Thomas Barfield, Shadow Empires. An Alternative Imperial History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023, £30.00.
Reviewed by Jeremy Black
The vexed nature of empire is best handled by an understanding of its complexity, although that is not the way that the subject is generally approached. From this perspective among others, the appearance of Thomas Barfield’s new book is particularly important. I first became aware of Barfield’s work not with his first book, The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan: Pastoral Nomadism in Transition (1981), a product of his anthropological research, but, rather, with The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (1989), a longue durée account that put tribute relationships to the fore and offered an instructive critique to longstanding assumptions about Chinese overlordship.
The latter approach is taken forward in this new book which provides an analytical structure in the shape of endogenous and exogenous or shadow empires, and also suggests that it is important to focus on the long period before European colonial empires. Endogenous empires are presented as developing through internal development and outward expansion, providing a territory occupied by different peoples that are taxed.
In contrast, exogenous empires are products of their interactions with already-established empires, leading to a form of secondary imperial state formation. Their political and military structures seek to extract economic resources from the endogenous empires and Barfield terms the exogenous ones as shadow empires. He discerns five types, to each of which he devotes a chapter. First come maritime empires using naval power to extract economic benefits. Second are nomadic steppe empires that operate in a similar fashion. The third type is more complex:
‘Periphery shadow empires emerged in frontier areas over which endogenous empires had previously exerted some kind of hegemony before they weakened or collapsed. Unlike the steppe and maritime exogenous empires that sought a favourable modus vivendi with neighbouring endogenous empires, those arising from the periphery saw themselves as possible replacements for them’ (p. 152). Barfield divides these into ‘vulture shadow empires’ which expand into the ruins of collapsed endogenous empires and vanquisher ones that overthrow.
Empires based on nostalgia are seen as displaying the outward trappings of an endogenous empire without their substance, and reflected the desire for a restoration of a collapsed endogenous empire. The Carolingian empire is one such discussed. Barfield also addresses the Kievan Rus’ Empire, finding it a vacuum empire:
‘vacuum empires arose in the sparsely settled forest and forest steppe zones of northeastern Europe that were previously without even nascent state-level political structures… they sucked in would-be empire builders who realised the potential of unifying such a vast region.’ (p. 248)
The last chapter, ‘Shadow’s End’, considers the extinction of shadow empires by 1800. He argues that three former exogenous empires became endogenous: the Manchu, the vacuum empire of Tsarist Russia, and the maritime British empire in India. Barfield then does on to consider why empires became ‘endogenous only’ (p. 298), before arguing that empires had become redundant due to socio-economic change. America and the Soviet Union are presented s dominant powers hostile to colonialism, and therefore not empires, which is not a view that many would have taken at the time. Indeed, Barfield then moves on to present America in terms of a maritime empire, the EU as a version of the Holy Roman Empire, Xi Jinping’s China as either Tang or Song in its parallel, and Russia as an exogenous shadow empire.
This is a truly fascinating as well as important book. It would be highly instructive to see this methodology expanded to the pre-contact Americas and Africa, and also to see more of a discussion of the degree to which empires of whatever form inherently depend on co-operative processes, a situation that continues to the present and has a long backstory. Thus, in the case of nomadic empires and China, initial violence often gave way to symbiosis, as when the Southern Xiongnu defended the frontier for a weakening Han and the Uighurs were instrumental in suppressing the An Lushan rebellion for the Tang. Indeed, for successful endogenous empires, Barfield notes a transition from coercion to co-option, then co-operation, and finally identification. As he points out, this could lay the groundwork for ‘empires of nostalgia’.
Possibly there is also more room for a diachronic analysis of types of maritime empire, and Barfield indeed originally focused on the succession of powers in South and Southeast Asian waters, beginning with the Chinese role in the early fifteenth century. These sections had to be cut, but hopefully he can revive them elsewhere.
Encouraging us to rethink past, present and future, this is highly significant book and a must-read for all those interested in empires. It is also a world-away from the sterile discussion of the subject in so much of the Anglo-American academic and public-historical realm.
