After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 [Hardcover]

John Darwin (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 5, 2008

A Rise and Fall of the Great Powers for the post–Cold War era—a brilliantly written, sweeping new history of how empires have ebbed and flowed over the past six centuries.

 

The death of the great Tatar emperor Tamerlane in 1405, writes historian John Darwin, was a turning point in world history. Never again would a single warlord, raiding across the steppes, be able to unite Eurasia under his rule. After Tamerlane, a series of huge, stable empires were founded and consolidated— Chinese, Mughal, Persian, and Ottoman—realms of such grandeur, sophistication, and dynamism that they outclassed the fragmentary, quarrelsome nations of Europe in every respect. The nineteenth century saw these empires fall vulnerable to European conquest, creating an age of anarchy and exploitation, but this had largely ended by the twenty-first century, with new Chinese and Indian super-states and successful independent states in Turkey and Iran.

 

This elegantly written, magisterial account challenges the conventional narrative of the “Rise of the West,” showing that European ascendancy was neither foreordained nor a linear process. Indeed, it is likely to be a transitory phase. After Tamerlane is a vivid, bold, and innovative history of how empires rise and fall, from one of Britain’s leading scholars. It will take its place beside other provocative works of “large history,” from Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers to David Landes’s The Wealth and Poverty of Nations or Niall Ferguson’s Empire.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Was Europe's domination of the modern international order the inevitable rise of a superior civilization or the piratical hijacking of an evolving world system? A little of both, and a lot of neither, this ambitious comparative study argues—because world history's real center of gravity sits in Eurasia. Historian Darwin (The End of the British Empire) contends that an ascendant Western imperialism was a sideshow to vast, wealthy and dynamic Asian empires—in China, Mughal India, the Ottoman Middle East and Safavid Iran—which proved resistant to Western encroachment and shaped the world into the 21st century. Europe's overseas colonial empires as well as the expansions of the United States across North America and Russia across Siberia—was not inevitable, but rather a slow, fitful and often marginal enterprise that didn't accelerate until the mid-19th century. Darwin analyzes the technological, organizational and economic advantages Europeans accrued over time, but shows how dependent their success was on the vagaries of world trade (the driving force of modern imperialism, in his account) and the internal politics of the countries they tried to control. Nicely balanced between sweeping overview and illuminating detail, this lucid survey complicates and deepens our understanding of modern world history. Photos. (Feb)
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Review

"Undoubtedly a great work, a book that goes truly global in chronicling the history of one of our abiding concerns: the pull and limitations of absolute power. It forces the reader to rethink commonly held assumptions about our collective past. For that alone, it should be read." —Vikram Johri, St. Petersburg Times

“Nicely balanced between sweeping overview and illuminating detail, this lucid survey complicates and deepens our understanding of modern world history.” —Publishers Weekly

'In this marvellously illuminating book, John Darwin accepts much but not all of the revisionist analysis. With an awesome grasp of global  history, he demonstrates that the continental peninsula of Europe was  peripheral for most of the time since the 14th-century conquests of  Tamerlane...Darwin sustains an intricate thesis with enormous panache.' —Piers Brendon, The Independent, 4 May 2007

'An astonishingly comprehensive, arrestingly fresh and vivid history of the forces that underlie the world we live in today, After Tamerlane sets aside ideologies in which European power - sometimes seen as liberating and at others as diabolically oppressive - is the driving force of modern development...After reading this masterpiece of historical writing, one thing is clear. The world has not seen the last empire.'  —John Gray, Literary Review, April 2007

'A work of massive erudition, After Tamerlane overturns smug Eurocentric teleologies to present a compelling new perspective on international history. Though the subject of empire stirs partisan passions these days, Darwin exudes fairmindedness...Big topics demand big treatments, yet few are brave or knowledgeable enough to hazard them. Darwin has provided an ambitious, monumental and convincing reminder that empires are the rule, not the exception, in world history.' —Maya Jasanoff, Guardian, 12 May 2007

'A wonderful and imaginative addition to the select library of books on world history that one really wants to possess, and dip into, for ever...It is rather wonderful to doff one's hat to a historian who can range across time and space, giving the reader continual cause for pause, in the way that Darwin has done.' —Paul Kennedy, Sunday Times

Darwin `gives us world history on the grand scale, equipping his readers with the knowledge and insights to make their own assessment of what is coming next. If only his book could find its way into the right hands, it might also serve to make the world a less dangerous place.' —Tim Blanning, Sunday Telegraph

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press; First Edition edition (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596913932
• ISBN-13: 978-1596913936
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #759,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Meta-Survey of Economics and Empire August 23, 2008

By Loring D. Wirbel

Format:Hardcover

Critics of this work make legitimate points, but miss the point. "After Tamerlane" is intended to be a survey of deeper analyses of empires in various regions. Like Mae "mes2000" says, there is not an overabundance of specific human examples of struggles on the ground. One might want to read this book in conjunction with some of the new Napoleonic War surveys, with the recent biographies of Tamerlane, with "The Pursuit of Glory" or "Liberators," etc. In fact, Cesar Gonzales has provided us with a fairly comprehensive list in his review.

Gonzales legitimately complains that Darwin spends a good deal of time answering a negative - i.e., telling us why the traditional views of European power don't completely explain what happened to world culture post-1750. But Rouco is wrong in saying Darwin never reaches that explanation. Darwin says that the abstraction of financial instruments, combined with globalized trade patterns, led to hyper-militarism. He wants to make sure readers understand that it is not merely the Industrial Revolution, not merely Marx or Weber concepts of capitalism, that brought Euro- and U.S. cultures to this point, and to make this clear, Darwin must first mention the negatives.

