This article presents a collection of work that grew out of an international symposium sponsored by the History of Education Society UK and held in Hamburg in 2007. The symposium aimed to contribute to understandings of different approaches to researching the extent to which education has contributed historically to social change in respect of "empires overseas" and "empires at home". This twin focus on "empires overseas" and "empires at home" also reflects more recent developments in historiography away from the uni-directional flows from "centre" to "periphery" that has framed much colonial and imperial history and studies of education and empire. This collection brings together many of the emerging developments in the international field. It represents historiographical debates within the history of education that engage with broader historical research and recent insights in the social sciences. Taken together the essays collected here suggest avenues for future work in the field by historians of education, at both the macro and the micro levels. The essays also demonstrate the potential for historical studies of education to engage actively with broader re-interpretations of the underlying assumptions of both imperial/colonial and nation-centred historiographies. (Contains 66 footnotes.)