Sublime

On the eve of the close encounter with the West, China’s distinctive political trajectory (still dominated by its symbiotic relationship with Inner Asia) propelled it not towards an all-powerful oriental despotism (imagined by Europeans) – which might have permitted drastic change in the face of external challenge – but instead still further toward

Address.

Europe’s expansion amounted in part to a deliberate assault on the modernizing ventures of other peoples and states. Perhaps it was not Europe’s modernity that triumphed, but its superior capacity for organized violence.

Beyond the great captains of irregular warfare, a few key supporting characters make recurring guest appearances in the pages that follow. The most frequent is Winston Churchill, who appears on the scene at the outset of the Boer War in 1899, returns to support T. E. Lawrence’s pan-Arab policy goals after World War I, develops a friendship with Tit

T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt

Far from imagining a common supremacy over the rest of Eurasia, European statecraft was obsessed with intramural conflicts. Symptomatically, the wealth of the New World was used to finance the dynastic ambitions of the Old.