This open access book makes an important and original contribution in shifting the analytical lens from 'empires' to the agency of 'resilient states'. Employing a comparative framework, which highlights strategies such as diplomacy, selective modernization, and national identity, the book provides a novel and accessible way to understand how certain states maintained sovereignty. Few countries have remained independent over the last 600 years. While many books have sought to understand why and how expansionist efforts occurred, none has turned that question around, seeking answers to why and how some nations remained independent. This book brings several (but not all) of these countries together, in one collection, capturing other histories. It presents chapters on eight countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, and Thailand, from 1400 to the present, and collates their historical trajectories in independence, outlining key commonalities, and differences. It is relevant to scholars in political science, development studies, decolonial and post-colonial studies, history, and international relations.

Logan Cochrane is Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Logan acts as Consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.

Alexandra Wilson holds a master of arts in International Development and Globalization from the University of Ottawa and a bachelor of global and international studies with a specialization in global development from Carleton University. She has published research on topics such as the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, electric vehicle adoption, and the motivations behind NGO donor funding refusal.