The final chapter investigates the nature of the 1918 transition from Empire to Republic. It opens with the lack of street lighting which persisted in the postwar years and symbolized the slow change from war to peace, and from old regime to democracy. The continuity between the two regimes and the continuation of wartime conditions were both visible in urban space. Prague’s unfinished transformation exacerbated the disappointed expectations of reward for war sacrifices and new life in the republic. Social uncertainty prevailed in the postwar city in an atmosphere of diffuse revolutionary spirit. The discourse of revolution, very present at the time, could refer to either the rupture of 1918 or the changes yet to come. Popular interpretations of revolution at the local level shed new light on 1918 as a turning point in twentieth-century Europe beyond its traditional interpretation as either an aftershock of the Bolshevik revolution or a victory of national self-determination.

Chapter 2, “Daidu’s Fall,” traces the fate of Mongol political and military power in eastern Eurasia during the decades following the Yuan ruling house’s flight to the steppe in 1368. This chapter examines the Yuan court’s efforts to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of former subjects and allies, which included Chinese, Mongol, Turkic, Jurchen, Korean, and Central Asian populations, by drawing on political emblems developed during the empire’s glory years. This chapter also explains the Yuan’s military and administrative strategies to come to terms with its new position in eastern Eurasia. After 1368, the Great Yuan court remained a powerful actor on the international stage; the Ming court was never the sole political patron available to ambitious individuals and communities.