The Economist - USA (2022-05-14)

The Economist May 14th 2022 Culture 79

Imperialnostalgia

The sun never sets

F

rom the decorative sovereigns of

Europetothemorepotentonesofthe

Gulf,monarchsstillaboundinthe21stcen­

tury.Butnoneofthemisa realemperor.

Thatistosay,thereisnomodernrulerwho

wields personal authority over a huge,

diverserangeofpolities,thankstoa dis­

tinctive,mysteriousswirlofdynasticand

spiritualcredentials.

Thatistheobservation,deliveredwitha

near­audiblesighofregret,ofa historian

whohasdevoteda professionallifetimeto

oneempire inparticular,thatofRussia

under the Romanovs, and to imperial

regimesingeneral.DominicLievenbrings

to his latest work a striking, informed

empathy for the dilemmas of mighty

sovereigns,fromBritain’sQueen­Empress

Victoriatogallopinglordsofthesteppes.

As his narrative whirls through the

realmsofRome,India,thevariousIslamic

caliphates(including theOttoman one),

thetsaristautocracyandcolonialsystems

commanded from western Europe, he

demonstratesanunmistakable softspot

notonlyformostoftheempiresofthe

past,butfortheirmastersandmistresses

too.Fewreaderswillsharethatsentiment,

butmostwillenjoythejourney.

Mr  Lieven  offers  especially  vivid  por­

traits  of  some  great  empresses,  from

China’s Wu Zetian (who ruled from 690 to

705 ad)  to  Russia’s  Catherine  the  Great

(1762­96), both of whom made shrewd use

of their status as outsiders in male­domin­

ated  worlds.  With  verve,  he  describes  the

good­cop/bad­cop games played by impe­

rial strategists: that mixture of light­touch

suzerainty through local proxies, and occa­

sional  ruthlessness,  which  often  let  a

handful of individuals hold sway over vast

and scattered populations. 

He  presents  empires  as  systems  in

which disparate cultures and technologies

could  co­exist  creatively.  He  sees  ethno­

nationalism—the emergence of small and

sharply defined states that slip the imperi­

al bonds—as a destructive force. He is dis­

armingly frank about the personal history

that  colours  this  approach.  His  academic

home  is  in  Britain  but  he  descends  from

Baltic­German  nobles  who  served  Russia;

he  grew  up  among  Anglo­Irish  folk  in  the

twilight of British domination, and spends

many months with his in­laws in Japan. 

Thetitlepromisesa focus  on  imperial

claims  to  divinely  ordained  legitimacy,  or

to the plain divinity asserted by the rulers

of ancient Rome and nearly modern Japan.

And Mr Lieven does say a lot about the uni­

fying  and  legitimising  role  played  by  reli­

gion  in  various  empires,  from  Buddhism

and  Confucianism  in  China  to  Russian

Orthodoxy. He writes well about the stark,

compelling  simplicity  of  Islam,  which

galvanised  a  previously  unremarkable

group  of  middle  Arabians  to  overwhelm

more sophisticated places.

But  religion  is  only  one  of  his  themes.

He  is  no  less  fascinated  by  the  dispropor­

tionate role in history played by the fight­

ing  horsemen  who,  as  he  recounts,  held

sway  over  the  north  Eurasian  grasslands

for  about  2,500  years—until  well  into  the

second  Christian  millennium.  As  Mr  Lie­

ven  notes,  the  dynastic  realms  that  once

extended from modern China can be divid­

ed  into  those  dominated  by  the  Han  Chi­

nese  (the  Song  and  Ming),  and  the  much

larger territories governed by the Mongol,

Qing  and  Tang  dynasties,  whose  origins

can  be  traced  to  “the  nomadic  warrior

world of the Eurasian steppe”.

Both the Ottomans and (less obviously)

the Russians, especially those of Moscow,

could  claim  similar  roots.  Russians  are

taught at school that in 1480 their forebears

threw off the yoke of their so­called Tatar­

Mongol masters. This falsely conflates two

peoples; it also understates the deep sym­

biotic link between the Slavic rulers of the

Muscovy region and their overlords.

Having  said  that  real  empires  are  a

thing  of  the  past,  Mr  Lieven  rather  shyly

makes the case that understanding them is

still  important.  As  he  puts  it,  “most  large

countries  in  Asia  remain  more  like  em­

pires than the European model of the eth­

no­national  polity.”  If  the  continent

“catches  the  disease  of  European  ethno­

nationalism  the  planet  might  well  not

survive the resulting chaos.” 

Modern  India,  he  writes  provocatively,

is  the  product  of  the  Mughal  and  British

empires,  which  used  divide­and­rule

tactics, along with pomp and ceremony, to

knit  the  subcontinent  together.  Having

lost its anti­colonial legitimacy, Mr Lieven

says,  the  Indian  state  is  now  succumbing

to  the  plague  of  ethno­nationalism,  and

seems  to  be  locked  in  an  ever­more  dan­

gerous stand­off with Pakistan. 

That  analysis  will  be  controversial  in

India. In any case, the argument for study­

ing  empires  can  be  made  more

simply.  Recall  that  since  2017  American

strategy has avowedly been based on great­

power  competition,  which  means  vying

with  Russia  and  China.  Officially,  neither

is  now  an  empire  in  the  sense  of  being

ruled by a sovereign. Vladimir Putin and Xi

Jinping  are  depicted  as  emperors  in  car­

toons, but both emerged from an ideology

that in theory abhorred inherited privilege.

What matters most, though, is not what

they  are,  but  what  they  think  they  are.

Regardless of their differences from the old

imperial  despots,  both  men  see  them­

selves  as  heirs,  in  important  ways,  to  the

monarchic  realms  of  yesteryear.  Mr  Putin

has  drawn  on  tsarist  history  to  make  his

case for subordinating Ukraine. He has en­

couraged his bureaucrats to study the work

of  Ivan  Ilyin,  who  saw  royal  imperialism,

not  liberal  democracy,  as  the  way  to  hold

Russia and its dominions together. For his

part,  Mr  Xi  has  led  an  energetic  effort  to

rehabilitate the Qing dynasty, which ruled

from 1644 to 1912, and has persecuted his­

torians who take a different line. 

In  a  sense,  Russia  and  China  have  fol­

lowed  similar  paths:  first  a  communist

revolution,  which  led  to  a  rejection  of

almost  all  the  religious  and  ideological

trappings of the regimes that went before;

eventually,  a  gradual  reclaiming  of  the

imperial  heritage.  The  era  of  crowned

despots who personifythedivine will may

be  over,  but  the  age of self­conscious

imperial calculus is not.n

In the Shadow of the Gods. By Dominic

Lieven.Viking; 528 pages; $40.

Allen Lane; £35.

Empires and emperors are a thing of the past—officially, at least

Wu Zetian in her pomp