Our modern world has its foundations in the development of a complex and changing system of international behaviours, customs, and rules. This course explores the global and often difficult transition from a world of empires to our contemporary world of nation-states, spanning the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Using a global lens, this course offers an introductory historical survey using multiple perspectives and diverse settings, paying special attention to the dissolution of empire, popular revolution and mass movements, and the creation of international order. How global transformations were experienced, not only at the highest levels of power, but also by the people living amidst such change, will be an abiding concern of this course.