Analytical Essay One, due Sunday, February 24th at 1100 pmTopic.docx

Analytical Essay One, due Sunday, February 24th at 11:00 pm
Topic A
In Unit 4, we claimed that empire-builders in the ancient world
needed to "craft a type of multi-ethnic cohesion" – ways for
people from different backgrounds to coexist under the umbrella
of the empire – in order for their state to function (Video
4.1). On the other hand, we consider evidence discussed in
Units 3 and 4 that the foundation of empire was the willingness
of leaders to use violence to overwhelm their enemies.
In an essay of 600 to 1200 words, explore such evidence
to make an argument about some of the ways people balanced
political solutions to problems with war. In the end, you should
persuade your reader, through your thoughtful analysis of the
historical evidence, that empire-building in the ancient world
transformed the ways that humans understood the role of
violence in politics.
When organizing your ideas and drafting your essay, follow
these guidelines:
1. Build your analysis using the course materials. The basis of
your essay should be the primary source material found at the
end of Unit 4 under “Unit 4 Resources.” By all means, take the
ideas and evidence offered in the videos (and please note that
we have provided transcripts of the videos as well.) This
information will provide context for the primary resources.
*DO NOT base your observations on other evidence that you
locate on the web or elsewhere. Remember, a big part of this
essay is showing your mastery of the course material as
assigned.*
2. After reviewing the material from Week 4, choose the two --
four examples from the primary sources that best allow you to
make a persuasive case about the role of empire in the ancient

world. While you want to show that you understand the larger
trends in the material, take the time to explore in depth these
specific examples.
3. When you refer to specific historical evidence (which should
be something you do frequently throughout the essay), indicate,
in parentheses, the location in the course materials of the
evidence. An example of this is in the first sentence above.
4. Do not simply copy what we (or anyone else) have said. If
you do, use quotation marks to indicate that the words were
written by someone else and be sure to indicate your source for
the quotation in parentheses. Plagiarism is a serious violation of
GSU policy that leads to severe penalties!
5. To qualify for a grade in the C range, your essay must be at
least 600 words (which is approximately 2 double-spaced pages,
depending on the formatting of your document). B-range essays
must be at least 900 words, and A-range essays must be at
least 1200 words. However, meeting the word requirement does
not mean that you will necessary receive a certain grade.
We will grade the essay out of 100 possible points according to
these criteria:
Up to 30 points for the student's grasp of the larger
historical context covered in the units
Up to 25 points for the appropriateness of the student's choice
of examples to analyze in depth and proper citation of these
sources
Up to 25 points for the quality of the student's analysis of those
examples
Up to 20 points for appropriate grammar and graceful
expression
Topic B
In Unit 6, we suggested that Africa and the Americas presented

us with a set of historical experiences that in some ways
differed from those of Eurasia (Video 6.1). This suggests that
we need to imagine what it would be like to tell the story of
world history from the perspective of these civilizations rather
than those along the Silk Road. In this essay we ask you to
present world history from the standpoint either of Africa or the
Americas.
In an essay of 600 to 1200 words, explore the evidence from the
videos and the assigned readings/images to describe some
aspect of world history from roughly the start of the Common
Era to 900 CE – trade, cities, empire, or religious practice, as a
few examples – from the standpoint of either Africa or the
Americas. In the end, you should persuade your reader, through
your thoughtful analysis of the historical evidence, that the
African or American trajectory was the norm, and the Eurasian
model diverged from it.
When organizing your ideas and drafting your essay, follow
these guidelines:
1. Build your analysis using the course materials. The basis of
your essay should be the primary source material found at the
end of Unit 6 under “Unit 6 Resources.” By all means, take the
ideas and evidence offered in the videos (and please note that
we have provided transcripts of the videos as well.) This
information will provide context for the primary resources.
*DO NOT base your observations on other evidence that you
locate on the web or elsewhere. Remember, a big part of this
essay is showing your mastery of the course material as
assigned.*
2. After reviewing the material from Week 6, choose the two --
four examples from the primary sources that best allow you to
make a persuasive case that African or American history
followed a typical historical trajectory. While you want to show
that you understand the larger trends in the material, take the
time to explore in depth these specific examples.

3. When you refer to specific historical evidence (which should
be something you do frequently throughout the essay), indicate,
in parentheses, the location in the course materials of the
evidence. An example of this is in the first sentence above.
4. Do not simply copy what we (or anyone else) have said. If
you do, use quotation marks to indicate that the words were
written by someone else and be sure to indicate your source in
parentheses. Plagiarism is a serious violation of GSU policy
that leads to severe penalties!
5. To qualify for a grade in the C range, your essay must be at
least 600 words (which is approximately 2 double-spaced pages,
depending on the formatting of your document). B-range essays
must be at least 900 words, and A-range essays must be at
least 1200 words. However, meeting the word requirement does
not mean that you will necessary receive a certain grade.
We will grade the essay out of 100 possible points according to
these criteria:
Up to 30 points for the student's grasp of the larger
historical context covered in the units
Up to 25 points for the appropriateness of the student's choice
of examples to analyze in depth and proper citation of these
sources
Up to 25 points for the quality of the student's analysis of those
examples
Up to 20 points for appropriate grammar and graceful
expression
Unit Six: The Othered: Africa and the Americas 1000 BCE-1000
CE

6.1 Alterity
It is important to recognize that civilization was not just limited
to those areas of the
Afroeurasian world that experienced empire-building or whose
integration into trade networks
meant that they were part of a broader, more tightly knit, world.
We also need to take seriously
the history of those peoples whose experiences diverged from
this model, looking closely at
civilizations in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Americas.
Making comparisons between the experiences of these regions
with other areas of the
world that we have studied will make some important elements
clear. Demographic historians
believe that less than 20% of the world’s population -- some 50
million people -- lived in the
Americas and sub-Saharan Africa. In many cases these people
lacked access to heavy draft
animals or never developed a pastoral economy, which meant
that they pursued alternative paths
in the course of their development.
These alternatives are important, and they speak to the
diversity and creativity of the
human experience. In some cases, people developed complex
societies that were not centered on
towns and cities; in others they developed complex societies
with intricate trade and
communications networks. In some cases empires formed, in
others they did not. Some societies
developed well-established religious traditions with an
entrenched priestly class; in others
religious experience remained rooted in local tradition and
folklore. We see, in other words, the
value of understanding the diverse range of human society and
culture. But this is also a history

class, so it remains important not just to note the diversity of
human society and culture, but also
to investigate how it changed over time.
6.2 African Geography
During the Classical Era of second-wave civilizations, some
85% of the world’s
population lived in Europe and Asia. Africa was home to 10%
of that global population. And it is
important to keep in mind that the millions of people living in
Africa during this period did not
recognize a shared identity based on their shared continent.
Instead, the geographical diversity of
Africa helped shape its historical trajectory in the period before
modern colonization.
It is useful to look at Africa as being split into different
geographical zones. The Horn of
Africa and the Nile River Valley is one contact zone, and as we
saw the River system was used
by people not only as a source of irrigation that supported
widespread agriculture, but it also was
used as a conduit of transport. The highlands of Africa, about
which we will learn more in the
following section, was connected not only to the Mediterranean
through trade, but also to the
Arabian peninsula across the Red Sea.
Northwest Africa and the Sahara form another analytical unit.
Societies there included
not only the mighty Carthaginians (who fought three brutal wars
again Rome for control of the
Mediterranean in the Punic Wars), but also the trans-Saharan
trading cities like Timbuktu, which
were connected East and West Africa to the Mediterranean

through its vast trading network.
Finally, there is sub-Saharan Africa, a territory that
encompasses both equatorial
rainforests, arid deserts, and vast grasslands. Sub-Saharan
Africa, which experienced lower
population densities than other areas, continued to see hunter-
gatherer societies thrive for
centuries after the practice was abandoned in more densely
populated areas. Indeed, one of the
big stories about the history sub-Saharan Africa, and one we
will consider shortly, is how the
settling of Southern Africa by Bantu-speaking agriculturalists
fundamentally transformed the
historical trajectories of the continent.
6.3 Meroë
In the Northeast region of Africa, the Nubian civilization
continued to flourish between
300 B.C.E. and 100 C.E., even as Egypt came under the control
of the Roman Empire. The
monarchs who ruled Nubia resided in Meroë, a city on the Nile
River with a flourishing
economy built around agriculture, herding, and a variety of
trades (from textile production to
metal working). Surrounded by agricultural and pastoral zones,
Meroë also benefited from long-
distance commerce with markets in the broader Mediterranean
world. In its earlier phase as a
civilization, Nubians religion reflected the influence of
Egyptian theology; and Egyptian
hieroglyphics were the basis for the Nubian system of writing.

