ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with a type of political entity that no longer exists anywhere in the world, at least in its pure form that is analyzed here. It develops generalizations about aristocratic empires that will help us understand their politics. The book defines a pure traditional aristocratic empire as a political entity that contains an aristocracy and is unaffected by commercialization or any other form of modernization. It explores the politics of the aristocracy are dealt with and not the politics of primitive societies, including villages within aristocratic empires, or the politics of towns, except as village and town politics affect the politics of the aristocracy. The book develops the tentative generalizations are supported by references to data from specific aristocratic empires only to a very limited extent. The empires dealt with here are best described as traditional aristocratic empires.
