Imperial History

Introduction

Empires have been a dominant form for organizing global space and peoples from antiquity to very recent decades - some would argue up to and including the present. Imperial history at Harvard enlists the teaching and scholarly efforts of many departmental colleagues. Our interests range from ancient to contemporary times, and cover diverse territories in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. We employ different methodologies, look for different sources, and ask many different questions. Yet we are all interested in power and hegemony, subalternity and resistance.

Empires challenge us to understand the organization of cultural diversity, the control of space, environment, and language, and the management of loyalties through consent, law, ideology, and violence. We seek to comprehend the mechanisms and processes that enable empires to emerge, adapt, and disappear, leaving some traces behind, but not others. In this effort, we believe that one must be attentive to economic, social, cultural, geographic and legal aspects and issues of gender as well as to change over time, and that one must constantly search for materials that reveal empire’s inner workings, not just from the top down, but also from the bottom up and from the periphery to the center. Finally, we ask what common features empires share, how empires differ among themselves, what is particular about empires as compared to other structures, and how they continue to shape our world.

 

Courses

Fall 2020:

  • FS 43C: Human Rights and the Global South
  • GENED 1136: Power and Civilization: China
  • HIST 12E: Migrant Geographies: Between Asia and the United States in the Twentieth
  • HIST 12F: Slavery in the Global Middle Ages
  • HIST 12I: Statelessness
  • HIST 74L: The New Deal and American Liberalism
  • HIST 82F: The Origins of the Cold War: The Yalta Conference (1945)
  • HIST 89J: The United States and China: Opium War to the Present
  • HIST 1006: Native American and Indigenous Studies: An Introduction
  • HIST 1008: The State of Israel in Comparative Perspective
  • HIST 1024: The British Empire
  • HIST 1036: Modern South Asia
  • HIST 1040: The Fall of the Roman Empire
  • HIST 1155: Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789
  • HIST 1206: Empire, Nation, And Immigration in France since 1870
  • HIST 1270: Frontiers of Europe: Ukraine since 1500
  • HIST 1465: The United States and World Order since 1900
  • HIST 1623: Modern Japan: Empires Aftermaths
  • HIST 1947: The Imperial Map: Geographic Information in the age of the Empire
  • HIST 1980: The Soviet Empire, 1917-1991
  • HIST 1981: The End of the Russian Empire
  • HIST 2400: Readings in Colonial and Revolutionary America: Proseminar
  • HIST 2709: Themes in Modern Sub-Saharan African History: Proseminar
  • HIST 2639: The History of the People’s Republic of China: Research Seminar
  • HIST 2651: Japanese History: Seminar
  • HIST 2690: Asia in the Modern World: Seminar

Spring 2021:

  • GENED 1095: Is War Inevitable?
  • GENED 1140: Borders
  • HIST 12G: Atlantic Slave Wars
  • HIST 12H: How Empires Fall: Case Studies and Theoretical Approaches from the Bronze Age to Today
  • HIST 97E: “What is Imperial History”
  • HIST 97P: “What is Indigenous History”
  • HIST 1001: The War in Vietnam
  • HIST 1023: Japan in Asia and the World
  • HIST 1035: Byzantine Civilization
  • HIST 1039: First Empires: Power and Propaganda in the Ancient World
  • HIST 1911: Pacific History
  • HIST 1951: Japanese Imperialism and the East Asian Modern
  • HIST 1982: The Nuclear Age: An International History
  • HIST 2442: Readings in the History of the U.S. in the 19th Century: Proseminar
  • HIST 2653: Historiography of Modern Japan: Proseminar
  • HIST 2056: Readings in Late Antique and Medieval History: Seminar

Past Course Offerings on Imperial History:

