Comparing Early Modern Empires: Reviewing John Darwin's 'After Tamerlane' | Study notes History

foremost, already had clear nationalist traits in the early modern era. The nineteenth

century might be called the century of nationalism in European history. Such

nationalism was clearly absent in the examples of Mughal India, the Ottoman

Empire, or Qing China. In the absence of certain preconditions, as distinct from

most of Western Europe, it was not easy to “create” nationalism in these countries.

This too is a very consequential difference.

The history of empires as empires is the history of the strength of their “core”

states. The rise of the West to global politico-military (and economic) primacy to

a large extent is explicable in terms of the specific characteristics of those states.

In a book like Darwin’s those specific characteristics would have deserved more

systematic attention. His fascinating descriptions would clearly have profited from

a more systematically comparative analysis of varieties and levels of state-power.

Such an analysis would have shown that the early modern world in many highly

relevant respects was not one of striking resemblances.7

Peer Vries

University of Vienna

John Darwin has given us by far the finest comparative study of early modern

empires: the best informed, the most intelligent, the most thoughtful, the most

engaging, the most wide-ranging. No scholar could have responded more

handsomely to the demand for a genuinely global vision of imperial history, or

answered with a more challenging approach to what Darwin sees as the crucial

story of the shifting balance of power in Eurasia in the last five hundred years. But

in a short review, author and readers want the reviewer to focus on what could be

even better. I see a few fairly serious problems.

First, Darwin dodges the problem of what the term “empire” means. He

characterizes it en passant as “the accumulation of power on an extensive scale” and

regards it as “the default mode of political organization throughout most of history”

(p. 23). But readers want to know the principle of selection that makes him treat

some states as empires and not others. In the early modern period – nearly half

the book – we typically apply the name “empire” to at least two dozen states that

shared, in varying degrees, a common profile, including expansion by conquest and

subjection of numerous cultural communities in a single framework of allegiance.

It seems churlish to complain about the limits of Darwin’s coverage of these states,

7 For such an analysis, focusing on early modern Britain and China, see my forthcoming

A world of surprising differences: state and economy in early modern Western Europe and China.

British Scholar 117

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foremost, already had clear nationalist traits in the early modern era. The nineteenth century might be called the century of nationalism in European history. Such nationalism was clearly absent in the examples of Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, or Qing China. In the absence of certain preconditions, as distinct from most of Western Europe, it was not easy to “create” nationalism in these countries. This too is a very consequential difference. The history of empires as empires is the history of the strength of their “core” states. The rise of the West to global politico-military (and economic) primacy to a large extent is explicable in terms of the specific characteristics of those states. In a book like Darwin’s those specific characteristics would have deserved more systematic attention. His fascinating descriptions would clearly have profited from a more systematically comparative analysis of varieties and levels of state-power. Such an analysis would have shown that the early modern world in many highly relevant respects was not one of striking resemblances.^7 Peer Vries University of Vienna John Darwin has given us by far the finest comparative study of early modern empires: the best informed, the most intelligent, the most thoughtful, the most engaging, the most wide-ranging. No scholar could have responded more handsomely to the demand for a genuinely global vision of imperial history, or answered with a more challenging approach to what Darwin sees as the crucial story of the shifting balance of power in Eurasia in the last five hundred years. But in a short review, author and readers want the reviewer to focus on what could be even better. I see a few fairly serious problems. First, Darwin dodges the problem of what the term “empire” means. He characterizes it en passant as “the accumulation of power on an extensive scale” and regards it as “the default mode of political organization throughout most of history” (p. 23). But readers want to know the principle of selection that makes him treat some states as empires and not others. In the early modern period – nearly half the book – we typically apply the name “empire” to at least two dozen states that shared, in varying degrees, a common profile, including expansion by conquest and subjection of numerous cultural communities in a single framework of allegiance. It seems churlish to complain about the limits of Darwin’s coverage of these states, 7 For such an analysis, focusing on early modern Britain and China, see my forthcoming A world of surprising differences: state and economy in early modern Western Europe and China. British Scholar 117

