Old World Empires: Cultures of Power and Governance in Eurasia by Ilhan Niaz (review)

Ilhan Niaz is a professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad and the author of two earlier monographs focusing on state power, one in Pakistan and the other in South Asia. This interest in a broader geographic sweep has continued in his new book, which examines the entire Eurasian landmass by presenting eight separate case studies of empires, framed by a comparative introduction and conclusion. He sets three tasks for himself: first, “to test a framework developed to explain the culture of power and governance”; second, to present “an interpretation of how and why the state evolved”; and third, “to explain the contemporary implications of cultures of power” (p. 340). In practice, this translates to applying his model for the development of political power in Pakistan and South Asia to the rest of Eurasia. His goal is to demonstrate that “Western” models of development are unsuitable for explaining many of the longest-lasting empires and to “re-orient” the study of comparative politics within a South Asian framework. This is an admirable goal.

Unfortunately, the execution is problematic. Niaz’s “non-Western model” is organized, somewhat ironically, in a strict Annaliste structure. The “ancient” part of each case study considers the longue durée, in particular the importance of geography and climate and their influence on the formation of states. The conjoncture reveals the importance of imperial bureaucrats, soldiers, and other agents for implementing centralizing policy, and his “modern” era reveals frequent collapses among the ancient empires. This is a straightforward and traditional interpretation of empires that does not offer new insights. Niaz’s choice of empires (Indian, China, Persia, Rome/Western Europe, Turkey, Russia, Japan, and Britain) offers a commendable mixture of cultures, but the strict model removes many of the differences in each place. Presenting the rise and fall of ancient empires in approximately thirty pages for each case study offers a broad narrative sweep rather than specific details. Perhaps a topical approach to the structures of empire, as employed in Jane Burbank and Fred Coper’s Empires in World History: Power and Politics of Difference (2010), would have offered a more satisfying approach than this series of discrete case studies.

The book spans more than a millennium and eight distinct empires, which requires the author to rely upon extensive secondary material to present each case study. Hence, the chapters tend to offer very traditional interpretations of these empires. A cursory examination of the footnotes reveals this material is frequently out of date, and, as a result, errors abound throughout the text. As a specialist in Russian history, I was struck by thin evidence and old stereotypes. I will offer only a couple to suggest the shortcomings in the chapter. The author begins with the rise of Kievan Rus’ that is “mired in controversy” (p. 242), but has no reference to the excellent study of the period by Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard in The Emergence of Kievan Rus (1996), much less to the more recent Reimagining Europe (2012) by Christian Raffensperger. I was stunned to read the author state that Ivan the Terrible “attacked his eldest son and heir apparently with a staff” (p. 254) because that incident has been decisively proven to be apocryphal. These sorts of issues recur throughout and distract from the overarching argument that Niaz outlines in his introduction.

The goal of offering a new model for comparative politics based on a non-Western empire is appealing, but the execution here is lacking. Perhaps fewer case studies, better documentation, and consultation with regional specialists would result in a more satisfying outcome. An engagement with other comparative studies of empires would have been an asset. I could see how a comparative politics course could benefit from reading Niaz’s engaging introduction, and his argument for the need to reorient imperial studies, but the case studies themselves are best avoided.