As Egypt lost its autonomy to
Rome, Egyptian cultural practices declined in Nubia, replaced
by worship of local gods and a
writing system created in Meroë. Between 100 C.E. and 400
C.E., Nubian autonomy eroded as
the kingdom’s access to natural resources declined with the
disappearance of its regional forests.
The city of Meroë was a center of Nubian civilization. The city,
which was in the
southern regions of Nubian influence, was ruled by a monarchy,
and this political position was
not limited to men. Ten women held the power of the throne,
and they ruled as Queen. This was
in contrast Hatshepsut in Egypt, who ruled as King and used
masculine pronouns. The city
economy was a diverse one consisting not only of tradesmen
(metal workers, weavers, and
merchants) but also laborers -- both free and enslaved. Over
time, this connection to Egypt also
meant that Meroë was exposed to Hellenism, and we see Greek
influences developing in Meroë
over time.
Outside the city people earned their livelihoods through both
agriculture and herding.
Farming, unlike the case in Egypt, was not completely
dependent on the annual flooding of the
Nile which meant that farming was a more diverse and
widespread than what is seen in other
areas. One consequence of this fact is that the rural population
did not experience the same
degree of political control as was the case in Egypt. Meroë , in
other words, was an important
economic and political center, but it was unable to exert quite
the same degree of control over

subject populations, who were still expected to pay tribute to
the rulers in Meroë .
Scholars note that Meroë ’s status came from its ability to
leverage its connections to
long-distance trade routes. Meroë tradesmen not only took
advantage of riverine trade routes up
and down the Nile River, which connected the city to Egypt and
the Mediterranean as well as the
highlands of Ethiopia, it also tapped into trans-Saharan trade
networks. In this way, Meroë was a
part of a thriving trade zone that criss-crossed North Africa --
connecting Meroë to cities as far
away as Marrakech, Timbuktu, and Fez. This trade was a robust
and diverse one. The Meroë se
traded iron and cotton for a wide range of commodities,
including gold and ivory. Over time, the
power and influence of Meroë began to decline, in part due to
shifts in the way that trade
operated. In particular, when trade shifted from the Nile to the
Red Sea, Meroë found itself
excluded from the lucrative routes and their access to resources
shriveled. By 100 CE their
influence was on the wane. These people then experienced a
series of dramatic and radical
changes. Meroë was opened up to the influence of Christianity
in the 4th century CE, and this
region of the world was dominated by Christianity for nearly
1000 years; only with the advent of
Arab trading in the 14th century, and the Islamic faith these
traders brought with them, did
Meroë fall under the sway of Islamic influences that still
characterize the region.

6.4 Axum
In the first century of the Common Era, the kingdom of Axum
took shape to southeast of
Nubia. The economic foundation for this emerging civilization
was a diverse economy that
funneled trade goods and agricultural products through the port
city of Adulis, on the Red Sea.
Using plows, the region’s farmers cultivated cash crops of
barley, millet, and wheat. And the
region’s merchants exported trade items from the interior of the
continent (including animal
skins, ivory, and human captives) and imported items from
distant markets across the Indian
Ocean economy. Likewise, Axum’s language and alphabet were
imported from the Arabian
peninsula. Axum’s rulers used their civilization’s accumulated
wealth to create magnificent
monuments in their capital city. Stone pillars memorializing
particular monarchs reached heights
of more than 100 feet, an impressive architectural feat given
that these markers were carved out
of individual rocks rather than being assembled out of multiple
stone elements.
The city of Axum in modern-day Ethiopia represented a rival to
Meroë’s power and
influence. Axum was located in the highlands of Ethiopia, close
to the coast of the Red Sea.
Unlike Meroë, which built its trade network both up and down
the Nile as well as tapping into
the trans-Sahara trade networks, Axum was oriented towards the
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
In this fashion, Axum was able to help satisfy Roman demands
for key commodities like pearls,
textiles, and spices. Axum was able to exact tribute on this

trade from Adulis, further enriching
the city and its elites. Importantly, Axum’s fortunes ascended
just as Meroë’s declined -- in each
case due no small part to the shifting nature of trade routes.
Axum’s monumental architecture meant to highlight the power,
significance, and
influence of the city elites. Axum was a powerful and
significant polity. Historians believe that
the Romans considered them to be an empire (just as they and
the Persians were). This
connection to Rome and to the Mediterranean also meant that
Axum was exposed to Hellenism
and to the influence of the Greeks.
The religious history of Axum centers on the importation of
Christianity in the 4th C CE.
This happened because of its connections to the Roman world.
King Ezana of Axum converted
to Christianity in the 4th century, making him and Emperor
Constantine of Rome two leaders
who each adopted Christianity and gave it a certain prestige. In
other words, King Ezana’s royal
authority made Christianity acceptable and lent it an
institutional prestige. With Ezana’s
conversion, Christianity made inroads into Axumite society, and
connected the Kingdom
religiously not only to Rome but also to Egypt, which was under
the influence of Coptic
Christians.
6.5 Jenne-Jeno
Diverging from the pattern of the centralized political systems
of Nubia and Axum, city-
states along the Niger River in West Africa seem to have been
governed without elaborate
formal institutions of power. From roughly 500 B.C.E. to 900

C.E., many different city-states
rose and declined in this part of Africa. Jenne-Jeno was perhaps
the most significant example of
this kind of society, maintaining a population of some 40,000
people despite the absence of a
sizeable military, a legal system delineating clear class
boundaries, or large structures through
which an elite communicated their influence over the rest of the
society. Instead, power
dynamics in Jenne-jeno reflected a rough equality of influence
being exercised by highly skilled
tradesmen producing metalwork, textiles and pottery. Not only
did the city’s residents engage in
mutually profitable local commerce, but they also cultivated
trade relationships with farmers,
miners, and merchants many hundreds of miles away.
West Africa, which experienced changes in climate that
disrupted the formation of large
polities, nonetheless saw the rise of urban centers that
dominated the political and economic
landscape. These cities, however, were not a part of some larger
state apparatus. The absence of
some overarching polity is a puzzling facet of West African
urban life. Indeed, these cities
cannot be termed “city-states,” because they lacked even that
type of political structure. Large
settlements like Jenne-Jeno, then, provide a remarkable
counterpart to the usual historical
narratives that describe a relentless process of political
creation, consolidation, and expansion.
Scholars suggest that in lieu of a state apparatus, even one that
only functioned at the level of the
city, places like Jenne-Jeno survived because of a process of

economic specialization. Each city
in the area dominated a key industry, thus ensuring its survival
and integrating each city into a
larger economic environment that promoted coordination rather
than competition. Jenne-Jeno,
for instance, was known for its iron smithing abilities, and the
iron smiths of Jenne-Jeno were
highly esteemed throughout the Niger River basin for their skill.
Other urban centers promoted
expertise in other industries, for instance textiles or leather
working. Over time these urban
centers were conflated with occupational guilds that controlled
aspects of the social environment,
dictating for instance marriage patterns and inheritance. Outside
the cities, rural areas also saw a
drive toward economic specialization that was linked to kinship
and ethnicity.
Cities like Jenne-Jeno, which enjoyed a dominant position in
one aspect of the economy,
then had to trade -- sometimes over long distances -- in order to
pull in all the resources that were
necessary. Historians have evidence that by 500 CE, Jenne-Jeno
was part of a long-distance trade
network that connected West Africa to the Mediterranean coast,
Egypt, and Central Africa.
6.6 Bantu
The Bantu population that pushed into the southern half of
African in the early Common
Era illustrated yet another pattern of political and economic
movement. Bringing with them
agricultural techniques that enabled them to compete with
populations continuing to rely on
Paleolithic practices, the Bantu expanded their geographic reach

