Eurasian Empires

Eurasian Empires explores the connected and comparative history of empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Our intellectual remit combines histories of global and regional imperial formations including the Russian, Ottoman, Safavid/Qajar, Uzbek, Mughal, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, British, French and Spanish empires. We will focus not only on how imperial centers governed diverse peoples, creating 'empires of difference', but also how the global age of capitalist expansion and nation state formation shaped and transformed these dynamics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The overarching theme for the 2023-24 academic year will be "Empire, Capital and Space" and we are especially interested in engaging with studies in economic and social history, and plan to build on the insights that emerged from discussions in the current academic year around histories of capitalism, particularly studies of labor relations and property regimes. The workshop will organize its engagements around three broad and interrelated sub-themes of 1) agrarian space, 2) urban space, and 3) oceanic space. Through each of these themes we will understand the nature and spaces of capitalist transformation under imperial rule across Eurasia.

Cover image credit: David Rumsey Map Center

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