Book description
Tamerlane was the last of the 'world conquerors': his armies looted
and killed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the frontier of
China. Nomad horsemen from the Steppes had been the terror of Europe
and Asia for centuries, but with Tamerlane's death in 1405, an epoch
of history came to an end. The future belonged to the great dynastic
empires - Chinese, Mughal, Iranian and Ottoman - where most of
Eurasia's culture and wealth was to be found, and to the oceanic
voyagers from Eurasia's 'Far West', just beginning to venture across
the dark seas.
After Tamerlane is an immensely important and stimulating
work. It takes a fresh look at our global past. Our idea of world
history is still dominated by the view from the West: it is Europe's
expansion that takes centre-stage. But for much of the six-hundred
year span of this book. Asia's great empires seemed much more than a
match for the intruders from Europe. It took a revolution in Eurasia
to change this balance of power, although never completely. The
Chinese empire, against all the odds, has survived to this day. The
British empire came and went. The Nazi empire was crushed almost at
one. The rise, fall and endurance of empires - and the causes behind
them - remain one of the most fascinating puzzles in world history.
John Darwin is a University Lecturer and a Fellow of Nuffield
College, Oxford. He is the author of
Britain and Decolonization
,
The End of the British Empire
and
Britain, Egypt and the Middle East.
