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After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405

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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.

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.

In 1400 Europe was a backward part of the world. The Ottoman, Murghal and Chinese Empires were all infinitely richer and stronger. Yet by the 19th Century European Empires dominated the world. European historians explained this by suggesting that Europe had a superior culture which in turn led to successful economic systems and superior technology. A march of progress.

As we enter the 21st Century the pattern of things is changing. The shift in world power is moving east to India and China. Europe is in decline at least as a military power.

This book examines the old explanations for Europe's rise to world domination and comes up with a different take on things. Up to the 19th Century Europe had two big successes. The first was the taking over of the Americans. This was done against a weak opposition. The second was the destruction of the Murghal Empire and the colonisation of India. This was a significant achievement and was the result not so much of European technology but the impact of Persia's wars with India. Britain was able to defeat a rump state which was just a shadow of its former self. Until the 19th Century most European colonisation with the exception of the Americas and India was on the coastal periphery of weaker states.

Europe never succeeded in destroying or taking over China and Japan was able to develop quickly and achieved military equality with the leading imperial powers. The golden age of colonialism occurred in the later 19th Century and its basis was that Europe was reasonably cohesive and the major powers accepted zones of control. European wars occurred but were of brief duration and not destructive. The development of the railroad and steam powered ships gave a dominance which enabled the seizure of Africa and parts of South East Asia.

In the 20th Century there were major conflicts between the European powers which strengthened the hand of the colonial nations in their dealing with their colonizers. Thus Indonesia, Algeria and Vietnam were able to fight victorious anti colonial wars. Following the Second World War the conflict between the Soviet Block and the Western Powers enabled colonial and third world countries to play both sides to gain and maintain independence.

During the height of empire a number of ideologies were invented to justify the system. Non white people were not civilized and empire was a device to bring them to civilization. Western ideas were superior and the way of the future, Eastern ideas were repressive and the way of the past. Central of course was racism. The conquered people were not seen to behave in certain ways because of a shared history or culture they were seen to behave because it was tied up with racial destiny. In retrospect the history of empire has been tied up with this same inherent racism and this book is closer to a real history of how Europe came to dominate the world. Even today some books have been written saying that there is an inherent western way of war. This book indicates that the Eastern Empires were flexible and adapted to technological and organisational change. The Ottoman Empire had started to reform itself in the 18th Century in response to Russian aggression and it was these reforms which formed the basis of the later secular Turkish state.

Brilliant book well worth a read.

This book is an effort to produce an overview of Eurasian history over the last 6 centuries. Darwin is particularly concerned with moving the focus from a "Eurocentric" history emphasizing the importance of Europe, and western Europe in particular, to a broader "Eurasian" perspective examining events across the whole continent. Darwin begins with the collapse of Tamerlane's effort to produce an Inner Asian based empire dominating the steppe core of Eurasia and with control of surrounding sedentary regions. In Darwin's view, this is the last time the Inner Asian steppe plays a decisive role in Eurasian history and is followed by the emergence of the modern pattern of powerful sedentary states across the whole continent. Darwin then describes the emergence of substantial polities across Eurasian in Europe, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Safavids, and China. These states grow, achieve a kind of rough equilibrium by the 18th century. Then everything changes with what Darwin calls the Eurasian Revolution in which European states extend across the globe producing intregrated political and particularly economic systems. Darwin charts this process in the late 18th and 19th centuries, then its decline with the catastrophic events of WWI and WWII. He concludes with a short section on the present status of the world.

Much of the narrative is quite good, and some is excellent. Darwin's specialty is the 20th century British empire and he is particularly good on the 19th century formation of European colonial empires, the crucial role of dominating India in the formation of the British Empire, and the process of decolonialization. While the narrative sections, which are the great majority of the book, are good, the quality and depth of analysis is not strong. For example, why did the early modern period have its particular structure with the parallel emergence of several strong polities across Eurasia, followed by 17th century stagnation, followed by another vigorous period of state building? Could it have something to do with gradual Eurasian recovery from the effects of the Black Death, followed by the interruption of the Little Ice Age? There is no discussion of any of these important features.

Perhaps more important, Darwin's attempt to shift away from a Eurocentric focus is largely belied by his narrative. Much of the book is necessarily a narrative of how Europe came to dominate the world. Darwin even describes the key events initiating and terminating this period of dominance as rooted in intra-European conflicts in the mid-18th and mid-20th centuries. Similarly, his Eurasian Revolution includes the crucial European elements of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Darwin, following the work of many other scholars, is careful to stress the highly contingent nature of European success and its relatively late occurrence. He is careful to emphasize appropriately that non-European societies were not passive, decadent cultures overthrown inevitably by dynamic Europeans. Nonetheless, even with all these qualifications, this is very much a Eurocentric account shorn of triumphalist language.

Darwin is not always consistent in his analyses. For example, he attacks the old conclusion that non-European societies were less intellectually dynamic than European societies. On the other hand, he is careful to point out that important Early Modern non-Western states, like the Ottomans and Ming-Qing China were considerably less outward looking than European states. At one point, he attacks suggestions that the very competitive European state system generated the relative dynamism and expansionism of Europe but his own account leads directly to this conclusion. Like many historians, he tends to underestimate the importance of the Scientific Revolution, in this case, misunderstanding the argument in the key text that he cites in support of his conclusions.

