Monarchy is one of the oldest truly global social structures. On the eve of the imperial age, most of the world was governed by monarchs. But as the European empires expanded, this order was radically transformed. During the long nineteenth century, most non-European monarchies were conquered by imperial powers. Often, European imperial powers abolished them, imprisoning, killing, or exiling local rulers; in other cases, the imperial powers incorporated the conquered monarchies into new imperial orders of indirect rule. Yet, there were some monarchies that survived Europe’s imperial expansion. In fact, every country that retained its independence in the era of high imperialism was ruled by a monarch: Ethiopia, China, Japan, the Ottoman empire, Persia (Iran), and Siam (Thailand). To some extent, these monarchs lived in the same social worlds as their European counterparts, forming a global, status-based community. This article offers some observations on the relationship between the world’s monarchs in the age of empire by focusing on encounters between European monarchs and those of the few non-European countries that retained their independence.

This article draws on childcare advice to investigate the shift from breastfeeding by the clock to feeding on demand in twentieth-century Britain and Italy, to demonstrate that it was not just mothers’ bodies, nor what they fed their children, but their time that was subject to political, medical, and cultural attention. The comparative approach highlights the convergences and divergences in breastfeeding advice, illuminating the interactions with political and intellectual currents, as much as social and economic patterns. ‘Scientific motherhood’ and the promotion of feeding by the clock dominated in Britain and Italy at the beginning of the century, and persisted under fascist initiatives to regulate breastfeeding. Some existing differences, however, contained the seeds of greater divergence after 1945 in the two countries. Shaped by differing intersections of medical, psychoanalytic, and feminist thinking, the uneven shift to the concept of demand feeding slowly took root in Britain in the post-war period, but in Italy only in the context of 1968 counter-cultural ideas. The 1970s brought the conversation back to a point of convergence between Britain and Italy in the feminist recognition of the complexities of balancing the ‘rights and duties’ of mothers and children when it came to feeding babies.

Fifty years ago, the infamous bank robbery and ensuing hostage crisis that took place in a Stockholm bank gave rise to the so-called ‘Stockholm syndrome’. Though never recognized as a valid medical diagnosis, the (allegedly) pathological relationship between kidnapper and hostage has become an omnipresent media phenomenon that inspires movies and television series to this day. However, this forced bond was not always seen as problematic. The years between 1860 and 1910 witnessed the rise of kidnappings in the Mediterranean world (Southern Italy, Greece, the Ottoman Balkan region, and Morocco) involving English, American, and European hostages. Today, we know about these incidents from autobiographical narratives by the former captives. They painted a surprisingly favourable picture of their captors – and found enthusiastic audiences for their stories. Looking at the interplay of feelings, coercion, and empowerment, the article opens up a new perspective on the history of emotions that brings both victims and perpetrators into the picture.

This article takes the example of the Tana-Beles project – a scheme sponsored by Italy to respond to the 1980s famine in Ethiopia – to demonstrate that postimperial international relief policies and practices were woven into the very fabric of the colonial past. Postcolonial humanitarianism emerges as the transformation of colonial practices and relationships into new policies, which did not depend on the interests only of former metropoles, but also of the new independent states and on the agenda of international organizations. Furthermore, this article contends that private companies had a prominent role in shaping postcolonial humanitarianism because they could benefit from both the favourable policies of donor countries and the relationships they established in the long run with the authorities of recipient countries. Finally, the history of the Tana-Beles project enables us to re-read the international response to the Ethiopian famine within a larger timeframe. On the one hand, this appears to be rooted in the previous colonial period, on the other it embraces the years thereafter when the schemes, relationships, and strategies set in motion during the famine were developed further.

