Premodern Empires: East, West, and In-between during the Early-Modern Era

Empires had been an accepted form of large-scale and complex political organization in human history. During the early-modern era in particular, extensive land empires developed in Asia, and European colonial empires began to rule vast areas across oceans. This seminar will examine these empires through a comparative perspective, and will trace similarities and differences in the ways empires were organized, categorized, defined, as well as their self-identity as empires. It will also examine the relationships between rulers and subjects, rulers and the imperial mechanisms, and the processes that led to the rise of some empires yet the downfall of others. We will further discuss the connections between different early-modern empires.