In 1900, most of the world’s population lived under the sway of European empires. Within a century, those imperial territories would fragment, as new—or restored—nation-states fought for independence. Yet the ideologies, institutions, and consequences of those empires remain significant today. This class explores the rise and fall of those empires, focusing especially on how different scholars have understood imperial power and anti-colonial resistance. This course offers students with experience in history at the collegiate level a chance to hone advanced skills, including historiography, the study of how history has been written. As we will see, history as a discipline has itself been an important tool in both creating and destroying empires. MWF 2