Why read Empires of the Weak?

Book cover of Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order

Book description

How the rise of the West was a temporary exception to the predominant world order

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Empires of the Weak as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

April Biccum

Author

This book is another example of the way that shifting our gaze to empires instead of states provides a radically different perspective.

In this book Jason Sharman takes on the Military Revolution Thesis, an approach to state formation in Europe which hives it off from its deeply imperial context and argues that the modern state is the product of a series of ‘rational’ decisions made through war.

Instead, what Sharman shows is that war making in Early modern Europe was just as external as it was internal and that Europeans had to contend with powers to their east and south…

From April's list on empire as a particular kind of politics.