Though many would say that the age of empires is over, it has surely left an indelible mark on the way many of us think about the past, on the way we conceptualize space, and on the way we define the boundaries between the familiar and the exotic. After all, empires may have been ruled from some of the world’s most celebrated cities but they were often forged along distant, forbidding frontiers. Because of this they proved to be surprisingly flexible entities capable of covering vast portions of the globe and transforming unknown territories – often described as wild or savage – into '...