ABSTRACT
The Czarist Russian empire in northern Eurasia offers a counterexample with some Western cultural dimensions. The early modern empires resembled the universal empires of the ancient period in the sense that they were built upon a preindustrial agricultural base by hereditary military regimes employing foot soldiers and horsemen. Early modern empires can be variously characterized as culturalistic or pluralistic, depending on their cultural policy and the foreign or indigenous origin of their rulers. In the broadest terms the early modern empires may be regarded as agents of cultural conservatism, reviving and preserving traditional values after the Mongol conquests. The early modern empires of Asia were roughly contemporaneous with the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English empires. In terms of the development of the various civilizations of Asia, the formation of early modern empires was in most cases a consequence of the experience of Mongol pressures in the preceding period.
