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The idea of the world as a sphere was an old theoretical presupposition. Only with both the crossing of the Strait of Magellan and circumnavigation were the geographical areas unknown to the Europeans opened to global trade. Therefore, this world event would be inscribed in the annals of history as a marker of the beginning of modernity, the era of maritime colonization that forever altered the notion of radical isolation.

Mule caravans established a network across physical, political, and ethnic boundaries that integrated Southwest China, Southeast Asia, and Tibet. This article is a first exploration of this little-known mobile network. Based mainly on oral history, it focuses on the mule caravans based in Zhaozhou in western Yunnan from the late Qing to the 1940s, when the first motor roads were constructed. The investigation assembles horse and mule technologies and trade organization in detail in order to reconstruct the role and standing of transporters and their networks in local society, in the regional setting, in a volatile political environment, and in the face of challenging natural conditions.

The bicycle so thoroughly transformed transportation in China that the country was known as “the land of cyclists” by the late twentieth century. Concerning the global popularization of industrial products, past research mainly focused on the interaction between the introduced commodities and their nonWestern consumers. In order to take the analysis of the modern transformation beyond Western objects and passive receivers, this article explores how Chinese people came to make a living from bicycles. This investigation traces the manifold transitions of the Chinese bicycle business in Shanghai during the tumultuous half-century from 1897 to 1949.

English abstract: Inter-regional orchestration is one possible strategy to shape global governance agendas, to coordinate international norm setting and contribute to a negotiated international order. The European Union has been engaging in various international, multilateral and inter-regional settings seeking cooperation with state and non-state actors striving for a multipolar and, to some extent post-Westphalian, system, based on democratic global governance structures and the rule of law among nations. Europe's interests, it is frequently argued, are best served by a stable set of relations, allowing for political and economic cooperation, trade and mutual respect. At the same time, the EU may have a system-inherent bias for regional cooperation. This contribution asks which are the innovative policy means to build multilateral governance structures, and what does the EU do to promote these with its partners around the world, and in particular in Asia and in the East-Asian sub-region. By adopting a behavioral approach and analyzing the mechanisms and instruments of EU engagement in Asia, this article contributes an organizational perspective on EU external governance and its multi-level foreign policy architecture to the geopolitical debates on the EU's role in Asian regional development.

Spanish abstract: Una posible estrategia para organizar las agendas de gobernanza global, coordinar el establecimiento de normas internacionales y contribuir a un orden internacional negociado es la orquestación interregional. La Unión Europea (UE) ha participado en varios foros internacionales e interregionales que buscan cooperar con actores estatales y no gubernamentales, aspirando a establecer un sistema multipolar , basado en el Estado de derecho y en estructuras de gobernanza democrática global. En este sentido, se e afirma que, probablemente, la UE tenga un sistema que esté inherentemente condicionado a favor de la cooperación regional. Este artículo se interroga sobre la determinación de las políticas innovadoras que construirán la estructura para una gobernanza multilateral y sobre el papel de la UE para promover políticas de desarrollo regional en Asia y, más particularmente, en Asia Oriental.

French abstract: L'orchestration interrégionale est une des stratégies possibles pour influencer l'agenda de la gouvernance globale, coordonner la création des normes internationales et pour contribuer à un ordre international négocié. L'Union européenne s'est engagée dans des schémas internationaux, multilatéraux et interrégionaux divers, en coopération avec des acteurs étatiques et non-étatiques, aspirant à un système multipolaire et, dans un certain sens, post-Westphalien, basé sur des structures démocratiques de gouvernance mondiale et ancré dans le droit international. Il est fréquemment évoqué que les intérêts européens sont mieux sauvegardés par un ensemble de relations stables, permettant la coopération politique et économique, le commerce et le respect mutuel. De plus, la matrice organisationnelle de l'UE semble être biaisée vers la coopération régionale. On s'interroge ensuite, sur la promotion de l'ensemble de ces pratiques par l'Union européenne avec ses partenaires dans le monde entier, et, plus particulièrement, dans la région de l'Asie de l'Est. Adoptant une approche béhavioriste, cet article examine les mécanismes et les instruments de l'engagement européen en Asie de l'Est et apporte une perspective organisationnelle de la gouvernance externe de l'UE et de son architecture multiniveaux de politique extérieure.

From the 1860s, the colonial settlement of Beltana in the northern deserts of South Australia emerged as a transportation hub atop an existing, cosmopolitan center of Aboriginal trade. Viewing a colonial settlement on Kuyani land through a mobilities paradigm, this article examines intersecting settler and Aboriginal trajectories of movement through Beltana, illuminating their complex entanglements. Challenging the imperial myth of emptiness that shaped how Europeans saw the lands they invaded, this article renders visible the multiple imaginative geographies that existed at every colonial settlement. Examining mobility along Kuyani and Wangkangurru tracks alongside British mobilities, this article makes a methodological argument for writing multiaxial histories of settler colonialism.

A research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science on “Itineraries of Materials, Recipes, Techniques, and Knowledge in the Early Modern World” held a series of workshops (2014–2015) on the movement of knowledge (materials, techniques, objects) across Eurasia, resulting in an edited volume. Participants articulated a framework of “entangled itineraries,” “material complexes,” and “nodes of convergence” by which historians might follow routes of knowledge-making extending over very long distances and/or great spans of time. The key concepts are (1) “material complex” denoting the constellation of substances, practices, techniques, beliefs, and values that accrete as knowledge around materials; (2) the “relational field,” the social, intellectual, economic, emotional domain formed by a “node of convergence”—often a hub of trade and exchange—within which a material complex crystalizes; and (3) “itineraries,” or the routes taken by materials through which they stabilize and/ or transform.