through a process of migration
and displacement that played out over multiple generations. As
had been the case in other parts
of the world, Bantu societies that could sustain larger
populations through agricultural and
pastoral practices exposed the preexisting populations to
diseases that decimated their ranks. In
some areas such as the Kalahari region, those older societies
were able to maintain their presence
and to also influence (linguistically and theologically) the more
recently arrived Bantu
populations. In the case of the Batwa society in central Africa,
Paleolithic economic practices
were maintained but redirected to connect the Batwa to broader
networks of trade with Bantu
populations. Over the centuries of the Common Era, the Bantu
populations developed
considerable regional differences across the African continent,
with distinctive variations
emerging in language and in agricultural and pastoral
techniques. Yet the many Bantu societies
tended to have in common religious practices focused upon the
veneration of ancestors and
common cultural practices in which music and dance followed
similar aesthetic conventions.
Unlike the Horn of Africa -- polities like Meroe and Axum --
and also dissimilar to the
urban experiences of West Africa, Southern Africans did not
develop the same type of
civilization or socio-economic stratification that we see in
Africa north of the Equator. To be
clear, this is not a critique and it is important to remember that
there are many paths through
history. People living in Sub-Saharan Africa did not feel the
same population pressures as those

in the North; an urban center, let alone an empire, simply did
possess the same logic in this part
of the world. Instead, the dominant historical fact in this period
is the Bantu migration -- the
movement of Bantu-speaking peoples throughout the vast
interior space of Southern Africa. The
evidence suggests that there were two waves of Bantu
migrations -- one to East Africa and a
second spreading south towards the Kalahari. Forest dwelling
Bantu thrived in part due to
banana cultivation, allowing massive growth in the population
between 500-1000 CE. Much of
the evidence for this migration is of a linguistic nature;
linguistic scholars have identified more
than 400 related languages, and by carefully tracing how
languages change have created a
fascinating picture of human migration in Southern Africa. The
evidence suggests that the
migrations originated in modern-day Cameroon and Nigeria
around 3000 BCE. By 100 CE,
Bantu speaking peoples had populated central Africa and
scholars believe had probably reached
the East Coast of Africa as well. From there, they spread
throughout the rest of Southern Africa.
Much of this process was a peaceful one, and as Bantu-
speaking peoples came into
contact with indigenous ones, they exchanged knowledge,
cultural attitudes, and goods. In other
cases, however, as when the agricultural Bantu displaced
hunter-gatherers, conflicts could arise.
Because of disease, their skill with iron implements, and the
advantages of an agricultural
lifestyle, the Bantu absorbed the people with whom they came

into contact. But they were
affected by this contact, learning new skills, religious attitudes,
and -- in some cases, like the
forest-dwelling Batwa peoples -- new lifestyles.
6.7 Mesoamerica
We’ve already seen something of the diversity of communities –
some massively urban
civilizations with a transcontinental military reach, some
relatively conflict-free empires with a
near-global trade footprint, and some widespread and loosely
connected communities of related
linguistic ancestry – on the continent of Africa. We’ve also seen
how geographic and ecological
factors (bodies of water, seas of sand, parasites and diseases,
and even the basic problem of a
north-south orientation) can shape or even slow down human
exchange and movement. There’s
probably no better example of this than the Americas, because
for SO much of human history –
really, for our purposes, until 1492 – massive salt water oceans
kept the Americas pretty much to
itself. Africa might have had some difficult areas, but it was
still very much plugged into the
general story, in huge and complex ways. The Americas,
though, were going it alone.
And maybe this fact – their massive, splendid isolation –
justifies us thinking of
civilizations in the Andes of South America, in Mesoamerica
(what’s now Mexico and
Guatemala) in the southwest of what’s now the United States,
and in the forested areas east and
west of the Mississippi River Valley – as an afterthought. We
talked about the numerical

insignificance of Africa and the Americas, in raw human
population, and that seems even more
pronounced here. Remember that the Americas had something
like five to seven percent of the
world’s population around the beginning of the Common Era.
That’s not nothing, but it’s not a
big chunk, either.
Think about this, too – if Africa had a north-south problem – if
its orientation meant that
there were a lot of different climates and latitudes that
migrating populations had to adapt to –
think how much more the Americas faced this. Look at the map.
See how far this whole thing goes, north to south, tip to toe?
And see that really
mountainous, volcanic, thin, jungly part right here, right where
North and South America are
joined together? This is not easy to get across. The Americas in
general are not easy going, and
this pinched bit –Central America – is especially rugged. All
this means that, for the most part,
there ends up being not very much contact between, say,
southern civilizations (like in the
Andes) and northern civilizations (for example, even the
Teotihuacanians in present-day Mexico,
let alone the peoples of the Mississippi River Valley.)
On the other hand - there’s so much diversity in topography, in
ecology, in plants and
animals and environments in Mesoamerica, it’s almost like a
continent unto itself. From beaches
to 12,000 foot snowcapped peaks, the territory of the Maya –

kind of, more or less the current
countries of Guatemala and Belize, with Mexico’s Yucatan
Peninsula thrown in – has been
occupied for a long time, even before the earliest Maya came on
the scene, perhaps 2,000 years
before the common era. And when we talk about the Maya,
we’re really focusing most on the
rise of city-states with massive temple complexes, since around
500 BCE. Some of these cities
were absolutely massive – the city of El Mirador, for example,
was some six square miles in area
even before the common era. These cities featured pyramids,
plazas, and – starting a couple of
hundred years BCE – a sort of public propaganda feature called
a stela.
The stela is a massive upright stone with carvings in the Maya
language, which takes the
form of hieroglyphics – picture-writing, like the Egyptians
used. And for the most part, these
stelae were carved with messages that recorded important dates
in the lives of rulers, taking care
to magnify their glory, their fitness to rule, their general
awesomeness. This, for the literate
Mayan citizen in one of these grand cities, might have been the
equivalent of a massive
campaign poster. For historians, of course, these stelae provide
us with an amazingly detailed
record of what the Maya were up to.
The Maya, during their so-called “classical” period – the height
of their power and
sophistication, around 200 to 900 CE – formed dozens of such
city-states, each with its own
hierarchy of nobles and clergy, merchants and artisans, and each
embedded within an impressive

system of intersecting alliances and antagonisms with city-
states around it. The states were
frequently vying with one another – sometimes violently – for
wealth and power. At the same
time, trade routes allowed them frequent and long-range contact
of a more cooperative kind,
through which their shared culture and language, their art and
religion and science, was
communicated and celebrated. The Maya, for example, were
pretty famous for their
mathematical systems (inventing, for example, the concept of
“zero” as a number – which is
actually a lot more sophisticated than you might think.) They
used these mathematical insights to
work with astronomy and calendars. Two notable things about
the Maya calendar – first, it was
in base 20 (not base 10 – and this supposedly reflects the Maya
propensity to count on their toes.
Lots of other cultures do this, too – it’s not just the Maya that
had the good idea.) Second, it was
incredibly accurate. The Maya calculated the length of the solar
year (it’s just a smidge under
365 and a quarter days, so that you know) with astonishing
accuracy. They had a lot going on, is
my point.
The networks of military and trade activities that I mentioned
before brought the Maya
into contact with another major Mesoamerican civilization,
based in the city of Teotihuacan.
Located to the west of Maya territory, the urban complex of
Teotihuacan is about 25 miles from
the present-day Mexico City. Weirdly, this is another of those
civilizations that boast massive
achievements – many impressive pyramids and temples, broad
avenues, multi-story apartment

