Product Description

Tamerlane, the Ottomans, the Mughals, the Manchus, the British, the Soviets, the Japanese and the Nazis. All built empires they hoped would last forever: all were destined to fail. But, as John Darwin shows in his magnificent book, their empire building created the world we know today. From the death of Tamerlane in 1405, last of the ‘world conquerors’, to the rise and fall of European empires, and from America’s growing colonial presence to the resurgence of India and China as global economic powers, After Tamerlane provides a wonderfully intriguing perspective on the past, present and future of empires.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5387 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Piers Brendon, The Independent, 4 May 2007
'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.'

John Gray, Literary Review, April 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.

Maya Jasanoff, Guardian 12 May 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.