Tarak Barkawi studies war and empire. His interdisciplinary scholarship re-imagines relations between war, armed forces and society in modern world politics. He has written on the pivotal place of armed force in globalization, imperialism, and modernization, and on the neglected significance of war in social and political theory and in histories of empire.

His book Soldiers of Empire examined the multicultural armies of British Asia in the Second World War, re-conceiving Indian and British soldiers in cosmopolitan rather than national terms. Tarak is working on two projects. The first concerns the Korean War and the American experience of military defeat at the hands of those regarded as racially inferior. It explores soldiers’ history writing as a site for war’s constitutive presence in society and politics. The second project considers how small wars and imperial military relations have had such large consequences for major powers and for world politics.