Global trade is a topic that is well suited for conceptualizing global social history as it allows the opportunity to challenge the notion that global markets were primarily congruent with imperial territories. Businessmen were regularly able to establish economic networks that transgressed state borders and challenged imperial aims for territorial control. This may be evidence for the fact that capitalism and imperialism were two different, although sometimes converging, spatial structures, each with a distinct logic of its own. Even in the colonial period, and despite the prevalence of imperial racism, co-operation between metropolitan capitalists and businessmen from peripheries was possible – and, in fact, the rule rather than the exception. This co-operation was facilitated by similar business practices and a similar mercantile culture, which is why the two constituencies have been described as joint members of a globally connected bourgeoisie in several studies. The ability of economic elites to establish transregional business structures is highly relevant for conceiving global social history as a distinct approach. It reveals that the activities of these actors were crucial for establishing global capitalism, and allows scholars to examine the embeddedness of mercantile elites in their socio-economic environment and in particular to study the relation between capital and labour.

This article argues that the late colonial government of Hong Kong shaped and reconstructed Chinese performances and festivities to secure public support, creating Chinese culture that was sui generis and historically produced. The disturbances of the 1960s prompted local officials to improve state–society communication and legitimize their rule. They utilized Hong Kong people's identification with Chinese culture to formulate their policies. Focusing on the Festival of Hong Kong, carnivals, Chinese opera shows, and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, this article shows that colonial administrators adopted policies that targeted people across generations and communities. They sought to cultivate a sense of belonging to Hong Kong by engaging both the older and younger generations in these cultural activities. Late colonialism became intertwined with notions of Chineseness in Hong Kong. Unlike colonial officials in other former British territories, those in Hong Kong went beyond British culture and focused on cultural elements that the people preferred. This cultural perspective, which has been underexplored, shows that late colonialism in Hong Kong not only made the colony's decolonization differ from other cases but also created diversified Chinese culture that was independent of the mainland China's and Taiwan's political discourses.

The intricacies of modern compensation procedures that value human life, injury, and property are often overlooked, despite growing demands for reparations and justice following state violence. This article historicizes the legal structures of modern compensation, arguing that the advent of imperial rule was characterized not only by the extraction of material resources and labour, but also by the discriminatory construction and implementation of imperial law, which sought to protect European life, wealth, and property. By focusing on one of the most notorious episodes of violence in British imperial and modern South Asian history – the atrocities committed by British officials in Punjab (1919), including the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre – this article underscores how British officials penalized protests and freedom struggles by legalizing indemnities, taxes, and fines to compensate European families. In contrast, colonial officials grossly undervalued the claims and payments of Indian subjects killed or maimed during state violence, if they did at all. Furthermore, this article reveals how imperial state compensation, managed in relative privacy and buried in legal proceduralism, was rooted in legal structures of intersectional racialized inequality, and political concerns that valued the longevity of imperialism, rather than a meaningful gesture of justice and redress.

Over the past two decades, historians have become increasingly fascinated by the question of what enabled the emergence of a stable model of democracy in post-war Western Europe, characterized by the persistence of pre-war elites and top-down forms of decision-making. This article reveals the importance of the British occupations during and after the Second World War in fostering this model of democracy. It does so by comparing and weaving together British occupation strategies in Germany and Italy between 1943 and 1949. Based on a novel examination of archival sources, it demonstrates that British ruling strategies influenced the form of democracy that emerged in these two states. As such, the article reveals the centrality of ‘indirect rule’ practices and their multifaceted impact. Building on imperial precedents, the occupations were primarily run through pre-existing local elites who commanded authority and influence amongst the population. The article argues that this choice explains why the British produced, first, functioning occupation regimes and, subsequently, contributed to the emergence of remarkably stable democracies. At the same time, however, this ruling strategy aided the creation of political regimes that were elite-led and that strongly limited popular participation, leaving many democratic aspirations unfulfilled.

