After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 Kindle Edition

Trade and Empire Building are two intrinsic aspects to human organization. They are both absolutely unavoidable, are completely unpredicable, and are neither good nor bad inherently. They are what we as humans require at a minimum for human civilization to be anything other than a mass of self-sufficient individuals, which is ultimately an impossibility.

States are nothing more than embryonic empires currently hemmed in by more powerful neighbors or geographical and economic constraints. Just as life dies when growth ends or corporations fail when profit shrinks, so do empires. Again - this is neither good nor bad - it is the essence of existence. Yet growth can happen too quickly, corporations can get too greedy, and unexpected geopolitical or technical change can shock the system in unexpected ways, often quite suddenly. We live in an Hegelian world, where every ideology, every religion, every culture, every empire is challenged by an opposing kind. Conflict is invevitable but a necessary prerequisite for resolution; only to resume in a new conflict. To what ultimate end however? To a one-world government of sorts? Perhaps but still - unpredicable - because there will be factors as of yet nobody can predict and even a one-world government/empire will face conflict from within.

Every empire that has ever existed is still with us today in some vestigial form; they never truly disappear and in some ways recur again but in unexpected places and in unexpected forms. The power of the Roman Empire still exists but has been incarnated in the United States, which even names its legislative body after the Senate and uses the very same eagle as its symbol; many other similarities exist. One can find to this day some incarnated form of the old Tsarist Russia, Ottoman, Persian, British, and Spanish empires, among others. Communist China today has roughly the same borders it had under the Qing dynasty, which formed it and kept it together under the horrors of civil war and foreign bullying from Britian. Empires lose cohesion and collapse but they never truly disappear. History is not about the past but about the present for all that was is with us still and all that will be is here already in some embryonic form.

The above are my thoughts after reading After Tamerlane, which is an outstanding book that will make you think and see connections. Books that focus on single eras, events, or regions can easily lose sight of the forest in which all things are ultimately connected and in which history is a series of patterns that repeat themselves endlessly, though always in some unique form, and typically in unexpected ways.

Author John Darwin refers to Tamerlane as the last of the great attempts to unifiy all of "Eurasia" under one empire. We may never see another Steppe Horde attempt to subjugate through the sword a large swathe of territory but without doubt we will see more attempts at empire. Though it may not be via the sword it could be by the purse or it could be via AI or some form of technological subjugation. We seem not far from this already.

There are essentially 2 predominant views of the period of European colonialism in Asia and Africa from roughly 1757 (after the Battle of Plassey) to 1961 (the Indian Annexation of Goa). The first is essentially pessimistic and increasingly views the Europeans as perpetrating evil or having some form of moral failing. The second is optimistic and sees the colonialism as a net positive that brought about accelarated progress, excesses and shortcomings notwithstanding.

Should conditions have been otherwise, it could have been the Chinese or some other regional power or culture that was actually doing the colonizing, and in any case eventually it may very well be (for history is still happening) that some day the tables are completely reversed. Did not Muslims attempt to conquer much of the world? Did not Asian Mongols?
Did not the Japanese carve out a large Pacific empire? Therefore, the idea that Europeans are somehow morally inferior or intrinsically more imperialistic is not based on sufficient evidence and in fact can be countered by examples of the opposite. It is not European nature that is the problem but human nature and it is the nature of power that it seeks more power.

The idea of progress itself is debateable. Is there truly progress if human nature does not change? Does it really matter that we can light our streets, air condition our homes, refrigerate our food, and hold in the palm of our hands more knowledge than entire libraries yet live in perpetual fear of being killed by our leaders, or worse - enslaved?

I originally wish-listed this book because I thought it was about Tamerlane, but then it would have been called "During Tamerlane" I guess. Darwin lays out the narrative and causes for why the West/Europe did not really start to dominate or overpower other cultures until 200-300 years until after Columbus/De Gama. For centuries after 1492 the Chinese,Indian and pan-Asian Islamic civilizations equaled or surpassed Europe in terms of development and it was only the period from 1750-130 that saw the West surge past everyone. The industrial revolution was the impetus. once Europe recovered from the 1/4 century of Napoleonic war they all kind of worked together to carve up the world into colonies with only a few tensions--Franco-Prussian war and the Fashoda incident being exceptions. Then WWI happens and European empires start imploding left and right. Sure England and France held onto theirs for a few more decades, but the writing was on the walls. Ironically Lenin who saw empire as the last stage of capitalism decided early on that the Czars empire would suit the new Soviet one just fine.
Darwin also makes case that although US was late to empire game,its development was a key factor in its rise and at the end of the 20th century was the last empire left.
Really good exploration of the subject that pursues angles i never thought of

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.

So much rich detail about global history, a must have for your history collection.

It was a bit breezy, but had lots of good new insights, enough to suspect that the current stasis is very transitory and that changes in the world order may be unexpected.

Only fifty pages into it and its already a great read.