ABSTRACT
It is held, in certain quarters and within particular genres of writing, that the modern world was created essentially through the global expansion of European powers, and by extension that other polities and societies were largely passive subjects of expansion. 1 While no one can reasonably deny the effects that European expansions over the last few centuries have had on the evolution of global structures, the assumption that non-European polities were passive and, by extension, essentially non-expansive is deserving of further dissection and analysis. This volume is intended to explore the historical experiences of polity expansion within Asia, specifically East and Southeast Asia, as an avenue both to illumine Asian pasts and to demonstrate how important have been Asian expansions in the creation of our world today. This book is also intended to provide a schema against which to compare and contrast the expansions of European and other polities and empires.
