What is the name of the book and what are its coordinates?

The book is Resilient Statehood: Why and How Some Nations Maintained Long-Term Independence and Sovereignty. It was published in June 2026 by Springer. The book is Open Access.

What’s the argument?

Over centuries of imperial pressures, the majority of the world’s states were conquered, dismembered, or remade by foreign powers. How did Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, and Thailand avoid this fate? Not because of favorable geography or other immutable factors, but instead through diplomacy, strategic concessions, social cohesion and identity, tactical resistance, and internal modernization.

Why should we care?

We think that the subject itself is interesting and important. Conventional narratives focus on empires, and neglect the agency of non-European political communities. Ethiopian Orthodox priests lead the march against the Italians. The leadership of Thailand remained neutral between rival empires (British and French) seeking to conquer its territory, while also crafting ties with Russia in to order influence French ambitions. Our findings also have contemporary implications. The broader strategies used in centuries past — including selective modernization, strategic concessions, niche military innovation, decisive decisions, cultivating national identity, and foresighted diplomacy — will help small states navigate an unsettled international order marked by shifts in the distribution of power.

Why will we find the article (or book) persuasive?

Many studies look to the country-level to understand what makes states resilient over the long term, and particularly small- and medium-size states. This is particularly true in historical accounts, which tend to focus on a single state. In contrast, we use a medium-n design which allows us to carefully examine historical processes across multiple cases. Each case is handled by an expert on the particular country and its history during the age of European empires. Our approach is inductive. We did not set out to test theories or pre-formulated hypotheses. We let the evidence ‘speak for itself.’

Why did you decide to write it in the first place?

The idea for this project emerged more than six years ago. We soon realized that we lacked the depth of country knowledge to do the project justice. So the idea sat for a few years. But then we realized we could address the problem by inviting experts to contribute to a collective project, in the form of an edited volume.

What would you most like to change about the piece, and why?

Wrangling an edited project always presents challenges. Academics brought diverse backgrounds to the question. One contributor found themselves, due to personal difficulties, unable to finish their chapter; we could not find an author for one of the planned cases. In the end, we included abridged accounts of Nepal and Mongolia in our framework chapter. We would have preferred full studies of those cases, written by genuine experts. We also wrestled with the criteria for which cases to include. The book explicitly discusses these questions, its own limitations, and possible future directions for research.

How much difficulty did you have getting the piece accepted?

One reason we opted for Springer was an ability to publish the book as an Open Access publication, making the entire book available freely to all. Support for this was granted by the Qatar National Library as well as a grant from the Qatar Research Development and Innovation Council. Given that readers in many of the country cases featured in the book face challenges accessing academic literature, this was essential for us. This was explicit from the outset of the project and publisher selection. The team at Springer (shout out to Alex) was great.