Transimperial Times, Transimperial Chronologies

Transimperial historians have distinguished their work from traditional imperial histories by pushing beyond the deeply rooted national tendency to focus empirical research and conceptual questions on one single empire. Transimperial historians systematically foreground relationships between and across empires and their governments, peoples, and spaces, studying a range of connectivities and documenting patterns of both competition and cooperation. In exploring such connections between and across empires, however, this emerging field has encountered conceptual questions about chronology and the limits of the transimperial approach in environmental history. These two linked panels explore these issues by bringing together historians who specialize in a range of pre-modern and early modern periods for the former and whose works are at the cutting edge of new environmental histories for the latter.

Questions regarding periodization and chronology are essential to how historians understand the past. This is particularly true for transimperial history, which is still an emerging field. As Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper have pointed out, empires have been among the most common and enduring forms of political organization throughout world history. However, this historical prominence of empires raises important questions about continuity and rupture between conventionally defined eras.

The premise of this roundtable is that transimperial history offers different answers to questions of periodization and chronology compared to other historical approaches. It will engage experts from various historical epochs—Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the modern era—who all have utilized (trans)-imperial perspectives in their work. Our conversation will explore broader questions, including the following three:

First, how can historians of (trans-)imperial history working on different macro-periods engage in a meaningful dialogue? Does the concept of “family resemblance” among empires, an idea proposed by Prasenjit Duara, facilitate their conversation? Furthermore, can transimperial histories prompt us to rethink established periodizations and chronologies?

Second, are there instances when multiple transimperial relationships began to interplay, creating a periodizational turning point in history? In other words, do we perceive commonly accepted turning points differently when studying them through a transimperial lens? Consider historical cases like the 1870s—often seen as the beginning of modern territorialization—or the question of the depth of the roots of the Cold War and decolonisation.

Third, empires are shaped not only by external forces but by specific “domestic” developments, which have their own rhythm and perceptions of time. How do such multiple and often different rhythms affect relationships across empires? Additionally, how should historians account for these differences when writing transimperial histories?