Books in the Oxford Studies in Early Empires series

In a series of pioneering comparative studies, leading historians break new ground by exploring government and power relations in the two largest empires of the ancient world. They shed new light on key issues such as elite formation, the rise of bureaucracies, and the determinants of urban development.

The Confucian-Legalist State proposes a new theory of social change and, in doing so, analyzes the patterns of Chinese history, such as the rise and persistence of a unified empire, the continuous domination of Confucianism, and China's inability to develop industrial capitalism without Western imperialism.

From minor nomadic tribe to major world empire, the story of the Parthians' success in the ancient world is nothing short of remarkable. Reign of Arrows provides the first comprehensive study dedicated entirely to early Parthian history and the first comprehensive effort to evaluate early Parthian political history since 1938.

Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE.

This volume brings together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China and presents a series of comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial developmental convergence.

This volume brings together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China and presents a series of comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial developmental convergence.

fully reconstructs Persian efforts to conquer, control, and, eventually, reconquer Egypt. Reinterpreting Persian-Greek interactions in the process, it furnishes a new narrative of 5th and 4th century history and places that narrative in the enduring struggle between Near Eastern imperial powers and Egypt that marked the longue duree ancient history

A comparative history that reconsiders China's relations with the rest of Eurasia, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors challenges the notion that inhabitants of medieval China and Mongolia were irreconcilably different from each other.

State Correspondence in the Ancient World introduces the reader to the state correspondences of centralized states and empires of the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the 15th century BC to the 6th century AD, and analyses their role in ensuring the stability of these geographically extensive state systems.

In the first study of fiscal sociology in the Roman Republic, James Tan argues that much of Roman politics was defined by changes in the fiscal system. Tan offers a new conception of the Roman Republic by showing that imperial profits freed the elite from dependence on citizen taxes.

The Confucian-Legalist State proposes a new theory of social change and, in doing so, analyzes the patterns of Chinese history, such as the rise and persistence of a unified empire, the continuous domination of Confucianism, and China's inability to develop industrial capitalism without Western imperialism.

Cosmopolitanism and Empire traces the development of cosmopolitan cultural techniques through which ancient empires managed difference in order to establish regimes of domination.

This book deals with the ways empires affect smaller communities and vice versa. It raises the question how these different types of community were integrated into larger imperial structures, and how tensions between local and central interests affected the development of the post-Roman West, Byzantium and the early Islamic world.