This book enters new territory by moving toward a new conceptual framework for comparative andinterdisciplinary research on transcultural state formation. Once more, statehood and governance are highly discussed topics, whereby modern state building is often considered to be a genuinely European characteristic, despite the fact that early modern Europeans knew of, experienced and grappled with highly developed states in Asia. The articles collected in this book discuss how strategies of governance were part of transcultural transfers between the two continents. The first part presents and...

The purpose of this volume is to identify and analyze the mechanisms and processes through which concepts and institutions of transcultural phenomena gain and are given momentum. Applied to a range of cases, including examples drawn from ancient Greece and modern India, the early modern Portuguese presence in China and politics of elite-mass dynamics in the People's Republic of China, the book provides a template for the study of transcultural dynamics over time. Besides the epochal range, the papers in this volume illustrate the thematic diversity assembled under the umbrella of the...

This volume looks across multiple eras to develop a comparative analysis of different monarchies with respect to the function of their political systems. It focuses on elite groups, on strategies of sacralization as pretexts to generate and perpetuate the legitimacy of monarchies, and on strategies to establish various forms of historical memory.