Strange Synchronicities and Familiar Parallels in Asia Conference 1: Empires of Thought
Fri 12/5 • 9AM - 5:15PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
In the 2025-26 Core Program conference, historians of the Ottoman, Qing, and Mughal empires revisit the problem of comparison by considering synchronicities and structural parallels across Asia. The first conference, "Empires of Thought," looks at imperial ideology, challenging and broadening the default understanding of empire as a large territorial state by focusing on how each empire upheld a normative universe within which particular kinds of political authority and legitimacy were articulated. Organized by Professors Choon Hwee Koh & Meng Zhang (History, UCLA) and Abhishek Kaicker (History, UC Berkeley).