Over the last few years, the task of rethinking the British Empire has involved reconnecting issues of race, class, gender, nation, and empire. This new imperial history is greatly strengthened by recent historical works which explore a range of issues including mixed-race liaisons, lascar seamen, the English language, conversion, and chain migration. This history connects the local and the global. This course offers a thematic approach focused on modern South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Rim, and the British Empire. Through exemplary studies, it challenges conventional, uni-directional dichotomies of empire-periphery and homeland-diaspora. It discusses how multi-directional modes of imperial circulation and diasporic flows transform both our understanding of the British Empire, and of imperial and trans-national history writing.