st 2014. The six PhD students and two Postdocs introduce themselves.

How do you integrate minorities into a society, and what kind of influence does this have on the collective identity? These questions may seem modern, but they have been relevant for a long time. The new Eurasian Empires research group studies how integration and formation of identity took place in…

The term “Lone Actor” has been applied to a variety of violent individuals who are thought to act out of ideological motivations using terrorist tactics.

How do we explain the fact that certain areas had many large cities, while other areas were studded with large numbers of small towns and yet other areas had very few urban agglomerations of any kind?

Conference

Embedding Conquest: Ties of Kinship and the Early Islamic Empire, Leiden, 6-8 December 2021

The final conference of the Eurasian Empires programme took place from 15 to 17 June 2016 in Leiden. The conference concluded a five-year research programme in which nine researchers worked on their own specific projects within the programme’s Eurasian scope, transcending borders by bringing together…

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. Its size and power was revered by some, feared…

What made the early Islamic empire so successful and have we missed the story by neglecting crucial evidence? The 7th-century Arab conquests changed the socio-political configurations in the Mediterranean and Eurasia forever. Yet we do not really know how the Arabs managed to gain dominance of this…

The Iseum Campense, the impressive sanctuary for Isis and the Egyptian gods on the Campus Martius and arguably one of ancient Rome’s most notable absent presences, is a monument central to various debates.

Catalysis is of extreme relevance in the production of everyday materials and plays a central role in many aspects of our life.