The authors of this book focus on transcultural entanglements in Manchuria during the first half of the twentieth century. Manchuria, as Western historiography commonly designates the three northeastern provinces of China, was a politically, culturally and economically contested region. In the late nineteenth century, the region became the centre of competing Russian, Chinese and Japanese interests, thereby also attracting global attention. The coexistence of people with different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures in Manchuria was rarely if ever harmoniously balanced or static. On the contrary, interactions were both dynamic and complex. Semi-colonial experiences affected the people’s living conditions, status and power relations. The transcultural negotiations between all population groups across borders of all kinds are the subject of this book. The chapters of this volume shed light on various entangled histories in areas such as administration, the economy, ideas, ideologies, culture, media and daily life.

This volume brings together a diverse group of scholars from North America and Europe to explore the history and memory of Germany’s fateful push for power in the Balkans during the era of the two world wars and the long postwar period. Each chapter focuses on one or more of four interrelated themes: war, empire, (forced) migration, and memory. The first section, “War and Empire in the Balkans,” explores Germany’s quest for empire in Southeast Europe during the first half of the century, a goal that was pursued by economic and military means. The book’s second section, “Aftershocks and Memories of War,” focuses on entangled German-Balkan histories that were shaped by, or a direct legacy of, Germany’s exceptionally destructive push for power in Southeast Europe during World War II. German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century expands and enriches the neglected topic of Germany’s continued entanglements with the Balkans in the era of the world wars, the Cold War, and today.

The authors in this volume seek to treat the modern history of the Balkans from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings.

Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals explores the changing field of local histories. Young researchers from around the world--including scholars from Canada, Mozambique, China, and Germany, representing fields as diverse as history, linguistics, political science, anthropology, medicine, and materials science--present their findings, all of which coincide in their understanding that local histories are inseparably intertwined and that, fundamentally, all history is the history of relationships.

Cold War history has emphasized the division of Europe into two warring camps with separate ideologies and little in common. This volume presents an alternative perspective by suggesting that there were transnational networks bridging the gap and connecting like-minded people on both sides of the divide. Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were institutions, organizations, and individuals who brought people from the East and the West together, joined by shared professions, ideas, and sometimes even through marriage. The volume aims at proving that the post-WWII histories of Western and Eastern Europe were entangled by looking at cases involving France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and others.

The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic as a hemispheric system? : English merchants navigating the Iberian Atlantic / Mark Sheaves -- Agents of empire : Africans and the origins of English colonialism in the Americas / Michael Guasco -- Empires on drugs : pharmaceutical go-betweens and the Anglo-Portuguese alliance / Benjamin Breen -- Marrying utopia : Mary and Philip, Richard Eden, and the English alchemy of Spanish Peru / Christopher Heaney -- The pegs of a wider frame : Jewish merchants in Anglo-Iberian trade / Holly Snyder -- Entangled Irishman : George Dawson Flinter and Anglo-Spanish imperial rivalry / Christopher Schmidt-Nowara -- Planters and powerbrokers : George J.F. Clarke, Interracial Love, and allegiance in the revolutionary circum-Caribbean / Cameron B. Strang -- The "Iberian" justifications of territorial possession by pilgrims and Puritans in the colonization of America / Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra -- "As the Spaniards have always done" : the legacy of Florida's missions for Carolina Indian relations and the origins of the Yamasee War / Bradley Dixon -- Reluctant petitioners : English officials and the Spanish Caribbean / April Hatfield -- Enabling, implementing, experiencing entanglement : empires, sailors, and coastal peoples in the British-Spanish Caribbean / Ernesto Bassi -- The Seven Years' War and the globalization of Anglo-Iberian imperial entanglement : the view from Manila / Kristie Flannery

The essays in this volume address theoretical and methodological issues of Balkan or Southeast European regional studies—questions of scholarly concepts, definitions, and approaches but also the extra-scholarly, ideological, political, and geopolitical motivations that underpin them.