Another significant defect is Darwin's emphasis on empire. Given his prior research interests, this is understandable but Darwin uses the term to describe the Mongol Empire, 19th century colonial empires, the Qing and Ottoman states, the preponderant hegemony exerted by the US after WWII, and the Soviet Union. Pulling such a diverse array of polities under one title considerably undermines the utility of the concept and really does nothing to advance understanding of historic changes.

Darwin asserts some surprising and hard to support conclusions at the end of the book. He suggests, for example, that the present globalization is a means of guaranteeing diversity. But the best index of human cultural diversity is linguistic diversity. Human languages have been going extinct at a phenomenal rate for at least the past 2 centuries and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. While Darwin takes pains to emphasize continuity in states like China, he pushes this argument too far. China today is a nation-state, not an empire ruled by a semi-divine figure. It is run by a technocratic one party bureaucracy with a nominally egalitarian and meritocratic ideology, not by a gentry based on inherited privilege espousing Confucianism. It is highly urbanized and its economy is a form of industrial capitalism. Its predominant intellectual culture is rationalistic and scientifically oriented. This isn't the continuity of Chinese history, its the triumph of European culture.

For readers interested in overview analysis of Eurasian history, a considerably superior book will be published later this year. Volume 2 of Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels, which covers medieval and early modern Eurasia, is an outstanding analysis of a broad sweep of history.

The other reviewers here do an excellent job treating this work. What you really need to realize before buying this is that it is not what they call "popular history"-- it is a dense, extremely dry, scholarly work that presupposes a pretty serious familiarity with world history, especially European history. The author does a brilliant job synthesizing global trends, especially economic ones, and patterns of global migration, settlement and population changes, and the rise and fall of empires, states, and nations, over an enormous period of time. The value of the work lies in the analysis that is truly world spanning.

But this is not a book a casual reader will enjoy. Rather, it is for the serious student or scholar of the history of economics, for example- someone who already has a great deal of knowledge about the history of the world, and would like to read a new perspective on some meta-level causes and effects from a revisionist standpoint.

After Tamerlane posed the fortunes of the West in terms of `conjunctures, periods of time when certain general conditions in different parts of the world coincided to encourage (or check) the enlargement of trade, the expansion of empires, the exchange of ideas or the movement of people.' Ming's strategic concentration and its concomitant seclusion and `the timing of Manchu consolidation between 1682 and 1750' contradicted determinism and lend credence to the chanciness of events.

Second, the narrative rejected the traditional European definition of modernity, which had obscured the assessment and study of extra-European societies. Darwin's worldwide survey did not support the primacy of the European model. In pre-industrial revolution, both the Ottomans and Chinese held superior ability to mobilize resources and people for a given task. One example was the sultan's vaunted devshirme, who inspired fear in much of continental Europe. Consequently, the swift rise and collapse of European imperialism in Near and Far East exposed a local identity and culture with an inner strength that made European control far from redoubtable. After Tamerlane posed the question: `Is there one modernity, or are there `many modernities'?'

In the conclusion, Darwin challenged readers to see the future without the distortion of conceptual lenses and held a conservative outlook on globalization: `if there is one continuity that to glean from a long view of the past, it is Eurasia's resistance to a uniform system, a single great ruler, or one set of rules.' This Foucaultian analysis defied the craze over the ineluctability of globalization. Those extra-European modernities remain to be plumbed and understood.

In my opinion, the problem with this book is that spends a good deal of its length explaining what it was not (i.e., that it is erroneous to think that the West was more advanced that the rest), and does not offer any alternative of its own, so eventually one wonders, "Well, if Europe was initially backwards, but by the end of the XVIII/beginning of the XIX century it became the first in the row, then, what on earth happened, why it moved ahead?" No answer at all is provided by the author.

Taking that into account (which should be tempered anyhow with Loring D. Wirbel's, Tom Munro's and Serge J. Van Steenkiste's enlightening comments), instead of this book, on the vexing question of why Western countries have dominated the world during the last few centuries [the very way the question is posed is controversial!], I would suggest reading the following books: 1) "Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium" by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke; 2)"The Great Divergence", by Kennetz Pomeranz; 3 - 4): "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes appeared on December 2007); 5) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation by John M. Hobson, and 6) it also seems interesting the brief book to be published this June "Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500-1850" by Jack A. Goldstone.

And for those looking for a broad framework to understand the past, I would add the following works, whose scope is amazingly global: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 3. Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 4. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 5. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.

Reviews here (on amazon) and elsewhere created expectations that I felt this book did not fulfill. It's far too broad, jumping from one place (or "empire") to another without ever making anything vivid. I hoped for a worthy companion to "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or "The Future Eaters" -- an alternate explanation of how the West won. All I got was another survey like they used to bore us with in school.

Worst of all: the author NEVER uses ANY human detail to bring his work to life. Modern history writers have made me expect much more appreciation that people and the details of their lives are part of history. The authors I like give specifics, not just generic trends, commodities, or ideologies.

I forced myself to read the whole thing. Now I wonder why. It was a waste of money and time.

It's the usual PC ideology when John Darwin dares not use the words "orient" or "oriental" when referring to Asia, but has no problem in referring to Europe as the "occident" and the "occidentals" several times in his book. I have no issue at all in avoiding the use of "orient" if that's what most historians and their readers prefer. But it then becomes pure hypocrisy to retain the term "occident". (Then again, why should I be suprised by these double-standards at this point in time.) Otherwise, an interesting and worthwhile read.