Just a moment...

Allowing for these cautions, we may derive endless instruction from the economic analysis of the past. We observe that the invading barbarians found Rome weak because the agricultural population which had formerly supplied the legions with hardy and patriotic warriors fighting for land had been replaced by slaves laboring listlessly on vast farms o

China grew quantitatively, not qualitatively. Part of the reason, Elvin argued, was the inward turn we have noticed already: the shrinking of China’s external contacts as the Ming abandoned the sea.

Two thousand years ago, the potential for multinational governance at a vast scale was already achieved. The European Union, one can say, seeks to govern Europe at the scale of the Pax Romana, but without the imperial wars and without the chauvinism of one people dominating the rest. The People’s Republic of China similarly aims for the internal pe

Zheng He’s voyages, closer in their origins and motives to the modern American and Soviet space programs than to Western equivalents at his time, were not so much leaps into the unknown as the rich products of imperial statecraft. But therein also lies a problem. The very things needed to ensure an expedition’s success, even within a well-resourced

For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.