"In Chinese and Indian Merchants in Modern Asia , the contributors put together an important and lucid study of overseas Chinese and Indian merchants and their impacts on the emerging global economy from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. In contrast to the conventional focus on the...

This paper argues that empires in the age of nations are beset by cultural contradictions that undermine attempts to create a cohesive social bloc able to achieve hegemonic rule. The proposition is tested through an examination of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth...