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John Lee

EMPIRES HAVE APPEARED in many and varied forms over the centuries.

Celebrations of a country's imperial heyday are nowadays considered inappropriate, but Dominic Lieven rightly feels that a historical overview of Europe's empires is necessary.

In particular he is concerned with comparing the Russian (and later Soviet) empire and its competition - the empires of Britain, Austria Habsburg and the Ottomans. He has tried to determine where there was common ground and where they differed.

The roots of European empires can be found in ancient Rome, where the relationship between the army and the ruler was crucial.

Success was impossible without military power and the problem all conquerors then faced was holding on to their possessions.

A great deal depended on chance. Russia would probably not have become a major power without the inspired leadership of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

The Bolsheviks would be a historical footnote, were it not for the debacle of World War I.

The defeat of the Stuart kings' absolutism eventually allowed a constitutional monarchy and parliament to pursue the commercial and military goals that accelerated the pace of British imperial expansion.

The European empires differed from each other in many ways.

The British depended on their overseas colonies, with few possessions in Europe, while the Habsburgs had no such overseas possessions and little in the way of a navy.

The tsars expanded overland, east into Asia, and west to Finland and Poland, trying to assimilate the peoples they conquered under the umbrella of Mother Russia. For the British, on the other hand, assimilation of the indigenous people of its non-white colonies was never an option, although some 19th-century politicians had a vision of uniting all its white colonies in a confederation.

As the imperialists became more successful so their arrogance grew and they were often blind to the dangers that lay ahead.

Lieven writes: 'The sense of overwhelming power and easy victory over the non-European was a key constituent element in European imperialist arrogance: in time the tsarist elites came to share this feeling.'

However, empires had within them the seeds of their own destructions. By the 17th century, the Ottomans held sway over too many domains and had insufficient resources to control them.

Growing nationalist sentiment in the late 19th and early 20th century undermined the unity of the Habsburgs. It forced the British to retreat from its colonies and once Mikhail Gorbachev opened the door with perestroika and glasnost, the breakup of the Soviet Union was inevitable.

Just as climate changes kill some species, so changes in world economics and two devastating world wars, made empires an anachronism after 1945.

In concluding, Lieven is ambivalent about post-Soviet empire Russia. He believes that the dismantling of the USSR was less traumatic and costly in terms of lives lost, than any previous empire.

Many viable nations emerged from the ruins of fallen giants. From the ashes of the Habsburgs, came Austria and Hungary.

Turkey was founded after the destruction of the Ottoman dynasty and Britain continued to play an international role, though as a second-rate power, in the United States-dominated world order. However, Lieven is not sure the future will be that rosy for Russia. He writes: 'The day when Russians will enjoy even semi-First World levels of prosperity and security seem long distant. A strong possibility exists that it will never come.'

Lieven has set himself an ambitious task. He covers such a broad sweep of history that it is difficult to keep up with him and follow some of his arguments as he flits from one century and one millennium to the next.

He is dealing with a history of the modern world in just over 400 pages and is honest enough to admit the problems this poses.

'I have raced across eras and empires scattering generalisations as I pass in a way that will enrage some historians,' he notes.

This is a useful contribution to the study of empires, but many readers will ultimately leave it, as I did, dissatisfied.

Empire: The Russian Empire And Its Rivals

by Dominic Lieven

John Murray $370



Fall of the imperial powers