This book presents the history of the British Empire as the "Bridge" for creating a Global History, especially emphasizing its connections with Asian regions. The United Kingdom ruled most of the world in the nineteenth century. Its influence spread around the globe in various forms - in the white settlements such as those in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Dominions), in Asian and African regions represented by present-day India, in colonies acquired by military force (Dependencies), and in other regions under its economic influence through trade and investment (the informal empire). Thus, the British Empire played a key role in nineteenth-century globalization.

There are many books on the British Empire in English. However, no books from Asian perspectives have interpreted it as "the means used by Asian countries for their own economic development" (and as providers of "international public goods"). Along with the East Asian economic resurgence, the weight of the global system and the world economy has now largely shifted from the Atlantic world to the Asia-Pacific region, encompassing India, as well as the Pacific coast of the United States. The global depression in 2008 accelerated this trend. We now face the task of building a new interpretation of world history with a clearer understanding of this upheaval. Redrawing world history is not an easy task but a good starting point would be to analyze the mutual relationship between the British Empire and the Asian regions, and this can be done by interpreting the historical significance of the British Empire.

Autorentext

Akita Shigeru is Designated Professor of Institute of Laser Engineering, and Emeritus Professor of Graduate School of Humanities, Osaka University. He was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1958, graduated from Hiroshima University (BA in History in 1981; MA in History in 1983), and received a PhD in History in 2003 from Osaka University. Akita was president of the Asian Association of World Historians (AAWH) (2015-2022), and president of the East Asian Association of British History (EAABH) (2018-2024). He is the fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History and Journal of Global History. In June 2004, he was awarded the Twentieth Ohira Memorial Prize by the Ohira Memorial Foundation, and in July 2013 received the Fourteenth Yomiuri-Yoshino Sakuzo Prize from the Yomiuri Newspaper and Chuo-Koron Shinsha. In 2022 he received the Japanese government's Medal with Purple Ribbon.

He has been working on several projects on "Creating Global History from Asian Perspectives" through global economic history. His major publications include (Ed.) American Empire in Global History (Routledge, 2022), From Empires to Development Aid (Nagoya U.P., 2017, in Japanese), and (Ed.) Oil Crises of the 1970s and the Transformation of International Order: Economy, Development and Aid in Asia and Africa **(Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).