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Many historians of China, particularly those based in North America, insist that the Qing dynasty's territorial expansion was imperial and comparable to the imperial expansions of other global empires. Other historians, particularly but not only those based in the People's Republic of China, continue to resist this interpretation. They argue that dynastic expansion in the Ming and Qing periods was simply a form of nation-state building, akin to similar processes in Europe. Rather than rejecting their claims as a product of Chinese nationalism, we argue that the term "empire" should be (re)understood as a global co-production, emerging from multiple intersecting histories and scholarly debates about those histories. Doing so challenges influential definitions of empire that rely on a distinction between empires and nation-states, highlighting their dual presence in both Euro-American and Chinese pasts (and presents). This move demands a rejection of periodizations that suggest that empires ceased to exist following the period of decolonization from 1945 to the 1970s. This opens up new avenues of historical and normative inquiry to acknowledge the modern continuity between empires and nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on archival sources in Britain, Singapore, Malaysia, and the United States, this article explores late-colonial anxieties about the influence of Chinese nationalism in Malaya (and especially among students in Chinese-medium schools) in the lead up to self-government in 1957. It demonstrates that the colonial fear of communism in Malaya was not always synonymous with the fear of cultural influence from "new China" and that the "rise of China" in the mid-1950s was viewed as a challenge to colonially sanctioned programs for "Malayanization." More importantly, in exploring some of the ways in which the colonial state mobilized anti-communist cultural workers from Hong Kong to help counter the perceived threat from China, the article argues that more focus should be placed on the role of colonial agency in shaping "Sinophone" cultural expression in Southeast Asia during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As diplomats across the world gathered in Paris in spring 1919 to discuss the peace process, observers asked "Whither India?" Critics wondered how the British government could enact emergency laws such as the Rowlatt Acts at the same time as it introduced the Government of India Act of 1919, which was intended to expand Indian involvement in governing the British dominions on the Indian subcontinent. Because Britain presented itself as a liberal form of empire on the international stage, its willingness to suspend rule of law over its subjects appeared contradictory. India's support of the Allied powers allowed Indian moderates to represent India in Paris; during the war, Indian subjects had contributed over one million soldiers and suffered influenza, plague, and famine. The possibility of a new relationship between those governing and those being governed led many Indians to demand an adherence to the rule of law, a guarantee of civil liberties, and the foundations of a government that was for and by the Indian people. In a time of revolution in Russia, and assassinations by anarchists in Italy and France, it seemed foolhardy to repress radicals by censoring the press, preventing the right of individuals to assemble, or detaining suspects before they had committed any crimes. Lala Lajpat Rai, an Indian political activist who had been part of the progressive wing of the Indian National Congress, wrote from the United States, "India is a part of the world and revolution is in the air all the world over. The effort to kill it by repression and suppression is futile, unwise, and stupid." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Japanese colonial period, Korea's reading public paid close attention to Chinese revolutions against Japanese and Western empires. Korean nationalists viewed China's revolutionary struggles as important for liberating Korea from Japan, a stance that reveals a transnational basis of Korean nationalism in the colonial era. One such nationalist was Sin Ŏnjun (1904–38), Tong'a Ilbo 's Shanghai-based correspondent, who played a critical role in conveying the momentous events in contemporary China to colonized Koreans. Drawing on Sin's example, this article shows how Sino-Korean transnationalism constituted Korea's left-wing, progressive nationalism in the 1930s. Although Sin Ŏnjun was a nationalist rather than a communist, he highlighted the communist struggles in China in his dispatches. He saw communism as the only viable way of solving China's internal and external problems, although he, at the same time, disapproved of Chinese communists' "terrorist methods." This article argues that this position also reflected his stance in favor of a broad communist-nationalist alliance in the Korean independence movement. He saw Korea's liberation agenda as closely related to the revolutionary events in China, thus accomplishing a synthesis between Korean nationalistic and social aspirations and an East Asia–wide transnational paradigm of a universal emancipatory struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]