These three volumes together examine the historical processes spanning wide geographical areas which shaped the people, places, and institutions that make up the modern Asian world. In all of these historical processes, significant turning points marked shifts from one era to another, as different political structures rose and fell, economic waves moved up and down, and people in motion changed their destinations in response. These significant moments transcend simple divisions of land and sea, political regimes, or religious and cultural boundaries. These empirical studies have deep theoretical implications. We highlight the historical global alongside contemporary flows and mobilities in order to place the bounded, statist units of positivist social science in a larger framework. By focusing on these critical periods, places, and peoples of historical and modern Asia, we hope to provide scholars and general readers with new perspectives on the long-term processes that have shaped the contemporary world.