So I'm curious, through the process of writing this book, did you discover something for yourself or did your opinions change about something?

Well, I think that...

Yes, yes and no.

So I started off with, I came to some of these arguments by my studies, but I really was forced to deepen them.

And I think I discovered, well, one thing is that when you teach European history in the academy, oftentimes there's not enough emphasis on really the whole breadth of Europe.

And so for some of these essays, I really delved into like Finnish history, Norwegian history, right? The history of, really understanding these, these smaller nationalities that are living under imperial rule, really thinking about political processes of empire and kingship and developments over time.

Like there, I came of age in the whole time where there's a critique of of Eurocentrism but in fact what I came to was sort of saying well Eurocentrism vis-a-vis the rest of the world but I kind of flipped it on its head and said look Europe is a tribal place right this development from tribe to empire to kingdom happens on the European continent itself so rather than it being that there's a model that works for Europe and doesn't work for the rest of the world actually there are deep structures of political and social organization that exist both in Europe and in the rest of the world, right? We have hunter-gatherers in Europe up until the 19th century, the Sami, you know, in the northern areas.

So- Right,