Sublime

European armies had evolved into highly specialized machines to fight each other – but not to fight military forces whose ‘strategic doctrine’ was radically different. This was painfully apparent in the encounters between British troops and Native Americans in the 1750s.

In the two centuries that followed the death of Tamerlane, Eurasia remained divided between the three civilized worlds we have explored so far, and a number of others, Buddhist and Hindu, that we have passed over in silence. There was little to show that their cultural differences were narrowing. If anything, the energetic state-building that was t

What made the Aztec Empire so vulnerable to Spanish attack, it has been argued, was the inability of its high command to grasp the origins, aims and motives of their European enemy or to imagine the reasons for its sudden appearance. The result was paralysing mental disorientation which destroyed the Aztec emperor’s capacity to resist.