This 3-volume set is the most exhaustive reference work available on this critical subject in world history, focusing on the politics, economy, culture, and society of both colonizers and colonized. Crisis in Afghanistan. War in the Balkans. Famine in Africa. To understand today's trouble spots is to understand colonialism's legacy. For half a millennium, virtually the entire world came under the sway of empire. Critical to the rise of capitalism and even democracy, colonialism also sowed the seeds of poverty and instability around the globe. "The history of the last 500 years is the history of imperialism," writes editor Melvin Page. In the Americas, as a result of imperialist conquest, disease, famine, and war nearly wiped out a population estimated in the tens of millions. Africa was devastated by the slave trade, an integral part of imperialism from the 1400s to the 1800s. In Asia, even though native populations survived, native political institutions were destroyed. Imperialism also forged the two most important ideologies of the last five centuries—racialism and modern nationalism. In more than 600 essays presented in this three-volume encyclopedia, Page and other leading scholars—historians, political scientists, economists, and sociologists—analyze the origins of imperialism, the many forms it took, and its impact worldwide. They also explore imperialism's bitter legacy: the gross inequities of global wealth and power that divide the former conquerors -- primarily Europe, the United States, and Japan -- from the people they conquered. - Publisher.