Reading List 2012

One major component of Empire in Asia: A New Global History is an active reading group, involving all project members. The project aims to reconsider the historical experience of empire in Asia, with particular reference to scholarship devoted to analyzing narratives, and systems, of world and global history. The major workshops the project will conduct are exercises in working through to a set of common questions and concerns that contributors can be asked to apply in their own particular study. Exploring the literature will thus help us lay a common intellectual foundation for conceptualizing our own question-driven approach to studying the historical experience of empire in Asia. We are less concerned with the field identified as "post-colonial" studies than with engaging global perspectives on what constituted an empire, and the evolution and operation of forms of supranational systems.

The first reading list, completed in 2012, focused on works devoted to general modern world or global history, or the general modern history of empires and imperialism. They ranged from classic to recent works, from sweeping monograph narratives to multi-author collections of essays, and from works aimed at a more general readership to works focused on the specialist.