The Rule of Empires

Those Who Built Them Those Who Endured Them and Why They Always Fall

By: Timothy H. Parsons

Narrated by: Thomas Fawley

Length: 25 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment. He explains what constitutes an empire and offers suggestions about what empires of the past can tell us about our own historical moment. Parsons uses imperial examples that stretch from ancient Rome, to Britain's "new" imperialism in Kenya, to the Third Reich to parse the features common to all empires, their evolutions and self-justifying myths, and the reasons for their inevitable decline.

Parsons argues that far from confirming some sort of Darwinian hierarchy of advanced and primitive societies, conquests were simply the products of a temporary advantage in military technology, wealth, and political will. Beneath the self-justifying rhetoric of benevolent paternalism and cultural superiority lay economic exploitation and the desire for power. Yet imperial ambitions still appear viable in the twenty-first century, Parsons shows, because their defenders and detractors alike employ abstract and romanticized perspectives that fail to grasp the historical reality of subjugation.

Writing from the perspective of the common subject rather than that of the imperial conquerors, Parsons offers a historically grounded cautionary tale rich with accounts of subjugated peoples throwing off the yoke of empire time and time again. In providing an accurate picture of what it is like to live as a subject, The Rule of Empires lays bare the rationalizations of imperial conquerors and their apologists and exposes the true limits of hard power.

©2010 Timothy H. Parsons (P)2014 Audible Inc.

A stark review of Empire

This book gives a compelling review & stories of history's empires & their eventual downfalls, as well as thoughtful contrasting & comparisons of common threads therein. A must read for world history buffs.

Way too multi-culturalist

Would you consider the audio edition of The Rule of Empires to be better than the print version?

This book provides a lot of information I was not familiar with. However, this - very well told - story comes with an edge - the historian premise.

Would you recommend The Rule of Empires to your friends? Why or why not?

If you want to hear that the US in Iraq was not very much different that the Nazis in France, this is the book for you. If you don't - for find yourself a less leftist history book.

great sweep of imperial failures

I loved thr book. The author keeps so much information in balance and demonstrate the facts of failure of empires. Their proneness to cruelty and theft is well laid out with facts. It was well told.

Generalized

It's a good generalized history of the conquest of empires. I highly recommend listening to it at a faster speed, or the narrator will turn you off completely on how slow he reads.

The book, unlike some reviews, is not biased. Try not to read too much into the introduction.

Very Good, learned a lot, well researched

This is a very interesting book, clearly showing the common themes that connect all empires in history. They all have the same narratives to justify the violence and exploitation. Narratives that are all essential to keep the empire going since state's military assistance is always required to pick up the tab. To put the tab on the taxpayer you need a story of 'the white man's burden' 'the greater good' 'making the world safe for democracy'. The state violence is also required because the empire is usually build on an exclusive monopoly, like the British colonization of India.
It also becomes clear that every empire needs local assistance to reap the taxes of the subjects.
What was new to me is that empires seem to be less and less sustainable, since the oppressed can have more easy access to knowledge and defense. They can also easily mobilize international resistance. The Soviet empire lasted relatively short.
The author also nailed the Iraq occupation pretty well describing how a estimation of 50 billion $ of which 20 billion $ was taken from SDH, grew to a 3 trillion $ declaration bonanza for well connected companies on the tax payer's expense. The real exploited were actually in the USA. Certainly with the latest development in Iraq it seems that even the most powerful military in the world can not keep a small band of committed insurgence.

Good book

The book feels like a business case study and guide to how empire builders shovel govern and integrate the conquests.

Please Don't Buy This Book!

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

If this had been written by one of my undergraduates, I would have given it an "F" and handed it back. While there are a variety of problems, I'll point out only a few that are indicative:
1) Research - the book claims that Constantine the Great made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. He did not - he legalized it. This occurred under Theodosius. That's shoddy research and makes most claims in the book suspect.

2) Logic - Parsons bases his argument on the romanticized view of "empire" in the West (which I think is accurate). However, when discussing the Umayyad Caliphate, he dismisses outright the possibility that modern groups (i.e. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc.) do not have a similarly romanticized view of this Caliphate, even while offering quotes that support a romanticized view. Is it ONLY Westerners who romanticize history and empire? That seems inconsistent to human behavior!

3) Case Selection - Parsons states that his list of selected cases is neither "exhaustive nor definitive." The not-exhaustive part I get. But not definitive? If at least ONE of the cases studied is not a definitive example of empire, in a book about empires, then why were these cases chosen? Further, one wonders about the logic of Parsons' case selection? Why were the Assyrians and Egyptians excluded (the Assyrians, especially, could have supported his thesis)? Similarly the Hittites, Moghuls, or Alexander's brief "empire."

I genuinely wanted to like this book - but it quickly devolved from a thorough academic examination of the excesses of empire to poorly researched revisionist history that favored histrionics over history.

What didn’t you like about Thomas Fawley’s performance?

Some of the pronunciations made my ears hurt!

Woke historian

Listened to the 1st few chapters and got sick of all the wokeness I nearly vomited and couldn’t go further. The amount I heard “intersectional” “oppression” & “systematic racism” made me want to punch a Baby Seal

Terrible narration ruins book

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narration in this book is the worst I've heard from Audible. I wish I could get a refund as it makes the book absolutely unlistenable in my opinion. Fawley reads at a snail's pace, with flat monotone, over-enunciated diction and absolutely no emphasis or colour. It is like listening to a text-to-speech computer program, there's so little connection with the text, or sense of pacing or atmosphere. It was bitterly disappointing. I strongly recommend listening to a sample before wasting a credit on it.

Bland textbook style writing and reading

The reader makes this textbook even more boring to listen to than it should be. I had to give up after a few hours