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The European Model and Imperial Contexts This article presents a typology of contemporary understandings for a history of Europe. It distinguishes between seven different basic models: two models for the analysis of tendencies towards homogenization; two models, which focus on cultural realms, choose as its beginning point center-periphery arguments for understanding inner-European differences; the institutional integration model, the communications model, and the «essence» model. The development of the imperial dimension can, at the same time, help avoid the danger inherent in isolationist and identity-bound tendencies in European historiography. This contribution makes it possible to thematicize a number of phenomena that bind the history of individual European nations with the history of empires and with other continents, reaching from national frontiers, inter-empire conflicts and the militarization of peripheries, to migrations, port cities, hegemonic symbolism, and selfdemarcation strategies towards outsiders. In this sense, imperial understandings include central aspects of Modern European History.

According to current Chinese views, in 1949 China was liberated from three major evils: feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism. The present article takes a closer look at the relationship between the two last mentioned. The period chosen is the early and mid 1930s, which was marked by growing tensions between the powers in East Asia, by acute economic depression and subsequent recovery, and by the gradual extension of the Nanjing Government's control over the country. On the foreigner's side, the focus will be on the British experience at a time when Great Britain's political position in the Far East was being overshadowed by Japan's thrust towards hegemony. It will be argued, the widening gap between Britain's political and economic presence in China was partly bridged by increasingly close co-operation between British business and the Chinese ruling elite.

When in August 1933 the German Minister to China, Dr Oskar P. Trautmann, reported to Berlin, 'daβ die Völkerbundsmelodie politisch hier ausgespielt hat', he had jumped to a conclusion too soon. When two years later the Journal Round Table commented, 'to-day the League of Nations is no longer a political factor in the Far East', this assessment was vindicated by evidence of every description. The two years between had witnessed the peak and decline of the League of Nation's 'technical co-operation' with the National Government of China. This episode plays its part as one of the major accomplishments of the League during the dismal second decade of its existence. It figures, however, only marginally in the history of twentieth-century China. Western works on modern Chinese history tend to neglect it altogether, and the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of China's foreign relations during the Republican period does not even deem it worth a reference in passing. On the other hand, the one authoritative textbook on modern Chinese economic history published in the People's Republic of China devotes ample space to the denunciation of the League's Chinese enterprise.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- I. Introduction: Looking to the East -- Asia's "Decline"-Europe's Arrogance -- The Great Map of Mankind -- The Power of Discourse, the Burden of Learning -- Sensing and Constructing Difference -- Spaces -- Epochs -- PATHWAYS OF KNOWLEDGE -- II. Asia and Europe: Borders, Hierarchies, Equilibria -- Asia and Europe in the Tsarist Empire -- The Ottoman Empire: European Great Power or Barbarian at the Gates? -- Asia: The Preeminent Continent? -- Character and Encyclopedia -- European Primacy and Provincialism -- III. Changing Perspectives -- Cultural Transfer and Colonialism -- Theories of Ethnocentrism -- Competition and Comparison -- Discursive Justice -- Chinese Interviews, Indian Letters -- Niebuhr's Monkey -- IV. Traveling -- Sir John Malcolm's Dinner Party -- A Weeping Mandarin -- Sea and Land -- East Asia: Walled Empires -- South Asia and Southeast Asia: Porous Borders -- The Near East: A Pilgrimage to Antiquity -- Adventurers and Renegades -- Scholars and Administrators -- V. Encounters -- Ordeals, Disappointments, Catastrophes -- The Mysterious Mister Manning -- Interpreters and Dialogues -- Language Barriers -- Mimesis and Deception -- A Sociology of Perception -- VI. Eyewitnesses-Earwitnesses: Experiencing Asia -- Giants and Unicorns -- Prejudices and Preconceptions -- Autopsy -- Before the Tribunal of Philosophy -- Methods of the Inquisitive Class -- Hearing and Hearsay -- Local Knowledge: Asiatic Scholarship in European Texts -- VII. Reporting, Editing, Reading: From Lived Experience to Printed Text -- The Travel Account as a Tool of Inquiry -- Style and Truth -- Anthologies, Collages, Mega-Narratives -- The Task of the Translator -- Topicality and Canonicity -- Traces of Reading -- Arts of Reading -- Fractured Representation -- THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more.This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments

A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions

The end of colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean was one of the most important and dramatic developments of the twentieth century. In the decades after World War II, dozens of new states emerged as actors in global politics. Long-established imperial regimes collapsed, some more or less peacefully, others amid mass violence. This book takes an incisive look at decolonization and its long-term consequences, revealing it to be a coherent yet multidimensional process at the heart of modern history.Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel trace the decline of European, American, and Japanese colonial supremacy from World War I to the 1990s. Providing a comparative perspective on the decolonization process, they shed light on its key aspects while taking into account the unique regional and imperial contexts in which it unfolded. Jansen and Osterhammel show how the seeds of decolonization were sown during the interwar period and argue that the geopolitical restructuring of the world was intrinsically connected to a sea change in the global normative order. They examine the economic repercussions of decolonization and its impact on international power structures, its consequences for envisioning world order, and the long shadow it continues to cast over new states and former colonial powers alike.Concise and authoritative, Decolonization is the essential introduction to this momentous chapter in history, the aftershocks of which are still being felt today