12 The Transnational Archive of the Sinosphere: The Early Modern East Asian Information Order KIRI PARAMORE Introduction This chapter uses an enquiry into the knowledge and information history of Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate 1600–1868 to consider wider issues related to how we might think of an early modern history of information glob- ally. The growth of ‘global history’ in the 21st century has been accompanied by an increasingly sharp critique of it. That critique often centres on global histo- ry’s modernism and/or Eurocentric nature. In a recent volume on global intel- lectual history Sudipta Kaviraj noted that most imaginations of global history assume ‘globality’ to be an inherently modern phenomenon. In trying to bridge the divide between pre-modern histories and current imaginations of the global Kaviraj focused on historical interactions of the early modern period. 1 Indeed, early modernists have been active in developing much of the apparatus of global historical approaches since around 2007, including the ideas of multiple moderni- ties and connected histories championed by Sanjay Subrahmanyam. 2 However, the problem with much early modern history writing claiming global credentials, including the ‘connected histories’ variety, is its Eurocentric nature. The dominant 1 S. Kaviraj, ‘Global Intellectual History: Meanings and Methods’, in S. Moyn and A. S. Sartori, Global Intellectual History (New York, Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 295–320, at pp. 300–10. Yet he also expressed dissatisfaction with the concept of early modernity itself (p. 314). An ambivalence about the concept of the early modern can be found throughout the volume, notably in Andrew Sartori’s chapter focusing on political economy, pp. 120–2. On the other hand, the importance of the early modern period is emphasised by Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori in the introduction to the same volume, p. 23. 2 S. Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31 (1997), 735–62; S. Subrahmanyam, ‘Hearing voices: vignettes of Early Modernity in South Asia, 1400–1750’, Daedalus, 127 (1998), 75–104. Proceedings of the British Academy, 212, 285–310, © The British Academy 2018.