The purpose of this volume is to identify and analyze the mechanisms and
processes through which concepts and institutions of transcultural
phenomena gain and are given momentum. Applied to a range of cases,
including examples drawn from ancient Greece and modern India, the early
modern Portuguese presence in China and politics of elite-mass dynamics
in the People's Republic of China, the book provides a template for the
study of transcultural dynamics over time. Besides the epochal range,
the papers in this volume illustrate the thematic diversity assembled
under the umbrella of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence "Asia and
Europe in a Global Context." Drawing from both the humanities and social
sciences, stretching across several world areas and centuries, the book
is an interdisciplinary work, aptly reflected in the collaboration of
its editors: a historian and political scientist.