Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History

by Thomas J. Barfield

Overview

An original study of empire creation and its consequences, from ancient through early modern times

The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years. These counterempires or shadow empires, which changed the course of history, include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens that controlled trade without seeking territorial hegemony. In Shadow Empires, Thomas Barfield identifies six kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity.

What all these counterempires had in common was their interactions with existing empires that created the conditions for their development. When highly successful, these counterempires left the shadows to become the world’s largest empires—for example, those of the medieval Muslim Arabs and of the Mongol heirs of Chinggis Khan. Three former shadow empires—Manchu Qing China, Tsarist Russia, and British India—made this transformation in the late eighteenth century and came to rule most of Eurasia. However, the DNA of their origins endured in their unique ruling strategies. Indeed, world powers still use these strategies today, long after their roots in shadow empires have been forgotten.

Looking afresh at the histories of important types of empires that are often ignored, Shadow Empires provides an original account of empire formation from the ancient world to the early modern period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691181639
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Thomas Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His books include Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton) and The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Empires cannot be properly understood without Barfield’s illuminating understanding of their ‘shadow’: of how they transform their entire periphery. That periphery is, under Barfield’s brilliant, clarifying lens, actually central. He provides us with an analytical tool of great power.”—James C. Scott, Yale University

“Ambitious and provocative, Shadow Empires is a must-read for every scholar of empire, from every discipline. Thomas Barfield provides an entirely new way of understanding and comparing empires, moving us beyond the usual thinking about empires that is so centered on European history. This book will become an instant classic.”—Ayşe Zarakol, University of Cambridge

“Thomas Barfield’s exciting and learned book foregrounds the ‘shadow empires’ that have arisen—sometimes symbiotically, sometimes parasitically—alongside the great landed polities of Eurasia. The result is perhaps the best model to date to account for the varieties of empire throughout world history.”—Charles S. Maier, author of The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Editorial Reviews

"[An] imaginative retelling of world history."—-Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times

From the Publisher

"[An] ambitious work . . . Clear, easy to read, illuminating, and immensely learned."

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