Rasbj Talk On "Empires: Retrospects and Prospects on Their Rise and Fall", a Zoom Talk by Prof. Felipe FernáNdez-Armesto
ABOUT THE EVENT: Renowned historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto raises problems about the nature of empires and the historical relationship between imperial and post-imperial China and other great powers. China’s global ambitions cannot be understood simply as a return to empire or as an imitation of Western models, but as a hybrid shaped by deep historical habits and modern constraints. The future is unlikely to belong to empires as we have known them, but neither will it belong to a world that has fully escaped their shadow.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Felipe Fernández-Armesto studied History at the University of Oxford and pursued his academic career at the Faculty of Modern History from 1981 to 2000. After Oxford, he held academic positions as Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary College, University of London, and as the Prince of Asturias Professor of History at Tufts University in Boston. In 2009 he joined the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame, where he is William P. Reynolds Professor of History—a role he continues to hold, with concurrent appointments in Classics and, more recently, History and Philosophy of Science.
Many works by Felipe Fernández-Armesto have appeared in Chinese translations. His most recent books are Straits (2022), The Oxford History of the World (2023) and (with M. Lucena) How the Spanish Empire Was Built (2025). He has won, among other prizes, the Caird Medal, the John Carter Brown Gold Medal, the IACP Prize, and Spain´s national prizes for geographical research and food-writing. The King of Spain awarded him the Grand Cross of Alfonso the Wise in 2016.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR: Alan Babington-Smith is President RASBJ. His MA from Cambridge University in Economics and History included study of the rise and fall of European global empires.
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