Structures on the Move Appropriating Technologies of Governance in a Transcultural Encounter 1 Antje Fl € uchter 1 Introduction The starting point of this book is an understanding of state, statehood, and technologies of governance as resulting from transcultural processes. Accordingly, we challenge the conception of state building as a European singularity, that is brought into existence by exclusively European driving forces, by European factors, and structured only by European actors. The academic aim of the present volume, as well as the conference Early Modern State (Building) in Asia and Europe—Comparison, Transfer and Entanglement from which it emerged, is to outline the new research field of transcultural state structures and state building, as well as to probe several promising fields for further research. 2 We apply a two- pronged approach: first we discuss the modern, academic conceptualisation of state and state building; secondly, we describe ways and methods to analyse state and technologies of governance. The latter include the contemporary perception, the appropriation of knowledge of foreign statehood, state structures, and technologies of governance as transcultural results of communication and interaction. Technol- ogy, in this context, serves as an umbrella term for anything that structures the distribution of power and resources in states, as well as the life and security of 1 Many thanks for critical reading and discussions to Susan Richter and Christoph Dartmann, Andrea Hacker, Isabella L€ ohr, Carla Meyer, Jenny Oesterle, Gauri Parasher, Barbara Stollberg- Rilinger. 2 The relevance of including state formation in a project about both entangled history and the broader view of making of Europe as a result of non-European influences was stressed by Sven Beckert at the recent conference at the Frias in Freiburg: “Making Europe: The Global Origins of the Old World”, Freiburg 27/5/–29/5/2010. In the fourth volume of the new WBG Weltgeschichte, Walter Demel writes about global empires and state building in a comparative perspective (Demel 2010). A. Fl€ uchter (*) Karl Jaspers Centre, University of Heidelberg, Voßstr. 2, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: fluechter@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de A. Fl€ uchter and S. Richter (eds.), Structures on the Move, Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-19288-3_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 1