The chapters in this final part deal with places that permeate peripheries and accentuate endpoints – of individuals and of states. Their focus is, first, on how borders were experienced as markers of the confines of one civilization and zones of transition to another and, second, what types of performance were established to deal with the existential crisis of death. Alex McAuley begins with the discussion of the Hindu Kush region, typically considered a realm in between: at its most western stretches, the city of Ai Khanoum has been labelled an outpost of Hellenism, while in the east, the city of Dunhuang in today’s Gansu province is understood as a fringe settlement on the edges of the Western Han. Traditional views of centre and periphery highlight the remoteness of both sites from the cultural core of their civilization and the corresponding centres of political authority. McAuley, too, asserts that the cultural traditions of Ai Khanoum and Dunhuang were designed to stand out from their environments. He takes this distinction as indicative of a peculiar dynamic between imperial centre and periphery, and between place and political culture. Seleucids and Western Han established remarkably similar mechanisms to link distant reaches to their domain. McAuley explores two means in particular: the strengthening of imperial integration through urban connections and designs, and the establishing of dynastic networks that linked client kings to the central core. Prevailing orthodoxies view these measures from the centre. McAuley’s chapter distinguishes itself by bringing local experience on the periphery to life, that is, by demonstrating how the central regions of empire, around Chang’an and the Seleucid tetrapolis, were transported by these measures to the edge of empire, where they wielded their own dynamic in place – and whence they radiated back to the imperial court. Effectively, this chapter not only enriches perspectives on the Hellenistic world and Han China from the vantage point of the Hindu Kush but also demonstrates how the imperial frontiers of both civilizations overlapped in Central Asia, suggesting that the divide between East and West in antiquity is shrinking.

This chapter develops models of what I call spatio-political structure, rooted in the differentiation of centers and peripheries. Distinguishing between a) the number of top-level political centers, b) the homogeneity or heterogeneity of centers, peripheries, and their relations, and c) the relative autonomy of centers and peripheries, I identify three principal types of political systems (both of which have “international” and “national” forms): systems of single-level governance (e.g., states systems); systems of single-center governance (e.g., empires); systems of multilevel multiactor governance (e.g., medieval Europe). In IR’s standard (Waltzian) structural framing, pre-defined units (individuals and states), on (three) pre-defined levels, combine into pre-defined types of (national and international) political systems. I instead treat as empirical questions the types of polities that exist within a space, their distribution and relations, and the resulting kinds of systems. The chapter concludes with a novel, heterarchic depiction of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Eurocentric international system.

The twenty-four accessible and thought-provoking essays in this volume present innovative new scholarship on Japan’s modern history, including its imperial past and transregional entanglements. Drawing on the latest Japanese and English-language scholarship, it highlights Japan’s distinctiveness as an extraordinarily fast-changing place. Indeed, Japan provides a ringside seat to all the big trends of modern history. Japan was the first non-Western society to become a modern nation and empire, to industrialize, to wage modern war on a vast scale, and to deliver a high standard of living to virtually all its citizens. Because the Japanese so determinedly acted to reshape global hierarchies, their modern history was incredibly destabilizing for the world. This intense dynamism has powered a variety of debates and conflicts, both at home and with people and places beyond Japan’s shores. Put simply, Japan has packed a lot of history into less than two centuries.

The conclusion examines comparative images of mountains in European atlases, particularly those of Heinrich Berghaus. This allows for a reprise of the key arguments by showing how remaking the Himalaya as globally commensurable necessarily meant erasing scientific uncertainties, failures of practice and dependence on indigenous expertise and labour. These are linked to broader issues in the histories of science, empire and geography to expose the assumptions that underlay the making of allegedly universal categories. The conclusion then briefly considers the trajectory of scientific practice in the Himalaya later in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, it argues that the comparison of uplands was central to the process of ‘othering’ that confirmed the mountains as the margins. Whether in applying horizontal divisions of latitude to vertical changes in vegetation or delineating ‘normal’ bodily reactions to the atmosphere, the lowlands always remained the point of reference. As a result, the conclusion argues that the notion of ‘the global’ itself needs to be understood as a powerful tool of empire, and calls for innovative new approaches to global history and the history of science.

The introduction outlines the two major arguments of the book. Firstly, the sheer laboriousness of doing science in remote locations, and the inherent dependency of naturalists and surveyors on Himalayan peoples’ expertise and labour. Secondly, the way that the imagining and remaking of the Himalaya was complicated by comparisons with the Alps and the Andes, and the recognition of the commensurability of mountain environments globally. Together, these approaches work to offer wide-ranging insights into the trajectories and consequences of emerging imperial visions of the globe in the nineteenth century. The introduction also lays out the geography, scope and scale of the Himalaya as treated in this book, and how the remaking of these overwrote existing understandings of the mountains in South Asian cosmology. This is followed by a discussion of the story of measuring mountains in relation to wider debates in historical geography, the history of science and the history of the British Empire in South Asia, as well as interdisciplinary questions about mountains, exploration and indigenous labour.