There have been several attempts in recent years to connect the histories of modern India and China, focussing mostly on travelers who crossed the borders between the two countries. This panel, however, takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on individuals alone, we seek to juxtapose the workings of imperial political economies across both contexts, observe their similarities and disjunctions, and begin a methodological dialogue on Empire in modern Asia. Thus the paper on law in Manchuria adopts methods from Subaltern Studies devised in South Asian historiography, while the study of the Board of Control for India Affairs pays renewed attention to commerce with China. We hope that this approach will help us devise new comparative methods and models in understanding the modern histories of both India and China.

Moving beyond binary Sino-Indian relations, the panel seriously puts the history of political-economic institutions in India and China in a broad global context across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. On the one hand, political and commercial institutions of British India are analyzed in relation to connections between Canada, the Caribbean and South Africa. On the other hand, legal and financial institutions of modern China are analyzed in relation to histories of American capital and international law. This attention to global connections aims to move beyond the old and tired paradigms of metropole-colony in studies of Empire in Asia. Rather, the panel demonstrates the broad range of international and cross-oceanic connections – including North America and South Africa – that were instrumental in shaping imperial institutions in India and China.