  • FRSEMR 43C: Human Rights and the Global South
  • FRSEMR 61M: The Silk Road as History, Culture, and Politics
  • GENED 1088: The Crusades and the Making of the East and West
  • HIST 12D: Histories of the Third World: Asia, Africa, and Internationalism
  • HIST 13E: History of Modern Mexico
  • HIST 13S: Secrets and Lies in European History
  • HIST 13X: Europe and Its Others: From the Enlightenment to the European Union
  • HIST 13Y: World War II through Soviet Eyes
  • HIST 13Z: Liberty and Slavery: The British Empire and the American Revolution
  • HIST 14A: The Medieval Mediterranean: Conflict and Unity, Tradition and Innovation
  • HIST 14E: The Cold War in the Global South
  • HIST 14I: American Food, A Global History: More Thn Just a Meal
  • HIST 14K: Oil and Empire
  • HIST 72E: The Life and Reign of Catherine the Great
  • HIST 82F: The Origins of the Cold War: The Yalta Conference (1945)
  • HIST 89A: British Colonial Violence in the 20th Century
  • HIST 89J: The United States and China: Opium War to the Present
  • HIST 97L: What is Atlantic History?
  • HIST 1001: The War in Vietnam
  • HIST 1006: Native American and Indigenous Studies: An Introduction
  • HIST 1018: Coffee and the Nighttime: History and Politics, 1400–2020
  • HIST 1024: The British Empire
  • HIST 1206: Empire, Nation, and Immigration in France since 1870
  • HIST 1035: Byzantine Civilization
  • HIST 1036: Modern India and South Asia
  • HIST 1039: First Empires: Power and Propaganda in the Ancient World
  • HIST 1053: After Catastrophe: Europe since 1945
  • HIST 1206: Empire, Nation, and Immigration in France since 1870
  • HIST 1265: German Empires, 1848-1948
  • HIST 1270: Frontiers of Europe: Ukraine since 1500
  • HIST 1280: History of the Soviet Union, 1917–1991
  • HIST 1281: The End of Communism
  • HIST 1284: Revolutionary Eurasia, 1905–1949
  • HIST 1290: The History of the Russian Empire
  • HIST 1457: History of American Capitalism
  • HIST 1602: Modern China
  • HIST 1623: Japan in the Modern World
  • HIST 1701: West Africa from 1800 to the Present
  • HIST 1878A: Ottoman State and Society (1300–1550)
  • HIST 1878B: Ottoman State and Society II (1550–1920)
  • HIST 1882: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century
  • HIST 1910: The History of Energy
  • HIST 1911: Pacific History
  • HIST 1935: Byzantine Imperialism
  • HIST 1943: From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: Indigenous Political Struggle since 1890
  • HIST 1944: Race, Indigeneity, and Empire in the Asia/Pacific Wars, 1898–present
  • HIST 1947: The Imperial Map: Geographic Information in the Age of Empire
  • HIST 1950: Beyond 'The End of History': Rethinking Europe's Long Twentieth Century, 1900–2018
  • HIST 1952: Mapping History
  • HIST 1959: The People's Republic of China and the World
  • HIST 1960: The European Union: Achievements and Crises
  • HIST 1984: The Dutch Empire
  • HIST 1993: Introduction to Digital History
  • HIST 2270: Reformation and the Making of Religious Practice in Britain and Colonial America, c. 1550–1700: Graduate research Seminar
  • HIST 2271: The Soviet Union: Graduate Proseminar
  • HIST 2277: Eastern Europe: Peoples and Empires: Graduate Proseminar
  • HIST 2400: Readings in Colonial and Revolutionary America: Graduate Proseminar
  • HIST 2480A: The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Seminar
  • HIST 2480B: The Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Graduate Seminar
  • HIST 2653: Historiography of Modern Japan: Graduate Proseminar
  • HIST 2950A: Approaches to Global History: Seminar
  • HIST 2955A: History of Global Capitalism: Seminar
  • HIST 2989: The United States in the World: Graduate Proseminar
  • SOCWORLD 13: Japan in Asia and the World
  • SOCWORLD 42 The World Wars and Global Transformation, 1900–1950
  • US-WORLD 28: Racial Capitalism and Imperialism: The US between the Revolution and the Civil War
  • US-WORLD 38: Forced to the Free: Americans as Occupiers and Nation-Builders
  • US-WORLD 43: Ancestry

People

FACULTY

Dimitre Angleov: Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History
Sunil Amrith: Mehra Family Professor of South Asian History
David Armitage: Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History
Sven Beckert: Laird Bell Professor of History
Vincent Brown: Charles Warren Professor of American History; Professor of African and African American Studies
Emma Dench: McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History and of the Classics
Caroline Elkins: Professor of History and African and African American Studies
Mark C. Elliot: Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History
Andrew Gordon: Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History
Tamar Herzog: Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs; Radcliffe Alumnae Professor
Maya Jasanoff: Coolidge Professor of History
Walter Johnson: Winthrop Professor of History; Professor of African and African American Studies
Mary Lewis: Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History
Terry Martin: George F. Baker III Professor of Russian Studies
Charles Maier: Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Emeritus
Ian J. Miller: Professor of History; Affiliate Professor of History of Science
Kelly O'Neill: Lecturer on History; Director, Imperiia Project
Gabe Pizzorno: Preceptor on History
Serhii Plokhii: Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History
Emma Rothschild: Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History
Michael Szonyi: Frank Wen-Hsiung Wu Memorial Professor of Chinese History