This book is an extraordinary tour de force, a work of such extravagant learning and analysis that it is likely to humble any reviewer (certainly this one) and overwhelm any reader. That is its greatest risk—that it is such an advance in comparative history that readers (and reviewers) will find it hard to comprehend its scope and thus will concentrate on details, where undoubtedly it is possible to find things to question. Such a narrow reading would be wrong; this monument must be appreciated in all of its scale, as well as in the refinement of its details.

Comparative history has certain ineluctable difficulties, arising from our necessary dependence on secondary works by other scholars for areas in which we ourselves do not command the primary sources. If we study the history of areas A, B, and C but command the primary sources only for area A, then similarities or differences that we perceive with areas B and C may be similarities or differences not in what the sources tell us, but rather in how those sources have been interpreted by others. Moreover, the inevitable scholarly controversies that arise are hard to judge: does X now dispute the interpretations of Y done twenty years ago because more is known and the sources have been explored better, so that X's interpretation is to be preferred, or does X differ because X is a sloppy historian whose attempt to revise Y's older interpretation does not stand up to an examination of the evidence?

Victor Lieberman's answer to this sort of difficulty is to acknowledge it and then to read absolutely everything he can lay his hands on covering the subject. This volume lacks a bibliography because the number of sources consulted—about 4,100, Lieberman informed me—would have added some 130 pages to the book. So that bibliography has been put on a University of Michigan website whose URL is given on page xxvi.

The comparative historian is also, of course, limited by his command of languages. I do not think that Lieberman commands Japanese, Russian, or Chinese, for example, so the voluminous historical work in those languages is closed to him. His sources are overwhelmingly in English. But these are so voluminous that it is hard to imagine that any significant matter discussed in, say, Japanese, Russian, or Chinese sources will not also have been reflected in the works accessible to him. His mastery of his sources is extraordinary. He has also consulted colleagues with detailed expertise where he felt it desirable to do so. I should say here that he consulted me with regard to island Southeast Asia, and I made some suggestions about his treatment of that region.

This is the second volume in Lieberman's magnum opus under the title of Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, the first having been published in 2003; this is helpfully summarized in the first chapter of volume 2. That first volume concentrated on mainland Southeast Asia but also explored parallels more widely. The entire project reflects an interest that is captured in the title of Lieberman's first, highly regarded book of 1984, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580–1760 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press). Lieberman was interested in what makes states cohere and what makes them fall apart. As he thought about this subject, as he says in the preface to volume 2 of Strange Parallels (following Montaigne), that he “found that the more I ate, the bigger my appetite became” (p. xxi). The result is volume 2, just short of a thousand pages. No intellectual anorexia there. I think that most scholars would find it easy to accept the idea that polities at similar levels of development might perceive similar priorities and adopt similar strategies. But Lieberman takes this simple insight a great deal further and asks why this might occur at roughly similar times at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, thereby elevating the issue to a historical question of prime importance—and an analytical task of great difficulty.

The book covers principally Russia, France, Japan, China, and South Asia, along with Burma, Siam, and Vietnam in mainland Southeast Asia and, at last appearing here, the island world of Southeast Asia. Occasionally other polities make briefer appearances. Lieberman points to similarities in political, cultural, and economic trajectories that raise valuable comparative insights. His general argument is that in the various regions he has studied, quite scattered, smaller-scale polities cohered into larger polities in similar ways and at similar times. He draws a primary distinction between what he calls “protected” and “exposed” zones, by which he means mainly those areas that were exposed to Inner Asian nomadic peoples and those that were not. These Inner Asian nomads indeed play a major role in his story. The “protected” cases are Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Russia, and France—places that those nomads found hard to get at—while the “exposed” case studies are China, South Asia, and Southwest Asia. He does not, however, apply this distinction mechanically and inflexibly. South Asia, in fact, sits in something of a midway position between the poles of protected and exposed. Lieberman insists that he does not mean to replace the more common distinctions drawn between Europe and the rest of the world, nor to deny European exceptionalism in many respects. Rather, he intends to point out comparisons that contribute to one of history's most crucial—yet most difficult—aims, to explain causation.

