One of the things in the article that feels off is presenting correlations among historic empires by looking through contemporary model view. In their time, those empires were ruled by different models. To give you an example, here is this "currency reserve" thing that he's talking about, and especially the claims about the Dutch empire in that context. AFAK, the "currency reserve" notion itself is pretty new, and to consider the Dutch empire as "world power" is also a stretch, regardless of whatever wonders that may have happened there in its heydays.