houses, workshops and stores and markets – but no sign of
military fortifications. The city’s
history lasted from around 200 BCE to sometime in the seventh
or eighth centuries, when a lot of
the city – but only the high-class parts – were burned and
destroyed. This might have been an
attack from without, but it could also be evidence of a pretty
angry lower class destroying the
civilization from within. Whatever the case, it seems that at
several points in its centuries of
history, forces from Teotihuacan encountered Maya city-states,
and in some cases – at least as
the Maya tell it – Teotihuacanian leaders managed to put their
own candidates on a Mayan
throne.
We only have the Maya’s word on this (carved in stone!)
because the Teotihuacanians –
again, unlike their boastful neighbors, the Maya – didn’t bother
to write things down.
Certainly they didn’t produce the self-aggrandizing infomercials
that were Mayan stelae, giving
glory to and claiming divine support for a particular ruler.
Instead, the Teotihuacanians seem to
have been content just to exist in their massive city until,
relatively quickly, they were no more.
Abrupt ends seem to be a specialty in Mesoamerican
civilizations, because the Maya, too,
collapsed pretty rapidly. (To be clear, it’s not like they all
suddenly died – and many city-states,
like Chichen Itza up in the north of the Yucatan peninsula, kept
right on rolling.) But in the

southern lowlands, where lots of famous Maya city-states were
located – Palenque, Copan, Tikal
– almost all the population centers were, well, depopulated.
Abandoned, almost, and all around
the 9th century. And while the collapse of a single city like
Teotihuacan is a big deal, surely, it’s
not nearly as striking as an entire region of independent city-
states running out of steam so
quickly. Scholars continue to debate this – was it a huge
drought? Disease? Warfare? What? But
let’s keep in mind that plenty of Maya continued to live – if not
in quite such splendor – when
the Spanish showed up in the early 1500s.
In any case, we see that Mesoamerica was home to at least two
important and influential
civilizations that flourished roughly 200 BCE to 7 or 800 CE.
These intricately connected,
hierarchically structured, technologically and culturally
impressive civilizations built on
Mesoamericans peoples in the past, and would leave an
important mark for their successors.
6.8 Andes
Scholars have identified three civilizations in the Andes that
help us understand how
politics, culture, and society operated in this part of the world.
One of the important issues that
we need to consider is the diverse terrain in the Andes--the
coastal regions were vastly different
than highlands and changes in altitude created almost infinite
ecological niches that humans
made use of.
The oldest of these civilizations was based on the trading city
Chavín de Huántar. Chavín

developed around 900 BCE as the centerpiece of a pan-Andean
religious movement. The
movement spread, in part, due to Chavín’s location on the trade
routes that connected these
centers both to the coastal regions and to the Amazon. As we
saw with the Silk Roads, religious
change and conversion took advantage of traders, and the spread
of Andean religion through
trade is usefully compared to spread of religion by the Silk
Roads. By around 750 BCE it is
thought that Chavín had grown to a size of perhaps 2,000-3,000
people, but with social
stratification, architectural distinctions based on status, and an
elaborate temple. Religious rituals
were dominated by the pan-Andean deities (jaguars, for
instance.) and they included rites based
on the use of hallucinogens meant to allow the priestly class
access to the supernatural world of
the gods. The city became an important one and was a
pilgrimage site; its religious practices
spread and scholars note that the city’s distinctive artistic styles
were emulated across the region.
Together, Chavín indicates how religion and trade could work
hand in hand in the region.
The Moche peoples are a second example of Andean
civilization. The Moche crafted a
coastal civilization between 100-800 CE. They built complex
Irrigation systems to channel
snowmelt from the Andes, and this permitted a robust
agricultural economy with a range of
diverse crops supplemented with fish hauled in from the Pacific
ocean. The largest city in the
Moche civilization was Chan Chan, boasting a population of 20-
30,000 people. Like Chavín, the

religious character of Moche civilization was based in the use
of hallucinogens. Unlike Chavín,
however, the rites also included human sacrifice. Priests were
also often military leaders who
captured subject peoples and used them in their religious
rituals. The economy, based on
agriculture but also tightly focused on religion, produced social
stratification. This stratification
was then reproduced in burial rites [photo “Lord of Sipan”], in
which high status Mochians
enjoyed intricate burial plots in which they were buried
alongside material objects befitting their
social status.
Finally, we consider the Wari and Tiwanaku peoples. These
polities were located in the
interior, away from the coast, and they demonstrate a type of
political and cultural cohesion that
transcended political borders. They reached their highpoint
between 400-1000 CE, when their
capital cities had populations numbering in the tens of
thousands. Geography was an important
consideration for these groups, and they formed what scholars
have called “vertical colonies”
that scaled the Andean mountain range. Establishing settlements
at lower altitudes for the
purpose of farming and to create a diverse range of foods, these
groups relied on llama caravans
for transport. The movement between capital city and colonial
outpost created a type of
integration that was notable for the region.
6.9 North America

Larger scale societies also emerged in North America. In the
southwest of this continent,
Hohokam society echoed practices that were staple features of
Mesoamerica. By 300 B.C.E. the
Hohokam population was constructing ceremonial platforms for
religious services and engaging
in ball sports. Yet North American societies did not simply
reflect the widening influence of
Mesoamerican civilizations. In the Mississippi Valley,
agricultural society was emerging by
2,000 B.C.E. In time, the Hopewell population developed an
economy predicated not only on the
production of crops such as squash and other gourds but also on
a vast trade network that
stretched from the Rocky Mountains through the Great Lakes
region and encompassing trade
partners across the eastern half of North America. By 200
B.C.E., Hopewell societies were
creating massive earthworks for ceremonial purposes.
Excavating and moving soil to shape it
into mounds, the Hopewell erected structures to serve as burial
chambers and to conduct
religious services. The pottery and artwork excavated from
Hopewell mounds reveals that these
populations were able to develop sophisticated artisanal and
artistic traditions. The architectural
scale of the mounds suggests that the Hopewell societies must
have had sufficient institutions of
government to be able to marshal sustained labor practices over
periods of many years. Still, the
Hopewell societies do not appear to have crossed the threshold
to become civilizations on the
scale established in Mesoamerica.
Here, as historians, we might pause to think about the choices
we make when we include

or exclude various societies from our discussion of world
history. What criteria should scholars
use when measuring which historical examples are significant
enough to demand lots of
attention? If we think about the Classical Era in terms of global
population, it would make sense
to mostly talk about Europe and Asia, home to some 85% of the
world’s people; and it would
make sense to talk relatively little about North America, home
to 1% of that global population.
But, by that token, if our conversation is going to be dictated by
the number of people living
within various cultural and political systems, our course should
almost entirely have focused on
the Paleolithic Era which stretched for hundreds of thousands of
years and, likely, provided the
framework for the lives led by the vast majority of human
beings to ever walk the face of the
earth.
Most world historians choose to emphasize factors that lead
them away from such a
course structure. For one, the limited evidence available to
historians from this early (lengthy)
phase of human history makes it difficult to develop satisfying
interpretations of what people
were up to those many tens and hundreds of thousands of years
ago. The evidence gets much
better once we get to the Neolithic Era—so just for practical
reasons, scholars tend dive into that
period with greater gusto. Beyond the question of historical
evidence is our preoccupation with
explaining change over time. We seek to identify the factors
that lead human societies to

