This doesn’t qualify as criticism per se, but might offer some help for coloring in the edges. The only real suspicion I have about Turchin’s work is that it follows the traditional model of only looking at agrarian empires, even though better information is available now outside of this traditional focus.
Significant change in the understanding of mongols and other nomadic empires
From Needy Nomad (of material goods for survival) to Tradey Nomad (of luxury goods for maintaining their social organization), from Thomas Barfield in The Perilous Frontier.
Under this lens, a large unified agrarian state provides enough luxury trade and raiding for large nomadic confederacies to form.
Beckwith goes further in Empires of the Silk Road (into controversy), arguing that nomads are the drivers of Eurasian commerce. This is on the basis of records detailing huge importations of finished goods, including things like iron weapons and armor, into China. Further, he argues an inverse relationship between the agrarian states and the nomad confederacies—noting that the confederacies grew larger first, posits that the formation of a large confederacy creates a kind of Silk Road free-trade zone, which generates enough surplus wealth in the agrarian kingdoms to fund wars of unification.
A little detail about the Han-Xiongnu Wars provides some context about a stupendous crisis that might devour a golden age.
Rough draft for Scott’s Secular Cycles post:
This doesn’t qualify as criticism per se, but might offer some help for coloring in the edges. The only real suspicion I have about Turchin’s work is that it follows the traditional model of only looking at agrarian empires, even though better information is available now outside of this traditional focus.
Significant change in the understanding of mongols and other nomadic empires
From Needy Nomad (of material goods for survival) to Tradey Nomad (of luxury goods for maintaining their social organization), from Thomas Barfield in The Perilous Frontier.
Under this lens, a large unified agrarian state provides enough luxury trade and raiding for large nomadic confederacies to form.
Beckwith goes further in Empires of the Silk Road (into controversy), arguing that nomads are the drivers of Eurasian commerce. This is on the basis of records detailing huge importations of finished goods, including things like iron weapons and armor, into China. Further, he argues an inverse relationship between the agrarian states and the nomad confederacies—noting that the confederacies grew larger first, posits that the formation of a large confederacy creates a kind of Silk Road free-trade zone, which generates enough surplus wealth in the agrarian kingdoms to fund wars of unification.
A little detail about the Han-Xiongnu Wars provides some context about a stupendous crisis that might devour a golden age.