TO GOVERN THE GLOBE

An ambitious effort to discern patterns in the rise and fall of world empires.

“In the four thousand years since the first empire appeared,” writes McCoy, the chair of the history department at the University of Wisconsin, “the world has witnessed a continuous succession of some 200 [empires], of which 70 were large or lasting.” Granted that many of those empires have faded into historical limbo, that’s an impressive record of political organization. One plank on which empires found their power is not often considered: energy and its flows and control. In this regard, McCoy considers the transfer of world dominion from Great Britain to the U.S. in the 20th century. After World War II, the U.S. controlled a vast inventory of energy resources and was directed by a forward-thinking, world-embracing governing class, as against Britain’s “leaders from its insular landed aristocracy, animated by a sense of racial superiority.” Less than a century later, the American empire is giving way to a new world order headed by China. “While Washington was spilling its blood and treasure into desert sands,” writes the author, “Beijing had been investing much of its accumulated trade surplus in the integration of the ‘world island’ of Africa, Asia, and Europe into an economic powerhouse.” China’s leaders play a very long game, with energy and raw materials capture being key features in a time of catastrophic climate change and upheaval. McCoy is not entirely successful in forging the general theory of empires promised at the outset of his book, and he might have better confined his argument to the U.S. and China from the start. This rivalry—and soon, inevitable transfer of power—is, after all, at the heart of his argument, and McCoy’s account is compelling as he details our frittering away of political influence and fiscal treasure while China has been busy building a superior navy and “the world’s largest high-speed rail system.”

Sometimes diffuse but with many provocative observations on world history and its present twists.