establish innovative patterns that ripple outward affecting
subsequent generations of human
beings. Based on that kind of scholarly concern, it makes sense
to spend more time in a world
history course studying Mesopotamia than it does to spend that
time on some society that,
however fascinating in its own right, exerted little lasting
influence on its surrounding
populations and cultures.
Still, we should remain very aware of what we are doing when
we focus on some
historical settings and ignore others. In a one-semester course
on world history to 1500, we are
by definition ignoring most of human history during this period.
We do NOT want to fall into the
trap of assuming that societies that we are not discussing are
somehow inferior in value to those
that we are concentrating on. We have defined influential
civilizations in terms of their
effectiveness in creating institutions that enable them to expand
their political and religious and
economic reach. But this by no means the same thing as saying
that these civilizations were
better ethically or aesthetically or intellectually than other
societies. Indeed, it might be that
societies that showed the greatest ethical disregard for most
human beings were the ones to
develop the tools to maximize their influence. So let’s keep in
mind what we are doing as we
check in only briefly with the historical developments outside
of Eurasia!
6.10 African Integration and American Isolation
In this unit we have investigated the history of different

civilizations in Africa and the
Americas. One of these continents -- Africa -- retained
connections to the Eurasian world; The
Americas, obviously, did not. In short, we can imagine a
comparative exercise: how did the
connections that Africa experienced transform its history? How
did American isolation affect its
development?
The African situation is perhaps to some degree a more
complicated analytical problem.
As we saw, The horn of Africa -- Egypt, Meroë, Axum --
retained connections throughout the
Mediterranean world and into the Arabian Peninsula. These
societies developed strong trading
and artisanal economies; they experienced exposure to
Hellenism and to Christianity. They also
participated in long-distance trade networks that connected the
rim of the Sahara desert, joining
much of Northern Africa into a complex trading zone. They
were, in short, connected to the
Afroeurasian world, with all of the opportunities for trade,
cross-cultural exchange, religious
conversion, and violence that that entailed.
Southern Africa was a different story, however. The Bantu-
speaking people certainly
engaged in cross-cultural exchange -- sometimes absorbing new
knowledges from people (like
the key to banana cultivation from forest dwellers), at other
times displacing hunter-gatherers
from their ancestral lands and converting those territories into
ones more suitable for agricultural
production. The Bantu migrations, in other words, were
themselves a form of integration,
although one that continued to only be remotely joined to the

other processes animating the
forces driving the Afroeurasian world.
It is true that the Americas were isolated from this connected
world, but it is too simple to
suggest that there weren’t important forces joining the disparate
regions of the Americas into a
set of cohesive cultures. In North America, for instance, we see
broad similarities in the
experiences of indigenous Americans. The empires of central
America were similarly forces of
cultural, social, and indeed military integration. And the pan-
Andean religious world defined by
Chavín and the other civilizations of the Andes demonstrate
how cultural beliefs may have
transcended political borders and outlasted the individual
groups provides evidence for a cultural
integration that was especially long-lived.
In short, the Americas may have been isolated from the trade
networks and military
empires of the time, but they developed their own cultures and
historical trajectories that were
autonomous. Africa too may have been “integrated” into world
systems, but neither completely
nor uniformly.
Unit Four: Age of Empires ca 1000-1500 BCE
4.1 Definitions

There was a remarkable shift in political organization affecting
large swaths of the
Afroeurasian world between 300 BCE and 300 CE: the
development of large scale empires. One
way to imagine this political shift is to consider what it takes to
change from just being a political
state to being an empire, a group of states or peoples under one
powerful leader or sovereign
entity that enjoy centralized political authority and are under
centralized military control.
Consider, in other words, what it takes to use force to expand
and extend borders and bring other
groups into a subject position.
This historical transition from state to empire developed in part
because of certain
military innovations and one of the tasks of emperors was to
craft a type of multi-ethnic cohesion
that allowed people from different groups to bridge their
differences. Additionally, political
consolidation and elaboration at times facilitated economic
growth, increased agricultural yield,
and led to higher populations. At the same time, however,
empires also responded to upheaval
and innovation, and we see scenarios in which empires
developed in the context of change and
upheaval: climate changes, migration, technological change.
These changes included new ways
of transporting troops and supplies with animals like camels and
elephants. New types of
transportation crossing long distances made new forms of trade
possible. And trading networks
like the Silk Road -- which connected the Afroeurasian
landmass -- enjoyed a type of stability
because of the ways empire was constructed and maintained.

New ways of traversing bodies of
water also impacted how empires functioned, and new methods
of working metal also
contributed to the rise of empire. Iron, especially, was
significant for its malleability and when
metal workers began adding carbon to iron an early form of
steel was created -- this in turn
allowed new tools, better plowing instruments and of course
weapons. Agricultural instruments -
- iron plowshares allowed farmers to move away from a reliance
on floods to rejuvenate the soil,
and thus extended greatly the amount of arable land available,
especially if canal systems and
roads connected these far-flung agricultural outposts. In short,
empire was built upon a number
of material factors -- better weapons, better tools, and better
agricultural instruments -- that
allowed both population growth as well as military might.
Empire entailed new ways of governing populations of citizens
and subjects, and there
were important changes in political administration that
coincided with the growth of empire.
New weapons have allowed the extension of borders, but
authority needed to be continually
asserted. This could happen militarily with annual reinvasions
of subject territories or it could
happen politically through the establishment of a colonial
administrative apparatus. Often
military/imperial control resulted in the expansion of a slave-
empire -- captives taken and
deported to other regions to provide labor. The
military/administrative nexus also was used to
demand and extract tribute from subject peoples -- this was an
innovation that in some places led
to a growing bureaucracy of people who not only transferred

information but also people, troops,
and goods within the border of the empire as a whole. In short,
empire helped shape entirely new
ways of governing.
4.2 Egypt
One way to investigate empire and its history is to test the
definition against political
entities with which you are likely already familiar. In this
segment, we investigate the question:
was Egypt an empire?
Egyptian society was a riverine culture, its agricultural
production tied to the annual and
predictable flooding of the Nile. One big problem facing
Egyptian rulers was the question of how
to forge a unified culture from the different regions. Egypt is
usefully imagined as having
different zones: the south has higher elevations while the north
is lower, and they each have
much different power bases and regional concerns. The
Pharaohs typically sought to unite these
regions into a common political unit under one ruler’s control.
One way of achieving this
political aim was to suggest that the Pharaoh was an
embodiment of natural forces and powers
and he (and sometimes she) also had to protect the long strip of
land under his control from
attacks from outsiders or marauders from Nubia to the South.
For a long span of time -- 3100
BCE to the conquest of Egypt by Alexander in the Great in 332
BCE -- Egyptian society and
politics responded to these demands: defend Egyptian territory,

expand it when possible, and
develop new forms of rule that promoted political legitimacy as
an expression of the natural and
divine order. With this in mind, you should know that pharaonic
Egypt is divided into three
periods: the old, middle, and new kingdoms.
During the period known as the Old Kingdom -- 2686-2181
BCE -- Egyptian rulers
embarked on a strategy of using sacred architecture to promote
an idea of divine rule. The
grandeur of the buildings was a visual representation of the
rulers political power. It is during
this period that we see the creation of monumental pyramids
built in the style of ziggurats that
functioned as a testament to the pharaoh’s power. These sacred
locations were the location of a
set of important rituals that not only promoted kingly authority
and power but also symbolically
enacted the political unification of upper and lower Egypt. The
pyramid complex at Giza, for
instance, dates to the Old Kingdom, and it indicates the some of
the ways that symbolic or sacred
architecture could be deployed politically. Together, they
indicate the economic and political
complexity of Old Kingdom Egypt. Building these complexes
required not only a massive
priestly class but also a robust bureaucracy that could be
mobilized in support of such a large-
scale undertaking.
Over time the political stability of the Old Kingdom collapsed,
and out of the chaos and
turmoil of that collapse (caused in part by irregular Nile
flooding and the religio-political crisis
that that crisis symbolized) came a new set of political leaders.
These rulers sought to reestablish
political control over a unified north-south Egypt and also to

