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After Tamerlane

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Britain, Egypt and the Middle East:

Imperial Policy in the Aftermath of War 1918–1922

Britain and Decolonization:

The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World

The End of the British Empire:

The Historical Debate

JOHN DARWIN

After Tamerlane

The Global History of Empire since 1405

ALLEN LANE

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

ALLEN LANE

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc. , 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc. ) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2007 1

Copyright © John Darwin, 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EISBN: 978–0–141–90468–9

For Caroline, Claire, Charlotte and Helen

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Preface

1. Orientations

2. Eurasia and the Age of Discovery

3. The Early Modern Equilibrium

4. The Eurasian Revolution

5. The Race against Time

6. The Limits of Empire

7. Towards the Crisis of the World, 1914–1942

8. Empire Denied

9. Tamerlane’s Shadow

Notes

Further Reading

Index

List of Illustrations

Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses.

1. A re-creation of the world map of Ptolemy (Corbis)

2. Constantinople, in the mid-sixteenth century (Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage Images)

3.

The harbour at Batavia, Dutch East Indies (Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage Images)

4. Engraving portraying the defeat of Tipu Sultan (Corbis)

5. Commodore Matthew Perry’s entry into Tokyo harbour (Corbis)

6. French soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion (Corbis)

7. Mahatma Gandhi on the ‘salt march’, India 1930 (Corbis)

8. Nuclear test, Marshall Islands, 1952

9. Flags on Tiananmen Square (Corbis)

List of Maps

1. The Islamic world in 1450

2. Ming China

3. The Portuguese empire in Asia

4. Russian expansion, 1462–1600

5. Ottoman expansion, c. 1600

6. Mughal expansion

7. Ch’ing expansion to 1760