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Empires and their Legacies

Since 2025, the GHI has been developing a new research focus on the history of empires and their legacies. This field complements the Institute’s global and transnational approaches, by centering empires within the political, economic, and cultural dynamics that have shaped and globalized the modern world.  Research at the Institute expands the scope of New Imperial History beyond the familiar categories of center versus periphery, colonizer versus colonized, and active versus passive. Instead, it sheds new light on the active role of men and women living under and impacting these systems of rule. As former empires seek to reclaim bygone influence and postcolonial societies battle with their past , the legacies of empire continue to shape global politics, culture, and memory today, creating new challenges that demand historical reflection.

Photo Credit: Photograph of a soldier from the colonial “Schutztruppe” sitting on the washed-out railway tracks in German Southwest Africa, ca. 1910. Inv. No.: Do2 2003/1139 (album).  © The Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin.

Team

Projects

Skyways to Empire: State Power, Commercial Airlines, and the Globalization of Airspace, c. 1918–1955

Andreas Greiner

Frozen Conflicts: Between War and Peace

Ulrike von Hirschhausen

Events & Conferences

Feb 25, 2027

The Violent 1950s: Towards a New History of the Global “Postwar” Decade

Conference at GHI Washington | Conveners: Andreas Greiner (GHI Washington) and Robert Kramm (University of Tübingen)

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Publications

Axel Jansen, John Krige & Jessica Wang, eds.

Empires of Knowledge

Special Issue, History and Technology 35.3 (2019)

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Julius Wilm

Settlers as Conquerors: Free Land Policy in Antebellum America

Transatlantische Historische Studien. Band 58. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2018.

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Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess & Ulrike Strasser, eds.

Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I

Studies in German History. Vol. 22. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018.

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Elisabeth Engel

Encountering Empire: African American Missionaries in Colonial Africa, 1900–1939

Transatlantische Historische Studien. Band 56. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.

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Karen Oslund, Niels Brimnes, Christina Folke Ax & Niklas Thode Jensen, eds.

Cultivating the Colony: Colonial States and their Environmental Legacies

Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.

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Suzanne L. Marchand

German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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Thomas Adam & Uwe Luebken, eds.

Beyond the Nation: United States History in Transnational Perspective

Bulletin Supplement 5 (2008)

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all publications

Latest News

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New Publication

Spring 2026 Bulletin (77) issue published and available for download

The latest issue of the Bulletin is now available online for download.

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Press Release

New Transnational Research Group in Santiago de Chile

Together with the German Historical Institute Rome and the German Center for Art History Paris, the German Historical Institute Washington…

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Watch recording of the fireside chat "Globalizing Soccer: Clubs, Leagues, and Fan Culture between the Local and the World"

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Alumni

Interview with GHI Visiting Fellow Sara Halpern

GHI editor Insa Kummer recently sat down with Sara Halpern, one of our current Visiting Fellows, to talk about her academic career, her research, and…

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