Who Were the Barbarians of the Steppes?
11th August 2023
It’s boom time for nomad history. It started some eight years ago, when Bloomsbury published a study of Central Asia from an Oxford academic. This might have been a fringe book, but the author’s breadth of knowledge and analysis was exceptional, the narrative was gripping, the cover was beautiful and the publisher had high hopes, in spite of my quibbling review. Their punt paid off. Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads has sold more than two million copies and counting. It has also helped renew interest in Central Asia, which had mostly been the preserve of travel writers and niche historians, including the great René Grousset.
Interest has been further stoked by politics, first China’s Belt and Road Initiative and now the Russia-Ukraine war. Since 2017, a series of books has included Warwick Ball’s dry but insightful The Eurasian Steppe, Nicholas Morton’s The Mongol Storm and my own Nomads. Bloomsbury now offers us another beautifully wrapped work, Empires of the Steppes.
The author, Kenneth W. Harl, is a professor of classical and Byzantine history in New Orleans. An expert on Roman coins, his plan is to present the steppe people from their own perspective, show how their empires came together and how, in the process, they changed their world and shaped ours. The narrative covers some 4,500 years, ending with the death of Timur, or Tamerlaine, in the early 1400s.
I knew Ken Harl at Yale, when we were both regulars at the Classics/Ancient History table in Silliman College, along with people like Paul Rahe and Barry Strauss (Ken and I used to pass notes in Greek). Ken has taught at Tulane his entire career; he is a man of high intelligence, great breadth of knowledge, and a delight to read. Highly recommended. (Ken has contributed to The Great Courses — also highly recommended.)