After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000

A most remarkable diplomatic initiative, known as the Iwakura Mission, was launched. Senior Japanese diplomats voyaged around the world to establish new diplomatic relations with Europe and the United States and to study best practices abroad as the basis for Japanese reforms in many key areas, including the structure of government, central banking

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At the same time, private commercial trade independent of the tributary trade was highly restricted. Indeed, in 1371, the Ming emperor had prohibited purely private trade. Zheng He’s patron and sponsor was the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24). Upon the emperor’s death, his son discontinued the voyages on the grounds that they were unnecessary, expensive

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And within a century of 1433, it was the gunboats of Spain, Portugal, and other European powers that were plying the waters of the Indian Ocean and circumnavigating the Earth. China gradually ceded its technological leadership and fell behind Europe in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. By the nineteenth century, the gap in technological c

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China, a proud empire with an astounding 37 percent of the world’s population in 1820, found itself humbled by countries less than a tenth its size. While China avoided direct colonization during the nineteenth century, it did not avoid chaos, military defeat, or European imperial encroachments on its sovereignty. India, with 20 percent of the worl

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