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.

back to the late eighteenth century. There was the long, slow decline of the Ottoman Empire, with its base for much of its existence in present-day Istanbul and which over some five centuries stretched over a good deal of what today constitutes the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Europe, and parts of Asia. The second trend was the emergence of