Thomas J. Barfield is a historian of Central Eurasia and a professor of anthropology at Boston University.
Latest by this author
The U.S. was born out of ideas and the geopolitical schemes of competing maritime empires, forging a foreign policy approach that dominates its foreign relations today.
By Thomas J. Barfield in Human Bridges | English
The European Union project might appear unprecedented but it is not. The Holy Roman Empire successfully managed the affairs of central Europe by creating a similar composite political structure.
By Thomas J. Barfield in Human Bridges | English
More about this author
Thomas J. Barfield is professor of anthropology at Boston University. His new book, Shadow Empires, explores how distinctly different types of empires arose and sustained themselves as the dominant polities of Eurasia and North Africa for 2,500 years before disappearing in the 20th century. He is a renowned historian of Central Eurasia and the author of The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757, Afghanistan: An Atlas of Indigenous Domestic Architecture, and Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (revised and expanded second edition 2022, Princeton University Press).
Publications by this author
The Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan: Pastoral Nomadism in Transition
University of Texas Press | 1982
University of Texas Press | 1991
Wiley-Blackwell | 1992
Princeton University Press | December | 2022
Princeton University Press | October | 2023