One of the strengths of this work is its refusal to pretend that everything is clear and straightforward. Again and again, Lieberman warns his reader that conclusions are preliminary, that interpretations are disputed, that other possibilities have yet to be investigated, and that synchronicities are often less precise than they might be in an ideal world. Lieberman authoritatively weaves his way through the messiness of history, never letting his reader think that it will be easy going. The work abounds with warning words and phrases, such as “probably,” “reasons to suspect,” and “arguably.” This lack of dogmatism is, indeed, among the hallmarks of this book. Lieberman makes observations such as, “Lest one assume that integration in different spheres of activity necessarily correlated, consider that in 1750 Vietnam and Japan were among the most politically decentralized realms, but in ethnic and cultural terms, among the most unified… . In short, we are dealing with deeply idiosyncratic societies” (p. 52). Or, “Convenient though it would be to find political history closely synchronized across Southeast Asia, reality did not always oblige” (p. 797). In the midst of all this complexity, the work is often speculative, but brilliantly so, and it invites readers to consider and take issue with it if they will (as, indeed, I will briefly here).

To illustrate the depth and complexity of Lieberman's analysis, consider this summary paragraph:

Lieberman's interpretations, as I have already indicated, point to the importance of the Inner Asian nomadic peoples as vital players in this historical drama from one end of the Eurasian landmass to the other, players whose activities were important in producing the synchronicities that he observes. But there are other factors, notably the Medieval Climate Anomaly (or Medieval Warm Period) of the ninth to thirteenth centuries that extended growing seasons in Europe at one end of the Eurasian landmass, increased summer temperatures in the middle, and increased rainfall during the wet monsoons at the other end in mainland Southeast Asia, thus boosting rice production there. Others include disease (notably the Black Death), advances in various aspects of warfare, including artillery and firearms, rising literacy and spreading vernacular literatures, increasing monetization, population growth, and rhythms of world trade.

There are several helpful summary points in the book, where Lieberman allows his readers to catch their breath and see whether they have kept up so far. On pages 77–92, he lists nine “reasons for global synchronization” (although, at this stage of the book, some of this may seem more the “what” than the “why” of these synchronicities):

1. 1. High cultural transmissions from core civilizations

2. 2. Disease

3. 3. Climate

4. 4. The “warhorse revolution”

5. 5. Mongol and Inner Asian influences

6. 6. Commerce

7. 7. Firearms

8. 8. Cumulative political expertise and parallel institutional initiatives

9. 9. Intellectual synergies

The synchronicities that Lieberman reveals are indeed striking. As he puts it, “In a word”—although nothing in this book is “in a word,” and it would be a great shame if it were—“cycles of economic/demographic expansion and contraction in mainland Southeast Asia, Europe and China ran loosely parallel, with growth particularly notable from 800/900 to 1270, 1470/1500 to 1640, and 1700 to 1830” (p. 548). He explains these cycles with relation to the nine elements set out earlier. Given contemporary global concerns, many readers will be particularly interested in his invocation of climatic change, such as the “increased solar radiation, warmer Chinese climate, glacier retreat, and more powerful Asian summer monsoons” of approximately 960 to 1340 (p. 555). I personally found the emphasis on the Inner Asian influences of particular interest; Lieberman points out how “the Yadavas, Hoysalas, and Delhi sultanates in India overlapped with the Turkic Seljuk empire (1038–1307) in Anatolia, Iraq and Iran; with the Turkic Karakhanid empire (999–1212) in Transoxania and Kashgaria; and with the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol empires” (p. 685).

