Chapter 3 (State & Empire)

Chapter 3: State and Empire in Eurasia/North Africa (500 b.c.e.–500 c.e.)

I. Empires and Civilizations in Collision: The Persians and the Greeks

• King of Kings: Cyrus & Darius Exercised absolute power over their subjects
• including life and death
• enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of elaborate rituals and palaces
• Claimed complete control over their entire domain and saw their centralized state as absolute
• Persian monarchs did not rule by force alone
• used an efficient system of regional administrators (satraps)
• respected the diverse cultures and religions of the many people they conquered.
• administrations set the pattern for some 1,000 years for the numerous successor regimes in the region
• postal system, forms of taxation, etc.
• Common identity as Hellenes
• sharing language
• religion
• rituals
• held the Olympics every four years celebrating their shared identity
• City-states: there was rivalry among many city-states
• had very different forms of organization
• Greeks were dynamic and expansive. expansion came about by waves of migration around the Mediterranean and Black Seas between 750 and 500 B.C.E.
• migrations spread Greek culture, language, and architecture
• Citizens and hoplites
• Greeks pioneered revolutionary political ideas such as viewing the individual as a participant of a larger state system, a citizen

II. Comparing Empires: Roman and Chinese

• was fairly weak and poor in early years; but conquered & incorporated neighboring territories throughout the Mediterranean and much of France, Britain & Spain as well as Egypt, Greece & Mesopotamia
• Changing gender norms
• power of the male head of the household
• many women found a less restricted life than they had known in the early centuries
• Empire building in China was not the creation of a new idea but an attempt to go back to the time of coherence and centralization of centuries past
• adopted the moralistic and scholarly ideology of Confucianism
• In Rome, past emperors were revered as gods
• In China, the emperors ruled in accordance with the spiritual force known as the Mandate of Heaven
• If the Chinese emperor did not rule well, the Mandate of Heaven could be lost and natural disasters and social upheaval might dispose the dynasty
• Rome and China dealt with foreign religions
• From east, Christianity, Persian, and Egyptian faiths entered the Roman empire
• faiths spread thanks to Roman transportation systems
• In China, Buddhism came from India and Central Asia via the Silk Roads
• faith gained adherents after the collapse of the Han dynasty
• Han state developed a strong and successful bureaucracy based on political and philosophical principles
• Romans relied on the aristocracy and military to piece various systems of rule together and create laws
• Romans desired good laws, the Chinese state wanted good men
• most fundamental reason for the collapse of Han and Roman was over-expansion

III. Intermittent Empire: The Case of India

• Indo-Europeans came into India
• there were several distinct and significant religious traditions that formed a common core that outsiders would come to call “Hinduism.”
• Maurya Empire
• first Indian empire
• inspired by contact with Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms
• 50 million subjects and 600,000 infantry soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, 8,000 chariots, and 9,000 war elephants
• empire was not as long lived as Rome or Han
• Ashoka
• most famous Indian emperor 
• first a great conqueror but later converted to Buddhism
• Gupta Empire
• flourishing of art, architecture, and literature, commerce and the sciences
• great achievements
• spiritual movements
• astronomy