This course introduces students to three key concepts in global politics: empires, nations, and borderlands, and examines how they have unfurled in a series of linked historical cases. The course examines a series of intertwined episodes from Spanish, Ottoman, American, Comanche, Navajo, Caucasus, and Russian histories to think about how empires have worked as a form of rule, the modes of resistance to and accommodation with them, and the results of their interactions. While we frequently think about global politics from the perspective of centers (major nation-states, global cities, concentrations of capital, empires) and juxtapose them with peripheries (the edges, borderlands, and frontiers of empires and economy, still ultimately defined by or against centers), this class instead approaches the study of these forces through a focus on global crossroads – multi-imperial, multi-national places at the intersections of those forces, with a life all their own.