SUMMARY:

This essay outlines the research agenda of new imperial economic history. The authors argue that economic history has become relatively marginalized not just because it came to be dominated by economists who rely on highly abstract formulas but because it can no longer offer a metanarrative to understand the past. They suggest that one way to reinvigorate studies of economic phenomena in the past is to understand economic activity and theorizing about economics as nonverbal languages of self-description through practices. This way, economic activity may indeed serve as a universal and global measure of the historical processes occurring in the diverse imperial space.