This is a dense and subtle book, but it is masterfully written. I kept trying to think of a more straightforward way Darwin might have written this to avoid the problems mae and Cesar have, but I'm not sure that's possible. Darwin is writing a meta-analysis to observe post-Tamerlane civilizational history from the 75,000-foot level, perhaps even the orbital level, so it certainly should not be read on its own, but as a companion piece to more detailed regional historical surveys of empire.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading February 6, 2010

By K. C. Virta

Format:Paperback

After Tamerlane is an interesting and ambitious book. It offers a great deal of information about the world's history of the past 600 years, appearing based on my basic knowledge, to have been carefully researched. I looked forward to reading it every day, and I wished there were more than the 500 pages when I was finished.

However, Darwin seems to use the book to grind one or more axes. His unofficial thesis was that the West is greatly overrated and most historians are schmucks. It becomes tiresome to be told what you have read, particularly when you have not read what you are accused of having read. I had the feeling that I had stumbled into an argument between a grad student and his advisor, who is now retired. More significantly, it compromises the book. Darwin repeatedly asserts that the non-Western nations possessed greater dynamism than they have been given credit for having, yet the book is a basically a story about the development of the military and economic dominance of the West. In the end, it almost seems to mock the Afro-Asian societies that he tries to celebrate.

Most people are at least acqainted with the achievements of the non-Europeans, and he would have done well to either look at what allowed Europeans to dominate the world, or to look at the needs of Africans and Asians that they met allowing them to become dominant.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Invitation to Thoroughly Rethink European and Western Expansionism August 25, 2008

By Serge J. Van Steenkiste

Format:Hardcover

John Darwin explores three themes in "After Tamerlane:"

1. The growth of global connectedness that results in the globalization as it is known today;
2. The key role that Europe and later on the West played in that process;
3. The resilience of many of Eurasia's other states and cultures in the face of Europe's expansionism.

Darwin pushes his audience to rethink the history of Europe's expansion by making four assumptions:

1) Europe did not progressively rise to preeminence, then fall and rise again as part of the West. The pace of European advance was spasmodic at best in the 250 years following the arrival of Christophe Columbus in the Americas in 1492 C.E. The subjugation of the Americas did not offer Europe a decisive advantage over the rest of Eurasia during that period. Asians were not interested in most of what the Europeans had to offer, resulting in a flow of American silver to South and East Asia. After 1750 C.E., this pattern progressively changed with the subjugation of India and the advent of the industrial revolution that allowed Europeans to impose a trade of manufactured products against raw materials and foodstuffs in the region.

The great expansion of trade in the 19th century C.E. and the globalization that it helped to promote were possible for two main reasons. Firstly, there was no general war between the major European powers between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 C.E. and the outbreak of the WWI in 1914 C.E. Secondly, industrialization allowed culturally self-confident Europeans to colonize far faster and on a far larger scale than was previously possible. For example, think about the scramble for Africa among European powers at the end of the 19th century C.E.

In contrast, Asian empires showed a remarkable cultural and political resilience in the face of Europe's expansionism. Despite all foreign encroachments, China ultimately lost only Outer Mongolia. A fast-industrializing Japan became quickly a match for its Western alter egos before losing all its colonies at the end of WWII. The victors of WWI failed to partition the Anatolian core of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s C.E. Finally, Iran comprises to this day most of "historic" Persia. The great exception to that rule was India because of its openness and accessibility, and because of the sophistication of its financial and commercial life.

2) A global proto-economy came into existence in the 16th century C.E. once the Americas had been connected to Eurasia and Africa. Without the exploitation of American resources, and the commercial integration of North East America and North West Europe to form an "Atlantic" economy, the eventual creation of a global economy in the late 19th century C.E. might not have happened at all. The increased protectionism against free trade that started in the 1880s C.E. did not stop the growth in international commerce before the outbreak of WWI. Globalization remained mostly in limbo during the Europe's second Thirty Years War.

The second wave of globalization that started after the end of WWII under the leadership of the U.S. has gone far beyond the limited promise of the pre-1914 world. The "great divergence" in wealth and economic performance between the Euro-Atlantic West and most of the rest of Eurasia has given way instead to the "great convergence," which should, if it continues, restore the balance to the rough equilibrium of half a millennium ago in the next fifty years.

3) Reducing the history of Europe's global expansion to that of Britain, the Low Countries, northern France, and western Germany is misleading for three reasons. Firstly, the quarrels and conflicts of the European states were a constant limiting factor on their collective ability to impose Europe's domination on the rest of the world. Secondly, this reductive approach ignores the territorial expansionism of tsarist Russia that was a European power. Finally, that analysis ignores the contribution of the early colonies to Europe's global expansion.

4) Empire has been the default mode of political organization throughout most of history. However, European imperialism stood out for two main reasons. Firstly, Europe was the main driver behind modernity in political, economical, and cultural terms. Secondly, Europe had a superior capacity for organized violence through expropriation by subjugation, and if necessary, by exclusion, expulsion, or liquidation.

Despite these strengths, European imperialism was inherently both unstable and unsustainable. The long interregnum of competitive coexistence that existed since the peace of 1815 C.E. crumbled for good in 1914 C.E. Furthermore, the Europeans lacked the resources and sometimes the motive to parcel out, or, if kept in existence, to reduce the remaining Asian empires to semi-protectorates before 1914 C.E. After 1918 C.E., their divisions were greater and the task even harder. Equally important, these Asian empires displayed tenacious traditions of political and cultural resistance in the face of Europe's expansionism.

To summarize, Darwin succeeds in his endeavor to encourage his audience to go beyond the received wisdom about European and Western expansionism.