This book is a study of the interaction of the Western societies of Europe and America with others around the world in the past two centuries - the age of European empire. It deals with the European threat and the non-Western response, but the focus is on the ways in which people in Asia, Africa, and Indian America have tried to adapt their ways of life to the overwhelming European power that existed in this period. The challenge and the response are presented through a series of selected and widely scattered case studies. They vary from those of the Maya and Yaqui of Mexico, to millennial responses as varied as the Ghost Dance or the cargo cults of Melanesia, as well as those of major players like the Ottoman Empire and Meiji Japan.
Part I. Conquest: 1. The Pattern of Empire; 2. Technology and power; 3. The politics of Imperialism; Part II. Culture Change under Imperial Rule: 4. Culture change in plural societies: South Africa and Central Asia; 5. Culture change in Mexico; 6. Administrative choices and their consequences: examples from Bengal, Central Asia, Java, and Malaya; Part III. Conversion: 7. Christian missions in East Africa; 8. Varieties of defensive modernization; 9. Meiji Japan: revolutionary modernization; 10. Ottoman reactions to the West; Part IV. The Drive for Independence and the Liquidation of Empires: 11. Non-European resistance and the European withdrawal; 12. Personal and utopian responses: millenarianism; 13. The search for viable independence: Indonesia; 14. Paths to viable independence: Ghana.
