Introduction: What effect did the Paris Peace Conference have on the international politics of East Asia? At first glance, this question seems too broad to challenge any particular historiographical trends. However, an extensive review of the literature teases out disagreement over the nature of Chinese and Japanese politics in the wake of the 1919 Conference. … Continue reading Japan, China, and the Paris Peace Conference

Why and with what consequences did Germany acquire a lease over Qingdao in 1897? When Germany invaded Shandong province and acquired a lease over Qingdao in 1897, the Kaiser’s empire took its first step into the colonial-imperial world of East Asia that had been dominated for decades by the empires of Britain, Russia, and France. … Continue reading The Aftermath of the German Lease of Qingdao in 1897

When Babur descended south from Transoxiana and founded the Mughal dynasty in Kabul in 1526, he brought with him an extensive inheritance of imperial philosophy from his Timurid family and his home region around Samarkand. These philosophies and practices had stemmed in large part from centuries of refined political thought from the Persian Shahs and … Continue reading Imperial Continuities in the Mughal Empire

Question: How have maps been used to advance imperial claims?  You may choose to focus on particular empires or parts of empires. For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the early modern empires of German Holy Rome, the Ottomans, and China (of the Ming and particularly Qing dynasties). This essay will argue … Continue reading Mapping claims in early modern empire

Why and with what consequences did Qing China lose its conflict with Japan in 1894-5? Most historians agree that the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 had a great impact across the world. However, public discourse on modern East Asia often sidelines or leaves out entirely the war’s consequences on international diplomacy and imperialism. This paper … Continue reading The Aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War

In 1398, the monastic state of the Teutonic Order invaded Danish Gotland, an island which had long held great importance to the merchants of the Hanseatic League. The histories of the German Teutonic Order (or Teutonic Knights) and the Hanseatic League weave intimately around each other throughout late-medieval European history.[1] This paper will primarily address … Continue reading Gotland and the Baltic Sea in the Historiography of the Hanse

It would be difficult to tell the history of economic development in pre-modern Europe without spotlighting the Low Countries. Although this region of Europe now holds only peripheral status in relation to the great powers of the 21st century, it once held many of the biggest centers of commercial activity in the western world. In … Continue reading The Low Countries in the Works of Henri Pirenne, Bas van Bavel, and Peter Wilson

This historical strategy video game challenges the player to take up the reins as a European prince and conquer the world.[0] Sources (images from the game, referenced later in the paper): This project will examine the geopolitical representation of the European continent in the video game Europa Universalis IV. Published in 2013, EU4 (as the … Continue reading Europa Universalis IV: An Interactive Idea of Europe

Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, in his Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974), considers himself to be following historian Fernand Braudel’s earlier theories on the rise of capitalism. Both authors speak of the emergence of capitalist trade and the European world-economy (or world-system), and both focus on the … Continue reading Braudel, Wallerstein, and European Medieval Expansion