expand the territory under their
control. Centered on the city of Thebes, these new rulers built
power by forging symbolic and
dynastic connections to the gods. One of them -- Amenemhet I -
- built a new cosmology by
taking a formerly insignificant deity, Amun, and placing him at
the center of religious and
political life. When Amun was merged with the God of the Sun,
Re, to form the deity Amun-Re
he assumed rule over all the other gods. His champion on Earth
-- Amenemhet I -- then could
wield unparalleled power. This political-religious synthesis was
a powerful tool. It ushered
centuries of peace and economic expansion. This, however,
made the Middle Kingdom (2055-
1650 BCE) a tempting target of outside invaders. Around 1640
BCE, waves of migrants and
military invaders from the west known as Hyskos -- the Rulers
of Foreign Lands -- conquered
the pharaohs and their armies, ushering in another century of
chaos and turmoil.
Beginning around 1550 BCE the New Kingdom rose to
dominance in Egypt. The best
known of these leaders was the pharaoh Hatshepsut. She pushed
the borders of the kingdom to
the South and into Nubia, where she could control the reserves
of gold. Importantly, Hatshepsut
ruled as a king -- she employed male pronouns and she was
depicted visually as a bearded man.
This strategy of rule raises important questions about gender
and authority in the New Kingdom.
Part of the novelty of ancient Egypt is centered on the ability

of its rulers to imagine new
ways of creating, consolidating, and expanding power. They did
this in part through military
prowess and by expanding the territories under their control.
But they also achieved this aim by
unifying the different parts of the country and by using religion
as a way of legitimizing political
power. In these ways, we can begin to see some of the forms
that power would take when it was
expressed in the form of empire.
4.3 Nubia
A second important political entity developed in East Africa
during this period as well.
Nubia -- whose kings also ruled for a time as Pharaohs of Egypt
-- lets us see a different strategy
at work when it comes to the question of political consolidation.
Nubia is located around the
upper Nile, to the south of pharaonic Egypt.
The state of Kush, with its capital city Kerma, was the first to
unify the various regions
between 1700 and 1500 BCE. Kerma and Kushite Nubia
represented an early experiment with
powerful centralized city-states. Kerma exerted influence
throughout the upper Nile and the city,
which was known for its strong mud-bricked architecture, was
the location of impressive palatial
architecture. Kerma was not just a political center, however, it
was also a powerful military and
commercial center. Nubia was a conduit for trade between
Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. This
cross-cultural trade took place over long distances and consisted
of trade in gold, ivory, and
slaves.

Besides Kush, there was also the Meroë kingdom, which was
located between the Nile
and the Red Sea. Meroe had its highpoint between 400BCE and
300 CE. The Meroë kingdom
was also deeply influenced by Egypt and its cultural forms,
even taking its leadership class from
among Egyptian royalty. It is also important to recognize the
commercial and trading
significance of the Meroë Kingdom, which was known for its
ironworkers and its textiles.
Indeed, its metallurgy was recognized as being some of the best
in the world at the time.
One of the significant factors at work in Nubia is the degree to
which the histories and
political fortunes of Nubia and Egypt were intertwined. That the
two polities shared rulers and
were trading partners, but that they also at other times fought to
control territory along the Nile
river indicates the complexity of African political and military
life before the Common Era. And
while it is not appropriate to call Nubia an empire (at least for
much of its history) we should be
mindful of how the region functioned not only as a conduit
between the Mediterranean powers
like Egypt and the sub-Saharan ones, but also how its craftsmen
and architects developed
reputations for their skill throughout Afroeurasia.
4.4 Persia
Thanks to a 1998 comic book series and a subsequent color-
saturated and ultraviolent
movie, a lot of Americans have some basic idea of the story of
the battle of Thermopylae. This
was a juicily romanticized moment in the history of Greco-

Persian contact in the ancient world,
almost 500 years before the common era. The cinematic version
seems to teach that Persians are
dark, pierced and bad; Greeks (except Spartans) a waste of
space, and Spartans the coolest,
manliest hardbodied killers ever – in short, a weird homage to a
particular city-state in ancient
Greece. That the movie is predictably unreliable as a historical
text is not the point. That’s never
the point. The interesting thing here is that the movie helps us
to think about the enduring value
of empires in our imagination. For millennia, the huge,
ethnicity-encompassing, territory-
gobbling, infrastructure-improving societies we call empires
have captured our attention. We’ve
already seen some of the ways in which early civilizations
helped to spawn the even larger
entities we call empires; now, let’s take a look at two players in
the ancient Imperial game,
Greece and Persia.
We’ll start with Persia. The territory we now know as Iran was
just the center (more or
less) of the massive Persian Empire around 500 BCE. Starting
with the king Cyrus the Great,
around 550 BCE, the Persian empire grew through military
conquest to absorb not only what we
think of as the Middle East, but all the lands between India and
Egypt, including present-day
Turkey and Armenia.
At its height, the Persian empire (also known as the
Achaemenid empire) contained

something like 50 million people, give or take. That’s huge –
more than 40% of the world’s
population at the time. That’s the biggest the world had seen at
that point. Moreover, an empire
that size – based in military conquest of (we assume) initially
unwilling subjects – took an awful
lot of governing. Remember how civilizations reflected a more
abstract, a more symbolic and
less personal form of government than the old chiefdoms? In the
same way, empires depended
on communicating the ruling structure – the basic hierarchies of
society, and the power of the
guy at the top – over huge distances to huge numbers of people.
This was an immense logistical
challenge. Part of the success of the Persian kings like Cyrus,
his son Cambyses, and later rulers
like Darius and Xerxes lay in their insistence on a royal cult.
Especially during Darius’s rule, the
king of the empire and his power were linked directly to the god
Ahura Mazda, the central deity
of the Zoroastrian religion (named after the prophet Zoroaster
or Zarathustra, about whom we’ll
hear more later). And while we see examples of divine kings all
over the place (in Sumer, in
Egypt, wherever) it seems that this divinity was really enforced
throughout the Persian empire; at
the death of the king, for example, national mourning was
enforced, and a variety of monuments
and writings attest to Darius’s claims that he was divinely
appointed.
At the same time, it’s important to get that the Persian empire
was diverse, and
deliberately so. Many of the tens of millions of people who
found themselves in the empire were
NOT Zoroastrian, but found a warm welcome nonetheless. Many

Jewish people – whose
homeland had been conquered by the Babylonians – were
witness to the Persian empire
conquering the Babylonians in turn. The Persians, however,
were by all accounts tolerant and
even generous toward the Jews, including the rebuilding of the
temple in Jersualem. This
resulted in the strong positive influence of the Zoroastrian faith
on Jewish mythology and
theology.
But tolerance and impressively divine kings alone don’t rule an
empire. On the practical
side, the Persian empire employed an impressive system of
delegated governors, called satraps,
who managed provinces in the name of the emperor, employing
a complex system of local
authorities under them. And should these trusted satraps get an
idea, for example, to dip in to tax
revenues before sending them off to the emperor – a bad idea,
because of the impressively exact
surveys of Persian lands that had already been conducted – a
system of spies, the “eyes and ears
of the king,” would quickly report on the bad behavior of the
governor. Perhaps most
impressively, the news of good or bad behavior was
communicated with lightning speed along
the “Royal Road,” a thoroughfare of more than 1,500 miles with
fresh horses posted at stations
along the way to ensure the fastest possible communication of
news.
Overall, the Persian empire was the absolute most impressive
entity of its time in the
ancient world, in size and sophistication. Far from the creepily
hedonistic warmongers of the

