The history of regional sporting events in 20th- century Asia yields insights into Western and Asian perspectives on what defines modern Asia, and can be read as a staging of power relations in Asia and between Asia and the West. The Far Eastern Championship Games began in 1913, and were succeeded after the Pacific War by the Asian Games. Missionary groups and colonial administrations viewed sporting success not only as a triumph of physical strength and endurance but also of moral education and social reform. Sporting competitions were to shape a "new Asian man" and later a "new Asian woman" by promoting internationalism, egalitarianism and economic progress, all serving to direct a “rising” Asia toward modernity. Over time, exactly what constituted a “rising” Asia underwent remarkable changes, ranging from the YMCA’s promotion of muscular Christianity, democratization, and the social gospel in the US-colonized Philippines to Iranian visions of recreating the Great Persian Empire. Based on a vast range of archival materials and spanning 60 years and 3 continents, Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia shows how pan-Asian sporting events helped shape anti-colonial sentiments, Asian nationalisms, and pan-Asian aspirations in places as diverse as Japan and Iran, and across the span of countries lying between them.

The early 20th-century world experienced a growth in international cooperation. Yet the dominant historical view of the period has long been one of national, military, and social divisions rather than connections. International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century revises this historical consensus by providing a more focused and detailed analysis of the many ways in which people interacted with each other across borders in the early decades of the 20th century. It devotes particular attention to private and non-governmental actors. Daniel Gorman focuses on international cooperation, international social movements, various forms of cultural internationalism, imperial and anti-imperial internationalism, and the growth of cosmopolitan ideas. The book incorporates a non-Western focus alongside the transatlantic core of early 20th-century internationalism. It interweaves analyses of international anti-colonial networks, ideas emanating from non-Western sites of influence such as Japan, China and Turkey, the emergence of networks of international indigenous peoples in resistance to a state-centric international system, and diaspora and transnational ethno-cultural-religious identity networks.

The first book to focus solely on the Asian Games, this is an analysis of the Oriental rival to the Olympics in terms of its geopolitical, economic, sociological, historical, racial and aesthetic context, looking at its birth, growth and maturation from 1913 up until 2006. Written by a team of international scholars, this is a collection of original research and first-hand material from archives across Asia which addresses a number of issues central to notions of nationalism and Orientalism in sport including: the relationship between the Asian Games and the Olympic Games the challenge the Asian Games present to Western forces such as the IOC and international sports federations politics power structure and struggle in the Asian Games nationalism and cultural identity the relationship between Orientalism, Globalism and the Asian Games commercialisation of the Asian Games the contribution modern sport makes to social development in Asia the future of the Asian Games. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.

Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies, and Minds in the Age of Steel offers new interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives on industrialization and societal transformation in early-twentieth-century Luxembourg by analyzing social-educational initiatives and various technologies of modernity and their effects.