Huns and guns

Horse-backed archers from central Asia left a lasting imprint on world history.

- NEVIL GIBSON

Empires come about through conquest and colonisation. Historians who take a longer view see this as a part of how civilisations rise and fall.

Last year we saw international history professor Marc David Baer's 500-plus-page The Ottomans. Now it's the turn of the nomadic tribes of central Asia to have their contribution recognised. These two accounts intersect, as the conquerors of the steppes often butted up against the easternmost borders of the Roman and Ottoman empires.

Kenneth Harl, an emeritus professor based in New Orleans, spent 25 years studying Greco-Roman sites in Turkey. Ten years ago, he launched a series of lectures called Barbarians of the Steppes. Interest in the Silk Road countries, a subject covered by the British Peter Frankopan, another distinguished professor of history, had spiked because of China's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Harl was persuaded to turn his lectures into another doorstopper of 570 pages, including an index, extensive source notes and a glossary.