Governing a Continent takes readers inside the real machinery of large-scale rule—where institutions outlast leaders, where roads and courts shape daily routines, and where culture, science, and trade knit diverse peoples into a common future. Through vivid analysis and human-centered storytelling, the book reveals how stable governance is built not only by grand strategy but by dependable services, fair laws, resilient budgets, and inclusive rituals.

Spanning provincial administration, taxation, logistics, military pluralism, legal pluralism, court ceremony, work and markets, art and identity, and the governance of knowledge and time, this volume shows how empires and federations maintain continuity through crisis and change. It explains how legitimacy is earned every day—at border posts and bus stops, in clinics and classrooms, through the choices of judges, engineers, quartermasters, and archivists.