This special issue examines the consequences of imperial collapse in central, eastern and southeastern Europe and the Middle East after the First World War. The authors present some of the latest research into the lived experience of former subjects of the German, Habsburg and Ottoman empires as they sought to navigate their way through a post-imperial landscape, from Poland to Cyprus, from Romania to Tanganyika. The articles explore the fate of individuals from a variety of backgrounds—diplomats, lawyers, high- and low-level civil servants, settlers, business elites and bankers—highlighting the challenges they faced, and the strategies they developed to survive, and sometimes thrive, in the new world order being imposed upon them from above.