When we think about World War I, most of us picture the horrors of trench warfare in Western Europe. In our mind's eye, we might imagine the destroyed landscape of no-man's-land, rats and fetid water filling the trenches, and pointless, appalling casualties. When we think about empire and colonialism, most of us think of particular colonies – such as India, Algeria, or the Philippines – and their respective relationships to Britain, France, or the United States. For the most part, we operate under the assumption that colonies and their national metropoles functioned as more or less discreet units, and that the colonial/metropolitan relationship was more important than any other. Finally, when we think about world history, we tend to conceive of narratives that explore complex processes and large-scale connections over huge areas or long chronologies. For many of us, world history sacrifices minute, individual stories in order to tell big, abstract stories.

Yet in this book, the stories I tell about World War I occurred thousands of miles from the Western Front, in Southeast Asia. The stories I tell about empire and colonialism are about connections between colonies – and between colonies and independent states – rather than simply colonial connections with their various metropoles. And the stories I tell about world history begin with individuals in a small place and move outward, from the local to the regional and global. In the process, this book contributes to a growing historiography on World War I that seeks to understand it as a truly global conflict. More fundamentally, this book represents a contribution to a recent trend in which historians attempt to rethink the history of empire and colonialism as a global – rather than a national – phenomenon. Just as important, this book offers an approach to “doing” world history in a way that does not compromise archival research or individual stories.