By revisiting the history of Russia and Eurasia in the context of global history, Stanziani is successful in breaking a number of our preconceptions. Indispensable for those who are keen to reconsider the conventional narrative and understanding of the history of the world.

Haneda Masashi, Professor of History, University of Tokyo, Japan

After Oriental Despotism is a fascinating and ground-breaking study of human bondage in Russia and Central Asia… This is a pioneering study of Russian serfdom in Eurasian context.

Elise Wirtschafter, Professor of History, California State Polytechnic University, USA

A wide ranging account that links power and the perception of power to the historical dynamics of Eurasian societies from the sixteenth century. Alessandro Stanziani is particularly instructive on labour controls and the related relationship between coercion and economic growth. An important work.

Jeremy Black MBE, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, UK and author of Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth-Century World and War in the Eighteenth-Century World

At a moment when some of the most repressive regimes see the fastest economic growth, it is time to revisit our cherished notions about the connections between freedom and economic development, between democracy and capitalism. To do so, Stanziani disentangles the economic history of Russia during the past few centuries -- usually considered to be exhibit A in any accounts of backwardness--and finds that its economic performance was much better than we have been led to believe and that it succeeded on the back of particularly coercive forms of labor mobilization, and autocratic political institutions. The disconcerting lesson of this path-breaking book is that economic growth can take on many different forms, and be channeled by very different institutions. Freedom, democracy and liberal institutions are neither a precondition for modern economic growth nor an automatic outcome of it. A must read for anyone interested in global economic history.

Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, Harvard University, USA and author of Empire of Cotton: The Global Origins of Modern Capitalism (2014)

Balanced assessments and breadth of perspective… [This book] is a significant milestone in the history of Western disputes about the ways of Russian history

Dmitry Khitrov, Istoricheskij Journal