From the Chinese Emperors to the Romans and the Byzantines, from British Foreign Office agents in the Great Game to today’s hippies, backpackers and aid workers, a long line of “civilized” sedentary peoples have again and again misunderstood nomads, and nomadism. Caricatured as backward herders, thieving pastoralists, or members of some vast and undifferentiated horde of humanity forever wandering the planet, nomads are usually perceived as anything but modern and almost always as on the verge of obsolescence. The Civilization of Perpetual Movement is the first examination of nomadism as a vital global political practice.