In this cycle of three conferences, historians of the Ottoman, Qing, and Mughal empires return to the problem of comparison by considering synchronicities and structural parallels across Asia. We focus on three broad areas: Imperial Ideology (Empires of Thought), Imperial Operations (Empires in Practice), and Society, Materiality, and Knowledge (Empires of Things).
Friday, December 5, 2025
9:00 AM - 5:15 PM
UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
2520 Cimarron Street
Los Angeles, CA 90018
The conference is free to attend with advance registration, and will be held in-person at the Clark Library. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.
Conference 1: Empires of Thought
The first conference looks at Imperial Ideology. How did early modern Eurasian empires conceive of and construct power and legitimacy? What were the bases of imperial ideologies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and who were their audiences? More fundamentally, what do we mean when we talk about Eurasian “empires”?
This conference challenges and broadens 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. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottomans and Mughals articulated ideas of universal sovereignty in millenarian terms that responded to and co-opted their subjects’ anxieties about the hijri millennium (1000AH / 1591-2 CE). Qing universal sovereignty was constructed as rulership simultaneously rooted in Confucian, Tibetan Buddhist, Islamic, and Shamanistic traditions and surpassing ethno-cultural differences. Rather than assuming a commonality in the aims of historical empires, we seek to understand how varying traditions of thought about power patterned the practices of rule.
Our prompt to participants of the first conference: What might sovereignty mean beyond the political context in which that idea was developed? How did actors conceive of the political order they were constructing, and how did such visions shape and constrain the particular forms of power and legitimacy? How did different visions of political order in turn shape different identifications of potential sources of threats, priorities of rule, and what was acceptable, or even conceivable, as viable policy options?
Program Schedule
8:30 a.m.
Coffee and Registration
9:00 a.m.
Director’s Welcome
Bronwen Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles
Introductory Remarks
Choon Hwee Koh, University of California, Los Angeles, Meng Zhang, University of California, Los Angeles, and Abhishek Kaicker, University of California, Berkeley
9:15–10:45 a.m.
Panel 1: Rulers and Plebeians
Discussant: Richard von Glahn, University of California, Los Angeles
Pamela Crossley, Dartmouth College
“Rulership, Identity, and Organic Patterns Across Early Modern Eurasia”
Suraiya Faroqhi, Ibn Haldun University
“Plebeian Politics in Early Modern Istanbul, Paris, and Shahjahanabad/Old Delhi”
Discussion
10:45 a.m.
Coffee Break
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Panel 2: Temporal and Genealogical Order
Discussant: Luke Yarbrough, University of California, Los Angeles
Ethan L. Menchinger, Niagara University / University of Manchester
“Failed Experiments in Imperial Genealogy? On the Ottoman Dynasty’s Arabian Origins”
Yuanchong Wang, University of Delaware
“Time to Reflect on Self and Statecraft: Eclipse Rescue Rituals, Imperial Mobilization, and Administrative Coordination During the Qing Dynasty”
Discussion
12:30 p.m.
Lunch Break
Exhibition of Clark Library materials in the North Book Room
1:30–3:00 p.m.
Panel 3: Scholars and Bureaucrats
Discussant: Nile Green, University of California, Los Angeles
Xiao Chen, University of California, Riverside
“Xinjiang and the Ideology of ’Grand Unity‘ in the Early Nineteenth-Century Qing Empire”
Supriya Gandhi, Yale University
“Gnosis and Politics: Mughal Bureaucratic Discourse”
Discussion
3:00 p.m.
Coffee Break
3:15–5:15 p.m.
Panel 4: Testing Sovereignty
Discussant: Sixiang Wang, University of California, Los Angeles
Matthew W. Mosca, University of Washington, Seattle
“Was the Qing a Universal Empire?: Mongols and Muslims”
Hasan Zahid Siddiqui, University of British Columbia
“Mughal Sovereignty in extremis”
Will Smiley, University of New Hampshire
“Ottoman Sovereignty and Legal Strategy”
Discussion
5:15 p.m.
Concluding Remarks
Organized by Choon Hwee Koh (History, UCLA), Meng Zhang (History, UCLA), and Abhishek Kaicker (History, UC Berkeley).
https://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/synchronicities-1/
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Asia Pacific Center, Center for Near Eastern Studies