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After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405. By john darwin. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. 592 pp. $34.95 (cloth).
John Darwin's comprehensive and ambitious account is a grand narrative of the history of empire since the beginning of the fifteenth century. Writing cleverly and responsibly, and offering, as such studies do, a synthesis of a substantial amount of scholarship (almost exclusively in English), Darwin seeks to explore what factors led to the globalized world of the late twentieth century on the one hand, and to the dissimilar trajectories of different major polities on the other. Underlining in particular various economic and political connections and circumstances, Darwin sets to counter perceptions that view the history of the last six centuries simply as a European or Western triumph, and, if such a triumph did seem to manifest itself from time to time, it was certainly not meticulously planned or even well executed. In fact, Darwin claims, the European story should be read as part of a much larger tale and with more discerning eyes; discussing events in a remote corner in the western extremity of Eurasia should be accompanied by an analysis of events in its center, as well as in its southern and eastern limits. In that sense, Europe's expansionism may have been a function of Eurasian expansionism.
Europe's role in shaping the history of the world has been a contested issue for some time. Although Darwin generally accepts much of the criticism (postmodern, Saidian, postcolonial) of Europe's so-called hegemony, he still wishes-sensibly, in my opinion-to set some limitations to the critique, and not to hasten to dismiss Europe's profound influence on the world, both in its physical presence and in a more...