ABSTRACT
The collapse of empire was inevitable as these political structures were
unsustainable; they were always going to be transient phenomena. Demo-
graphics was key; foreigners were always a small minority;1 learning was
another key as the elites and masses of the colonized territories learned how
the modern world worked (the economics, the social organizations and the
politics). Sweeping imposed change was another key; as extant forms of life
were turned upside down it could only provoke a reaction.2 The project of
empire was challenged with anti-foreigner movements, religious cults/revivals, mutinies, uprisings, nationalist movements and metropolitan refor-
mers.3 The old system, as modified in the phase of impact/response to
modernity, fell apart: economic breakdown, social breakdown and political
breakdown. It was not clear how the social world was to be ordered,4 but it
was clear that extant patterns were illegitimate. The unfolding general crisis
was marked by a series of interlinked wars: overlapping participants, dif-
ferent experiences and different memories. The collapse began in China;5 at
the start of the sequence East Asia was dominated by competing European, Japanese and American empires and China was divided; at the end of the
sequence the European, Japanese and American empires were gone and a
number of new or radically remade countries had been established. The
transformation was attained at great cost; total casualties numbered in the
tens of millions.
