Comparisons Across Empires: The Critical Social Structures of the Ottomans, Russians and Habsburgs during the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

In the veritable industry that has been engendered by studies of empire, theoretically informed comparisons have remained scarce. Two tendencies dominate the recent studies of empire. First we have erudite typologies of what empire is or is not according to a favourite set of criteria used by the scholar,1 and the second remains within the domain of eloquent political narratives of particular empires or a parallel telling of the fate of different entities.2 Another approach focused on the subaltern populations dominated by empire remains interested in comparative work, though from a particular point of view more embedded in cultural studies than social scientific analyses. The domain has largely been abandoned to policy analysts.