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"[An] imaginative retelling of world history."—Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times

"[An] ambitious work . . . Clear, easy to read, illuminating, and immensely learned."—Choice

"Very well written and is cogently organized."—Christopher Chase-Dunn, The Developing Economies

"The book provides a handy sweep of pre-modern empires, and also a set of connections to link up the ancient with the medieval and even the modern. . . . Filled with innumerable comparative gems, Shadow Empires will prove mandatory reading."—Michael J. Taylor, Classical Association of the Middle West and South

“Empires cannot be properly understood without Barfield’s illuminating understanding of their ‘shadow’: of how they transform their entire periphery. That periphery is, under Barfield’s brilliant, clarifying lens, actually central. He provides us with an analytical tool of great power.”—James C. Scott, Yale University

“Ambitious and provocative, Shadow Empires is a must-read for every scholar of empire, from every discipline. Thomas Barfield provides an entirely new way of understanding and comparing empires, moving us beyond the usual thinking about empires that is so centered on European history. This book will become an instant classic.”—AyÅŸe Zarakol, University of Cambridge

“Thomas Barfield’s exciting and learned book foregrounds the ‘shadow empires’ that have arisen—sometimes symbiotically, sometimes parasitically—alongside the great landed polities of Eurasia. The result is perhaps the best model to date to account for the varieties of empire throughout world history.”—Charles S. Maier, author of The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries