Acknowledgements
Many, many people provided invaluable support and feedback on this work. This book would not have been written without their insights, not to mention friendship over the years working on this project. I am particularly indebted to Peter Turchin and Andrew Monson for their constant advising and backing in everything I do, and to Michael Peachin, Gilles Bransbourg, and Sebastian Heath who were instrumental in helping me shape the ideas expressed here. I would like to thank also James Bennett for reading an early draft of this book and providing quite helpful notes, and to an anonymous reviewer for thoughtful commetns and critiques which improved the final product substantially.
I want also to acknowledge Joe Manning, Daniel Mullins, and all of my friends and colleagues at Seshat: Global History Databank for helping to sharpen my thoughts on these issues and exposing me to novel methods of comparative history. Much of the initial thinking about this project was conducted while a PhD student, and I would like to thank Dennis Kehoe for his very helpful appraisal of my earlier work on the Roman economy and to everyone in the Classics department at NYU and my friends at Columbia and ISAW for all their support and encouragement during those years.