2006 film, the Persians maintained an impressive, vibrant, and
multiethnic empire.
4.5 Greece
The Greeks, on the other hand, were a different story. Loosely
connected through
language, shared ancestry and an every-four-years-sports
festival worshiping their common gods
of Mount Olympus, the Greeks were hardly an empire as much
as a bunch of city-states, each
maintaining their own distinct identity in the naturally divided
topography of the mountainous
peninsula. The city states warred with one another as often as
they cooperated, but a unified
interest in merchant activity (beginning in the 7th century BCE)
and growing populations spurred
Greeks to migrate into neighboring lands, establishing colonies
on the shores of the
Mediterranean.
But these colonies were nothing like the colonies that we
usually associate with empire –
they weren’t armed invasions, or even centrally coordinated –
instead, they were just small
settlements of Greek traders and farmers, who made it as far as
present-day Spain, Ukraine, and
Egypt. To be fair, they were often launched by a particular city-
state, and the founders of
colonies were honored as heroes; this is hardly the same as a
coordinated imperial expansion,
however. With these colonists came elements of Greek culture,
including language, currency, art

and architecture, and religion, and a vibrant Mediterranean and
Black Sea trade ensured that the
colonies kept in touch with their nominal homes.
We should note, too, that while later histories have absolutely
blown the Greek-
civilization horn to distraction – lauding their democracy, their
concept of citizenship, their
philosophy and mathematics and science and mathematics and
whatnot – there’s a lot to be
impressed with. They were no Persia, to be sure – but at the
same time, perhaps it’s the very
disaggregated, diffuse, antagonistic nature of the Greek
community that makes their
achievements all the more impressive. Certainly larger city
states like Athens, Corinth, and
Argos – and the anomalous Sparta, with few citizens but lots of
slaves – developed significant
new political organizations, including (famously) democracy.
That’s not nothing, as we’ll see.
So we have two very different models of expansion; one
military and centrally driven, and one
opportunistic and piecemeal. Let’s remember, too, that the
Persian empire dwarfed the Greek
conglomerate, which had maybe ten million inhabitants – again,
in divided, antagonistically
oriented city-states. But it’s still not surprising that these
expanding entities would eventually
bump up into one another.
When some Greek colonies on the coast of Anatolia – present-
day Turkey – rebelled
against their Persian overlords (remember, there were Greek
colonies all over the place,
including in Persia) the opportunistic leader of the rebellion
managed to draw in the support of

Athens. With Athens, the rebels burned a Persian city, thereby
managing to secure the attention
and intense anger of the Persian king, Darius. He launched a
series of military campaigns against
the Greeks; an early one against Athens ended, famously, at the
battle of Marathon, when in 490
BCE a courier managed to run more than 170 miles – first to try
in vain to get Spartan help, and
then to deliver good news of the Athenian victory over the
massive Persian forces – before
falling down dead. Now fully enraged, Darius planned further
punitive attacks, but other troubles
delayed him and it fell to his son Xerxes to launch the next
attack, in 480 BCE.
This brings us to Thermopylae, and the doomed efforts of the
Spartan king, Leonidas,
and his bodyguard of 300 men (and thousands of other allied
Greek troops). Although defeated
there by the Persians, the Greek forces would fight such costly
battles that, after their decisive
naval defeat at Salamis, the Persians decided to call the whole
thing off.
This didn’t matter much to the Persians, honestly – the Greeks
were just another slightly
fractious element in a massive empire, and there were other
more pressing matters. For the
Greeks, however, this was close to miraculous; and it propelled
Athens into a pretty cocky
position, from which it later attempted to control all of Greece –
launching the Peloponnesian
War, which marked the end of a unified Greek empire until the

rise of Alexander the Great.
So what does this mean for us? Well, part of the idea is that
empires come in very different
shapes and sizes, with very different approaches towards
managing their own populations. The
Greek and the Persian case help us to see that; it also helps us
to think about how empires (again,
in different ways) are necessarily expansive and therefore
destined to bump up against each
other. And, given the romantic treatment this particular
encounter has received, we can also see
how empires have captured the imaginations of historians and
regular folks alike for millennia.
4.6 Macedonia
The eastern Mediterranean saw the rise not only of Egyptian
political power but also the
Greek and Persian Empires. Following these inspirations,
Alexander the Great expanded the
power and significance of Greek culture throughout the eastern
Mediterranean and Southwest
Asia, crafting what some scholars argue was the largest
multiethnic empire in the world.
Alexander the Great’s empire, however, was culturally unified
around “Hellenism,” or
the Greek-speaking culture of the eastern Mediterranean.
Hellenism was a unified culture that
was not rooted in the historical experiences of any one of the
specific Greek-speaking city-states,
but rather represented a broader set of cultural experiences and
social practices. Alexander’s
empire represented the diffusion of these cultural practices and
norms through military conquest
and trade. Alexander’s conquests also brought stability and
peace in their wake, allowing urban

environments to grow and to become more sophisticated.
Indeed, one outcome of Alexander’s
conquests was to provide the stability necessary for the Western
section of the Silk Road to
thrive and in this way a bridge between East and West was
formed.
Alexander started his empire in Macedonia -- a area of
Southeastern Europe at the
northern edge of the Greek isles -- and built an empire on the
basis of a unified polity created in
Macedonia by his father Philip II. Beginning around 330 BCE,
Alexander began the expansion
of his empire out of Macedonia, attacking Southwest Asia, and
conquering the Persian Empire.
Once the Persian Empire was under his control, Alexander
encouraged a broader range of trade
with his territories in the eastern Mediterranean. One of the
methods that Alexander used to
solidify his power was to seize the wealth of conquered
territories and redistribute it. This was
famously carried out against the Persian empire when Alexander
seized the wealth of the Persian
royalty and dispersed it throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
He further reinforced his authority
by founding cities that were infused with hellenistic cultural
beliefs and naming them after
himself -- the city of Alexandria in Egypt is just one example of
the process.
Alexander died at a young age in 323 BCE -- he was only 32 at
the time of his death, but
he had conquered a vast swath of territory spanning northeast
Africa, the Greek isles and
Macedonia, through what is now Syria, Iran, and Iraq, and even
into modern-day Pakistan and

Afghanistan. Because his empire depended on his person for
unity, his death caused a crisis of
succession. Who would control these territories after his death?
Alexander had a number of
generals who sought to cement their own power, which they did
over large chunks of
Alexander’s broken-up empire. Alexander’s empire was huge,
and upon his death it was split
into three main zones of control, each administered by one of
his generals. Egypt and North
Africa was ruled by Ptolemy I; Seleucus seized control of the
territory spanning the Persian
empire and what is now modern-day Afghanistan; Antigonus
Gonatas came to control the Greek
isles and Macedonia.
4.7 Mauryan Empire
The massive empires of the Eastern Mediterranean were not
alone, and Alexander the
Great served as an example of empire-building prowess to
others. Before his death in 323 BCE
Alexander the Great marched his army into the Indus Valley in
South Asia, a region of the world
his troops occupied between 327 and 325 BCE. Alexander’s
army brought an end to the chronic
fighting between different groups in the region, generating a
period of stability and political
consolidation. Following Alexander’s departure, however, the
question of political control again
became paramount and a chaotic political environment once
again characterized South Asia. Out
of this chaos came the creation of the Magadha kingdom under

the rule of Chandragupta Mori in
321 BCE. The Mori family, for whom the Mauryan empire is
named, took advantage of the
power vacuum created by Alexander’s departure, and used this
opportunity to extend and expand
its influence. The Mauryan Empire, led by Chandragupta, came
to include much of what is now
modern-day India, from the Ganges and Indus Rivers into the
North to the southern tip of the
subcontinent and the Indian Ocean. Chandragupta’s abilities as
a military leader meant that the
Mauryan empire soon was rubbing up against the remnants of
Alexander the Great’s empire,
most significantly against the Seleucid empire dominating the
span of territory between modern
day Turkey and Afghanistan. Military conflict between these
two polities was avoided through
savvy marriage arrangements and diplomatic missions that
connected the two courts through
kinship. In this fashion we another form of empire-building:
kinship networks could stabilize
imperial borders and de-escalate the tensions that existed
between political groups. In a similar
way, diplomatic missions that connected rival courts meant that
political solutions to crises could
be fashioned before violence broke out.
Chandragupta was a capable military leader who secured the
borders of his empire
through diplomacy and with a military presence in the border
regions. But the empire enjoyed its
greatest period during the reign of Chandragupta’s grandson,
Asoka, who extended the borders
of the empire further to the South. Asoka was a devout Buddhist
who came to regret the
bloodshed and misery he caused in the course of the military
campaigns that had expanded the

