This is the first book-length study of the academic career and political activism of the overlooked US sociologist Herbert Adolphus Miller. He was associated with the Chicago school of sociology, but took a distinctly more radical approach to race and immigration than his contemporaries.

This book sets out Miller's radical approach to race and immigration involving a novel political sociology of domination. It argues that Miller's critique of empires, his focus on the plight of subject minorities, and the risks associated with the inevitable nationalist responses, were far ahead of their times. Indeed, where others identified with the 'internationalisation' of nationalism, Miller sought to make the nation 'international'. The book reveals how these ideas were developed through his involvement in movements for racial justice in the US, Czechoslovakian independence, the formation of the Mid-European Union of subject peoples, as well as support for Korean and Indian independence.

Empire and subject peoples brings to light an important but forgotten figure in the political sociology of domination and nationalism.