How Empires Run Out of Money: Fiscal Collapse Through History

Every empire learns the same hard truth: power costs more than it pays. From the Roman legions to the British Navy, from the Ming Dynasty to the Soviet Union, states rose on conquest and trade-then faltered under the weight of their own expenditures. This book examines how empires across history exhausted their treasuries long before they lost their armies. Drawing on economic archives, numismat...