borders of his empire. In a famous decree -- the Kalinga Edict --
he doubled down on his
adherence to Buddhism and publicly sought to rule his empire
according to the moral code of
dharma, expressing sorrow for the violence of his campaigns
and the deaths of those people
caught up in the violence of empire.
4.8 Han China
Centered on the turn of the millennium, we see a major
transition in the way the
Afroeurasian world was structured. Beginning in the third
century BCE we see the creation of
parallel imperial structures -- one based in the Mediterranean
and the other in China. We focus
first on the eastern section, looking at the creation of empire in
China.
The third century BCE in China is called the “warring states
period,” a time of political
chaos defined by the lack of a single power center that could
dominate the region. Beginning in
the eastern range of Zhou China this period of political turmoil
was brought to a conclusion with
the rise of a dominant political power: the Qin. The Qin
absorbed the Zhou dynasty in 221 BCE,
winning a series of military confrontations not only with their
infantry and cavalry, but also with
a dedicated core of archers employing crossbows to deadly
effect. This military prowess was not
just politically significant, it was also symbolically important, a
fact demonstrated by the “terra
cotta army” buried alongside the Qin emperor to battle
alongside him in the afterlife.

Having solidified their political position and masters of China
militarily, the Qin
dedicated a portion of their energy to developing the tools
necessary to administer a large
empire. It was in this environment that a range of new ideas
from Daoism and Confucianism to
legalism were created which together helped create a strong
centrally powerful state supported
by an elaborate bureaucracy. These innovations by the Qin
helped fuel the rise of what came to
be known as the Han Dynasty after 207 BCE.
One way that the Han dynasty achieved dominance was through
the inclusion of subject
peoples in its political system. And this inclusion was one that
went beyond the mere extraction
of tribute and taxes but included legal absorption, religious
conversion, and the consolidation of
trade networks. There was also an attempt at cultural
assimilation, forged through a common
written language and immersion in a common intellectual
tradition of Confucianism.
The Qin Dynasty employed a new system of territorial control
based on the unit of the
province. Each province -- of which there were 36 -- was
controlled by a dual political structure
that was part military and part civilian but which was
responsible to the Emperor. The emperor’s
subjects were required to register with the state apparatus so
that they could be taxed or pressed
into service on public works projects or into the army. The
Emperor extended his power over the
economic life of China by instituting standard weights and

measures as well as a unified coinage
system. There was also the imposition of a standardized legal
code with established punishments
for wrongdoing. Writing too was standardized. These tools,
which generated not only
standardization but also resistance to the government,
contributed to the collapse of the Qin in
211 BCE. Following a short period of civil war, the Han
Dynasty was founded when Liu Bang
declared himself to be the first emperor in 202 BCE, setting in
place a dynasty that would last for
the next four centuries.
The Han Dynasty thrived because of its bureaucracy, staffed by
men who benefitted from
a sophisticated educational system created in part to generate
the man-power for the bureaucracy.
Historians note that this educational system -- which grew to
30,000 students by the 2nd century
BCE -- was a cornerstone of imperial control, in part because of
the ways that Confucian
ideology was wedded to administrative capability and to
imperial authority and legitimacy. The
scholars trained in the state educational system went on to
control the administrative processes of
the government. Especially under Emperor Wu around 100 BCE
these government officials
oversaw taxation and military service and over time began to
erode the power of the local
nobility.
These reforms in turn facilitated military expansion of the Han.
Following the silk roads,
Han armies conquered territory to the West and then also into
the Korean peninsula. Attacks into
modern-day Mongolia against the Xiongnu were only partially

successful, however,
demonstrating that there were limits to Han military might.
The Han succeeded in crafting what scholars call the Pax Sinica
-- or Chinese Peace --
between 149 and 87 BCE. This period was known for its
internal peace, the expansion and
solidification of trade networks, and a general period of social
peace and economic prosperity.
4.9 Rome
Han China was one empire in the Afro-Eurasian world that
brought stability and peace to
large sections of the system. Rome was another. The two
empires, in fact, operated
contemporaneously, and may be usefully compared and
contrasted.
The Roman empire grew through a process of legal and political
consolidation; it exerted
trade dominance; and it offered a type of cultural cohesion --
most obviously in the form of
“Christendom” after the 3rd century CE -- but also by creating a
universal language — Latin —
and also through the military power of the Roman state. The
power of Rome originated in the
loose political world of 4th century BCE Mediterranean. Rome,
attacked by other city states in
modern-day Italy, initiated a massive military buildup that
allowed them to dominate the Italian
peninsula, forcing their rivals to acknowledge their subservient
status and to provide men for the

Roman military.
This massive Roman army -- staffed only in part by people who
called the city of Rome
their home -- then fought three wars with the Carthaginians of
North Africa to determine which
power would rule the Mediterranean. These wars — called the
Punic Wars — were fought
between Rome and Hannibal, the leader of Carthage. One result
of the Punic Wars was Roman
dominance of the Western Mediterranean. The final defeat of
Carthage in 146 BCE was a type of
total war. The city of Carthage was destroyed by Roman troops,
and salt was even sown on the
fields to render them infertile. Rome’s domination of the
Carthaginians facilitated attacks on the
eastern Mediterranean as well as military incursions into Spain
and Gaul, modern-day France.
The Romans built new political institutions that matched this
impressive expansion. The
Roman Republic was governed by the Senate, elected among
free men who enjoyed citizenship
of Rome. Two of these senators would be selected as consuls,
leaders of Rome’s military. Two
others, elected as tribunes, spoke for the common people.
During a political crisis, a notable
citizen could be elevated to the position of dictator, his word
law. It is important to remember as
well, however, that Rome was also a slave state -- and its unfree
subjects, pulled in from across
the Mediterranean world to serve their Roman masters -- were
the victims of a brutal economy of
mining, plantation work, and most famously, gladiatorial
entertainment.
The power dynamics informing the Roman republic -- powerful

elites with political connections
held in check by a huge population of poor, but free, citizens --
were unstable. This instability
culminated in a period of civil war in the middle of the first
century BCE. When Julius Caesar --
still a member of the Senate despite his military prowess --
attempted to assert power as dictator,
he was thwarted in his ambitions to become an emperor only by
assassination. His heir, however,
Octavian, adopted the title imperator -- emperor -- to signify his
awesome status and unbounded
political authority. His imperial title coincided with the creation
of the Pax Romana -- the Roman
Peace -- that historians argue characterized Roman politics
throughout the Mediterranean from
25 BCE to 235 CE. The Pax Romana, which like the Pax Sinica
facilitated trade, was crafted in
part through the ruthless incorporation of subject peoples into
the Roman imperium.
4.10 Life outside Empire
Empires and empire building were defining features of the
period around the beginning
of the common era. Throughout the Afroeurasian world we see
the creation, extension, and
elaboration of territorial empires. These empires helped
generate new ideas about military
prowess, new experiments with political power, and new forms
of governmental administration.
While empire building was an inherently violent process, the
empires also put into place
conditions for peace, prosperity, and trade. The Pax Sinica and
the Pax Romana -- at either end
of the Afroeurasian world connected by the Silk Road --
indicate how empire and economic

vitality could go hand in hand.
That said, empire was not the whole story, and those groups on
the periphery of empire,
or who resisted incorporation into an empire, also have
historical importance. The Europeans
who rejected Roman imperium -- the German tribesmen fighting
under Arminius, for instance --
or the Xiongnu horsemen who rejected the Han tell us that
empire was never a completely
successful project. Empire, in other words, was incomplete, and
those people and those regions
who were not bound to some imperial order nonetheless
developed their own economic forms,
their own political structures, and their own social codes.
We should also note the experience of empire in the
Afroeurasian world was not a
necessarily a normative one. Other forms of empire existed
elsewhere in the world — in Central
and South America, for instance — and these political
structures operated in ways that were
different than what we find in the empires along the Silk Road.

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