It is commonly stated that China has 5,000 years of continuous history. It is a claim repeated in textbooks, mini-dramas, and tourist sites across the People’s Republic of China (PRC, also commonly referred to as ‘China’). It formed the narrative foundation for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It is also a ubiquitous claim internationally, recited by global political leaders, in foreign media, and in children’s books. Ironically, it even serves as the tag line for the highly political and anti-communist global dance show ‘Shen Yun’, its posters promising a celebration of ‘5,000 years of civilization reborn’.1 This millennia-long history, often short-handed as ‘Yao-to-Mao’ – the Yao referring to Emperor Yao, one of five founding Chinese rulers who is said to have lived in the third millennium BC, the Mao referring to Mao Zedong, the founder of the PRC – is a story of civilizational continuity in which a politically and culturally unified ‘China’ maintains its fundamental cohesion despite a range of challengers, invasions, and upheavals.2

Historians have long argued that science was fashioned as a bourgeois, Western cultural practice by the late nineteenth century, in ways that allowed its practitioners to exclude or distance themselves – through a rhetoric of endeavour, utilitarianism, and progress – from the more useless, ‘frivolous’ learning of aristocrats, women, or, indeed, native ‘informants’ in the colonies. This article examines the case of scholars from outside northern Europe and North America – Japanese literati, creole intellectuals, and Lebanese scholars – who managed to participate in the period’s Western scientific networks as peers. It holds that these men were able to establish epistemic credibility not because their lower rung in a political and racial hierarchy was ever irrelevant, but because their status as upper-middle-class professionals and their bourgeois habitus – their ‘civility’, and ‘manners’ – in some measure made up for it. The article reveals, rather than forthright ‘exclusion’ and ‘silencing’ of non-Europeans, complex epistemic hierarchies and geographies of knowledge. It exposes the mechanisms of epistemic inclusion and its limits in the period: the functioning of an academic community that was – in many, rather significant ways – also a social world.

Between 1958 and 1973, hijackings between Cuba and the US surged, prompting Cuban officials in the early 1960s to propose an extradition agreement for hijackers. However, the US, leveraging its superpower status, dismissed these initiatives, viewing hijackers as political asylum seekers rather than criminals. By the late 1960s, as hijackings escalated from the US to Cuba, the American approach shifted, seeking a bilateral agreement to address air piracy, only to be rebuffed by Cuba, which refused to accept the US’s categorization of specific hijackers as political asylum seekers while classifying others as criminals. Meanwhile, the US pressed its extradition stance through international bodies like the International Civil Aviation Organization. These diplomatic efforts underscored broader challenges in US–Cuban relations, with negotiations repeatedly missing opportunities for enhanced co-operation. A pivotal shift occurred after a significant incident threatened both nations, leading to a more balanced perspective between the US and Cuba. This change culminated in the 1973 signing of a ‘Memorandum of understanding’, marking a turning point that significantly curbed hijacking incidents and hinted at potential future improvements in bilateral relations.

Peasant transformation has often been framed in dichotomous, linear, and predominantly a-historical models. This article adopts a dynamic perspective and shows how the developments that have often been regarded as constituent to the long-term process of the decline of agriculture and peasant worlds were in fact part of the spread of more diversified labour and income strategies of the peasantries. In the movement towards a worldwide enclosure of the rural worlds after 1870, a global peasantry emerged through a wide range of regional trajectories and narratives. By the first half of the twentieth century, peasant households all over the world had become heavily involved in the capitalist market economy. In this article, we argue that the (re)creation of peasantries as a social group is part of a diverse complex of reciprocal exchanges, regional and extra-regional market transactions, actions of public forces, and social conflict. Also we stress that social class formation should be understood in its specific world-historical co-ordinates using a particular set of transhistorical concepts like (re)peasantization, peasant frontiers, and peasant regimes.

The thirteenth edition of Robert Art and Robert Jervis’s International politics: enduring concepts and contemporary issues (2017), a textbook used in the core International Relations class for MA students in the Georgetown Masters in Foreign Service and many other such courses, asserts the following: ‘By the fourteenth century, these Sinicized states [China, Japan, and Korea] had evolved a set of international rules and institutions known as the “tribute system”, with China clearly the hegemon and operating under the presumption of inequality, which resulted in a clear hierarchy and lasting peace.’ This appears in a short article by David Kang, summarizing arguments from his books.1 It appears in a section titled ‘The mitigation of anarchy’, sandwiched between short pieces by Stephen M. Walt (‘Balancing and bandwagoning’), Hans Morgenthau (‘Diplomacy’), Stanley Hoffman (‘International law’), and Robert Keohane (‘International institutions’). This positioning suggests that while international relations in the West involves balancing, bandwagoning, law, and institutions, East Asia runs on the ‘tribute system’.