since his efforts to defy Eurocentrism are heroic. He insists that empire is not just a white vice. He has a dazzling talent for comparison – of Muscovy with Spain, for instance, China with the Mughals, or the Manchus with the Raj. In practice, however, empires remain, in his book, almost exclusively Eurasian empires. The Aztecs and Inca do not figure, except as victims, despite the fact that in the early sixteenth century, until the Spanish monarchy gobbled them whole, they were the fastest-expanding systems of conquest and tribute in the world. There is nothing on the Sioux or Cheyenne or the imperialist of the late eighteenth-century pampa, Cangapol el Bravo. These are important omissions because the success of European intruders in the Americas is unintelligible unless and until one acknowledges that they were competitors with indigenous imperialists. Darwin may be right to leave out such soi-disant empires as independent Mexico and Brazil, but in the absence of a working definition or check-list the reader cannot be sure. In Africa, no native state qualifies for inclusion in Darwin’s framework of comparison. The Fulani Empire gets a mention, but is classed as a jihad state. The Egypt of Khedive Ismail falls at the knock-out stage, while the similar case of contemporary Zanzibar qualifies, for unexplained reasons, only as an “empire” in inverted commas: the Omani empire of the early modern period is omitted altogether. Ethiopia is acknowledged as an empire but gets only one sentence to itself. The coverage even of Asia wavers. Darwin’s justification for starting “after Tamerlane” is that Timur was the last great steppeland imperialist, but he never considers the claims of the Uzbeks or of such later Mongol imperialists as Altan Khan, or indeed the extent to which the Qing – romantically, at least, identified with a mythic steppeland past. On the other hand, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Durrani get the credit for “the last great imperial effort in the tradition of Tamerlane” (p. 151). Iran does not feature as an empire under the Safavids. Darwin’s language about Burma, Siam, and Vietnam is calculatedly ambiguous, but in practice he excludes them from consideration as empires. Japan is the most intriguing omission of all. Darwin accepts traditions that emphasise Tokugawa “seclusion” and never treats Japan as imperial in anything but name; yet the coquest of the Ainu, the outreach into Sakhalin, the partial incorporation of the Ryukyu Islands and, above all, Hideyoshi’s imperialist campaigns against Korea and imperialist rhetoric against China show that Japan’s more recenty imperial vocation grew out of a long past. In a sense, however, empires for Darwin are merely a route towards understanding how and why European and ultimately North American intiatives displaced those of states and peoples in other parts of the world. In his account of the shifting global balance of power he handles argument, evidence, and historiographical baggage deftly and sensitively. He is surely right to exhibit impatience with bleaters 118 Book Reviews

made clear. Darwin’s account of it is troublingly Eurocentric and triumphalist, with at best an oblique sense of the indebtedness of the Enlightenment to extra- European influences. The terms “Europe” and “the West” elide alarmingly. The reader grows increasingly uncertain of what Europe is. It apparently includes Russia, but much of what we conventionally think of as Europe, including, for instance, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Switzerland, Iceland, and Ireland fit badly or not at all into Darwin’s generalisations. The differences in the nature and reach of imperial vocations between different communities of Europeans never get the attention they deserve. Sometimes Darwin appears not to compare like with like, but to be weighing the world-shaping potential of “Europe” or “the West” against that of particular Asian states. At times, the book is a study of politically defined cultures, at others an exercise in the comparative study of civilizations. The second half of the book – say, from about page 270 – is a long colophon, tracing the fates of empires after the main story of the westward shift in the balance of Eurasian power, has reached its climax. Still, it would be unfair to accuse Darwin of failing in a dazzlingly ambitious project. Even to have done it badly would be cause for praise. The amazing thing is that Darwin has done it so well. It is not imperial history as Diogo Curto or Linda Colley know it: few individuals make more than a cameo appearance; the level of analysis is lofty; the brush-strokes are broad and the paint is thinly applied. But it is still a pleasure to read for fluency and clarity. If one treats the work as a sesquipedal and selective essay, rather than an attempt at a comprehensive story or the exhaustive investigation of a problem, the only possible judgements are positive: only a master of all the skills of scholarship and authorship could handle so original and demanding a task with such apparent ease, to such stimulating effect. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Tufts University Response From John Darwin Professors Fernandez-Armesto and Vries have advanced a number of criticisms of my book in a generous and constructive spirit. It might be best to begin my reply by setting out what I intended to be the main aims of the book. I hoped, first of all, to offer an accessible “grand narrative” of the relationship between “Europe” (an entity whose problematic definition I try to dissect) and the other main states and civilizations in the rest of Eurasia over the longue duree from the fifteenth 120 Book Reviews

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