A book of this scale is bound to throw up some questions in the minds of readers—if it did not, it would be a miracle rather than a book. For example, I did not entirely understand how Lieberman can say that “the Irrawaddy, Chaophraya, and eastern lowlands” of Southeast Asia “by 1825 … [each] supported one incontestably dominant complex,” yet that “in the Chaophraya basin … as late as 1800 … perhaps [only] half the population … would identify themselves as Siamese” (pp. 29–30). Of course the Siamese were the most dominant there, but if something of the order of half the population regarded itself as non-Siamese, it seems to me that this dominance must have been in some measure contested, or at least contestable. Pages 58–62 have detailed graphs showing “the number of square kilometers held” at certain times by states in Southeast Asia, Russia, France, and Japan, but I am skeptical that we have the statistical data necessary to support all of these graphs, particularly those for earlier periods.

Inevitably, other scholars will test this book in the first instance on how Lieberman handles their own sphere of expertise. My expertise is on the island world, and there I must say that I have reservations. Overall, Lieberman's command of the literature is exemplary, and my objections are marginal to the main thrust of his arguments. But I do feel that he overestimates the extent to which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) can be compared to the Inner Asian nomads who are important to the rest of his story. Of course the VOC was important in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of course the Dutch state that succeeded it profoundly affected the Indonesian archipelago, but that was largely a phenomenon of the nineteenth century. Lieberman seems to me to see that impact as occurring too early, and he may be too anxious to see a common pattern in dubbing the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries “white inner Asians” (p. 770). When he says, “From the early 1600s to 1830 the Dutch emasculated the archipelago's chief Muslim polities” (p. 769) or “Between c. 1660 and 1830 the VOC state evolved from primus inter pares to dominant archipelagic power… . Far more convincingly than under Majapahit, by 1830 a single state controlled far-flung regions in terms not merely of titular preeminence, but hard military strength” (p. 857), he is wrong, in my view. The period from 1660 to 1800 was precisely the time when the VOC got overextended, lost a great deal of money, had to withdraw from some its barely visible outposts, and finally went bankrupt. In 1830, the Netherlands at last controlled Java, but not a lot else.

The comparison with Majapahit is not really so decisive. In some ways, the Dutch may well have exercised more control in 1830 in some places than Majapahit nearly 500 years before—more modern weapons made that possible—but the difference is not as great as Lieberman seems to me to suggest. Both Majapahit in the fourteenth century and the Dutch in 1830 had fairly firm control of Java and Madura, but for the rest, the comparison is a bit of a toss-up. The Dutch in 1830 had more control of South Sulawesi and the “Spice Islands” of Maluku than Majapahit, but the latter did not matter much by then. On the other hand, Majapahit conquered Bali in 1343 and in 1377 successfully sent a punitive expedition against Palembang in Sumatra. The Dutch, by contrast, had no control of Bali in 1830 and failed in their first expedition against Aceh in 1873—and then settled into the longest war in colonial history to try to subdue it. One could say that “a single state controlled far-flung regions” in Indonesia in 1910, but not 1830.

Thus, it seems to me that the islands of Indonesia do not fit the patterns seen elsewhere in the book at all well. Emphasizing that instead of seeking parallels, I feel, would have strengthened yet further the striking synchronicities across the Eurasian landmass in the rest of the book, a landmass to which the islands were only tenuously connected geopolitically during the period covered by Lieberman—a point he alludes to himself on page 905.

In the end, a book such as this must face the “so what?” question. What do we learn from a work of such superb erudition, one that consumed many years of an outstanding scholar's life? Lieberman's answer is persuasive:

This outstanding work is a major contribution to the discipline of history on a global scale. Few historians have the range of knowledge, the determination, and, indeed, the courage to tackle analysis on this scale. One should not use the term “masterpiece” lightly, but I think that it can be rightly used of this book. Lieberman and his publisher are to be congratulated on setting a new standard of scholarship for comparativists, and providing much stimulating material and inspiration for all the rest of us.