This essay argues that contemporary Taiwan, as a democratic, functionally independent polity, constitutes the crucial exception to disavowals by the Republic of China (ROC) and People’s Republic of China (PRC) of imperialist claims and ambitions. As such, it explores how the ideal of a single China spanning the Taiwan Strait (‘one China’) depends on the erasure of a (proto-) national Taiwanese identity, and possibly the suppression of the people who claim it. ‘One China’ narratives seek to naturalize Taiwan’s absorption into the ROC in the 1940s and its potential future annexation by the PRC, hiding the pressures placed on Taiwanese people today to give up their hard-fought democracy, as well as the bloodshed that would be involved in any military conquest.

This review identifies three major traditions in British landscape historiography: material/environmental, cultural, and phenomenological. The continuing vitality, methodological rigour, and popular reach of the material tradition is emphasized, notwithstanding persistent questions about the adequacy of its theoretical foundations. Its close cousin historical ecology has meanwhile developed into a broader environmental history, increasingly sensitive to ideological and institutional influences. The development of the cultural tradition, originating in art historical analysis of the ‘landscape idea’ as a culturally specific ‘way of seeing’, is traced through a rich proliferation of studies connecting landscape with memory, national identity, and governance, and through feminist, postcolonial, and history-from-below perspectives. The pervasive influence of the spatial, mobilities, and material turns is highlighted but phenomenology’s focus on experience perhaps challenges the cultural tradition’s premises more fundamentally. Although historians were slower than anthropologists and archaeologists to adopt phenomenology, medievalists and early modernists have applied it rewardingly to topics such as the settings of elite buildings, peasant landscape perceptions, and collective landscape memories. Few modernists have yet embraced phenomenology but it has great potential here given the abundant life-writing sources available. While scope remains for further convergence between research traditions, British landscape history is therefore in an exciting phase of methodological renewal.

Eric Hobsbawm argued that banditry was an archaic and pre-political phenomenon that emerged simultaneously and with striking intensity in different regions around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While it has often been seen as marginal in global histories, banditry provides an essential gateway to the study of modern history from a global perspective. Drawing on different regional case studies, this article approaches the similarities and connections that ran through different instances of banditry in terms of their inclusion within the global dynamics of imperial expansion, capitalism, and the developing notions of territoriality and sovereignty. It argues that the ubiquitous presence of banditry in this period was propelled by the deep-running changes to local relations of class, economy, and power that resulted from these accelerating global dynamics. Bandits emerged as the expression of rural communities in all their complexity and were able to negotiate their place within the rapidly evolving societies of this period. Far from being victims, bandits were key agents who navigated change, adaptation, and resistance in the modern world. In this sense, banditry was a powerful expression of the different ways in which rural communities interacted, negotiated, and clashed with the global.

This article explores the construction of ‘tribe’ as a socio-political unit of global history, revealing an evolution of ideas and practices, both of which actively sought to limit, by co-opting, the opportunities and agency of Indigenous groups. The category of ‘tribe’ was, and is, co-constitutive of Euro-American empire. Euro-American empires created two interlinked dynamics in the social history of the ‘tribe’. One was external, a process of categorization to facilitate and effect conquest and integration. The other was internal, a process of reimagining social relationships through which locals adapted to the threats and opportunities of empire. By mapping British approaches to ethnic Pashtuns and the state of Afghanistan onto imperial engagement with ‘tribal’ communities worldwide – and highlighting both similarities and differences with the North American examples more prominent in the existing literature – global patterns of ‘tribalism’, as defined by Euro-Americans, become apparent. The article illustrates some – but certainly not all – of the impacts of being labelled ‘tribal’ while demonstrating ways that areas and societies seemingly peripheral to each other became interconnected because of shared Euro-American terminology and practice.