Introduction: Social Science and Empire: A Durable Tension, Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University, USA) 1. Campillo’s Theory of Commercial Empire: Political Economy and Commercial Reform in the Spanish Empire, Fidel Tavarez, (University of Chicago, USA) 2. Poor Mao’s Almanack? Empire, Political Economy, and the Transformation of Social Science, Sophus A. Reinert, (Harvard University, USA) 3. Utilitarianism and the Question of Free Labor in Russia and India in the Eighteenth Century, Alessandro Stanziani, (EHESS, Paris, France) 4. Geography and the Reshaping of the Modern Chinese Empire, Shellen Wu, (University of Tennessee, USA) 5. The Periphery’s Order: Opium and Moral Wreckage in British Burma, Diana Kim, (Georgetown University, USA) 6. Custom in the Archive: The Birth of Modern Chinese Law at the End of Empire, Matthew Erie, (Oxford University, UK) 7. Nitobe Inazo and the Diffusion of a Knowledgeable Empire, Alexis Dudden, (University of Connecticut, USA) 8. Modern Imperialism and International Law, Josh Derman, (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China) 9. Knowledge as Power: Internationalism, Information, and US Global Ambitions, David Ekbladh, (Tufts University, USA) 10. American Hegemony, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of Academic International Relations in the US, Inderjeet Parmar, (City, University of London, UK) 11. Circumventing Imperialism: Latin American Social Sciences and the Making of a Global Order, 1944-1971, Margarita Fajardo, (Sarah Lawrence College, USA) 12. Western International Theory, 1492-2010: Performing Western Supremacy and Western Imperialism, John M. Hobson, (University of Sheffield, UK) Index

This superb compilation of essays situates the history of the social sciences from the 18th century onward in the contexts of various imperial formations. It provides us with rich accounts of how the social sciences were shaped by diverse forms of imperial order while at the same time they also contributed to shaping them. Authored by an international group of leading scholars, all essays manage to combine global historical questions with due attention to local contexts. The book crosses many academic disciplines, and it fills an important gap in the currently available literature on the global history of knowledge in general and the social sciences in particular.

An exploration into how the social sciences and their intellectuals were entangled in the rise and fall of empires, asking classical questions about empire-building and examining the role of ideas, experts, and expertise in their creation.