Comparisons between China and India have long abounded in scholarly literature and popular writing, often hinging, as editors Prasenjit Duara and Elizabeth J. Perry suggest, on simplistic contrasts between “autocracy” and “democracy” as regime types. Beyond Regimes proposes a more nuanced comparative frame, taking comparison “beyond” such regimes types. The volume's aim is a more fine-grained framework for historical comparison between China and India over (roughly) the last century, pointing toward a more globally engaged methodology for historical comparison between states and societies.
Central to the volume's comparative method is the recognition that the histories of both countries were profoundly shaped over the last century by the shifting pressures of the global systems of which they were a part. The editors thus identify three key historical periods (or “temporalities,” as they call them, since they were neither all-encompassing nor fully bounded chronologically) that provide the frame for analyzing the historical...
