Tag Archives: imperialism

Paper 2: One Name, Many Regimes: The Transhistorical Use of “Babylon” and the Problem of Imperial Persistence

Posted on September 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

The Bounds of Their Habitation, Tier 1, Cluster A Abstract Paper 1 argued that Genesis 11 describes a configuration rather than a polity, and that the narrator’s substitution of Babel for the city’s own self-designation established Scripture’s right to name … Continue reading →

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Paper 1: Babel Is Not a Place: Genesis 11:1–9 as the Founding Anti-Imperial Text of Scripture

Posted on September 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

The Bounds of Their Habitation, Tier 1, Cluster A Abstract This paper argues that Genesis 11:1–9 functions in the canon not as an etiology of linguistic diversity attached to a particular ruined ziggurat, but as the founding description of a … Continue reading →

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Introduction: The Type and the State

Posted on September 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

1. The problem this collection addresses Most contemporary analysis of empire is organized around states. It asks which polities were empires, when they began, how they were administered, and when they ended. The categories are territorial and institutional: extent of … Continue reading →

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The Layer That Is Not There: Local Government, the Sixth Constitutional Convention, and What Five Previous Conventions Left Unfinished: A white paper by an interested outsider

Posted on August 28, 2026 by nathanalbright

I. Standpoint I am not a Virgin Islander. I am an American researcher who has visited all three main islands, who was driven past the Julius E. Sprauve School and the Myrah Keating Smith clinic by a St. John taxi … Continue reading →

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Paper 2 — Invasion and Survival: The Tocobaga World Under Assault, 1528–1600s

Posted on July 20, 2026 by nathanalbright

Introduction The people described in the first paper—the fishers, shellfish gatherers, and mound-builders of Tampa Bay—stood on the edge of a catastrophe they could not have imagined. Within a single lifetime of the first Spanish landing, epidemic disease, slave-raiding, and … Continue reading →

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The Imperial Plateau State: A Typology of Geographic Empire

Posted on March 9, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper proposes and defines the “plateau-state” as a discrete geopolitical formation characterized by highland geographic cores that historically produce some of the world’s most enduring imperial civilizations. Through an examination of key physical, ecological, and strategic variables — … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Security Carve-Outs as the Shadow Constitution of International Law: How Exceptional Zones Quietly Override Sovereignty Without Abolishing It

Posted on February 18, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Across the modern international system, a recurring pattern appears wherever law collides with strategic indispensability: security carve-outs. These are territorial, legal, or administrative exceptions that preserve great-power operational control while maintaining the outward forms of sovereignty, decolonization, and … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Why Roman Britain Ended in Usurpers: Institutional Fragmentation, Military Autonomy, and the Collapse of Imperial Order in the Early Fifth Century

Posted on January 30, 2026 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Roman Britain did not fall because of a single invasion, rebellion, or withdrawal order. Instead, it unraveled through a long-running institutional failure in which military authority, fiscal extraction, and political legitimacy progressively decoupled. By the early fifth century, … Continue reading →

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White Paper: The Declaratory Act as a Structural Error in Parliament’s Management of Colonial Discontent

Posted on December 30, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary The Declaratory Act (1766) was intended by the Parliament of Great Britain to restore authority after the repeal of the Stamp Act. Instead, it entrenched colonial suspicion and accelerated a pattern of mistrust. This white paper argues that … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Strategic Depth and Fragile Unity: Managing the Tensions Between Territorial Expansion and Internal Cohesion

Posted on December 11, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary States have long sought strategic depth—the acquisition or consolidation of geographic space that provides military buffer zones, control of transportation corridors, and protection of core population centers. Yet this expansion often incorporates peripheral regions with weak historical integration … Continue reading →

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