Sublime

On Europe’s Inner Asian frontier, demographic expansion long seemed as hobbled as it was in mainland North America until the 1750s.

crisis of government in

However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom o

We should react sceptically to grand generalizations about stasis and stagnation. Nor should we be too quick to assume that China’s very limited participation in international trade after c.1690 signalled its incorporation into the subordinate ‘periphery’ of a European ‘world system’.76 Indeed, closer inspection may suggest that the reconstruction

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

faster churning of companies in and out of the S&P 500, the death of news and the newspaper, the failure of established