The world’s first great empires established by the ancient Persians, Chinese, and Romans are well known, but not the empires that emerged on their margins in response to them over the course of 2,500 years.
These counterempires include the imperial nomad confederacies that arose in Mongolia and extorted resources from China rather than attempting to conquer it, as well as maritime empires such as ancient Athens.
In “Shadow Empires,” Thomas Barfield identifies six kinds of counterempire and explores their rise, politics, economics, and longevity.
