Week Five: Due September 26

DUE SEPTEMBER 26:  READ & BLOG ON Intro to Part Two & Ch 3 (State & Empire)

Part Two: Second Wave Civilizations in World History 

The Big Picture: After the First Civilizations: What Changed and What Didn't?

• The entire age of agricultural civilizations 
• Civilization as a form of human community proved durable and resilient as well as periodically fragile

Continuities in Civilization 

• States and empires rose and expanded 
• No technological or economic breakthrough occurred to create new kinds of human societies 
• Many fluctuations, repetitive cycles, and minor changes characterized this long era of agricultural civilization, but no fundamental or revolutionary transformations of social or economic life took place

Changes in Civilization

• Population grew more rapidly 
• The rate of growth, though rapid in comparison to recent centuries, was quite slow if we measure it against the expansion of recent centuries
• The rise and Fall of these empires represented very consequential changes to the people who experienced them

Chapter Three: State and Empire in Eurasia/North America

• The United States' enormous multicultural society, its technological achievements, its economically draining and overstretched armed forces, its sense of itself as unique and endowed with a global mission, its concern about foreigners penetrating its borders, its apparent determination to maintain military superiority - all of this invited comparison with the Roman empire

Empires and Civilizations in Collision: The Persians and the Greeks

• These distant civilizations did not directly encounter one another, as each established its own political system, cultural values, and ways of organizing society
• Emerging Personal Empire and Greek civilization, physically adjacent to each other, experienced a centuries long interaction and clash

The Persian Empire

• Persian conquests quickly reached reached from Egypt to India, encompassing in a single state some 35 to 50 million people, an immediately diverse realm containing dozens of people, states, languages, and cultural traditions
• The Persian Empire centered on an elaborate cult of kingship in which the monarch, secluded in royal magnificence, could be approached only through an elaborate ritual 
• Persians were expected to shave their head in mourning
• Kings were absolute monarchs, more than willing to crush rebellious regions or officials 
• An effective administrative system placed Persian governors in each of the empire's twenty-three provinces, while lower level officials were drawn from local authorities 
• The infrastructure of empire included a system of standardized coinage, predicable taxes levied on each province, and a newly dug canal

The Greeks

• Small competing city states of Greece, which allowed varying degrees of popular participation in political life 
• The Greeks created a civilization that was distinctive in many ways, particularly in comparison with the Persians
• Greek civilization took shape on a small peninsula deeply divided by steep mountains and valleys
• Even though intense conflict with neighbors they put them aside every few years for olympics
• The Greeks were expansive people, but there expansion took the form of settlement in distant places rather than conquest and empire 
• Greatest contrast with Persia, lay in the extent of popular participation in political life that occurred with at least some of the city states
• Compared to the rigid hierarchies, inequalities, and absolute monarchies of Persia and other ancient civilizations, the Athenian experiment was remarkable 
• Athenian democracy was different from modern democracy. It was direct, rather than representative, democracy, and it was distinctly limited

Collision: The Greco-Persian Wars

• If there was ever an unequal conflict between civilizations, it was the collision of the Greeks and Persians 
• From the respective patterns of expansion 
• Outraged by the assault from remote and upstart Greeks, the Persians, twice in ten years, launched major military expeditions to punish the greeks in general and Athens in particular. Against all odds and all expectations, the Greeks held them off, defeating the Persians on both land and sea.
• The Greek victory also radicalized Athenian democracy, for it had been men of the poorer classes who had rowed their ships to victory and who were now in position to insist on full citizenship
• Civil War with Sparta - Athens was defeated, while the Greeks exhausted themselves and magnified their distrust for one another

Collision: Alexander and the Hellenistic Era

• Served to unify the fractions Greek in a war against their common enemy - Persia 
• Ten-year expedition, accomplished while Alexander was in his twenties
• Alexander was hailed as the King of Asia. In Egypt Alexander, 24, was celebrated as a liberator from Persian domination, was anointed as Pharaoh, and was declared by Egyptian priests to be son of the Gods 
• Periodic rebellions expressed resentment at Greek arrogance, condescension, and exploitation 
• Much of this Greek cultural influence faded as the Hellenistic kingdom that had promoted it weakened and vanished by the first century 

Comparing Empires: Roman and Chinese

• They were the giant empires of their time, shaping the lives of close to half of the worlds population  
• The Romans and the Chinese were only dimly aware of each other and had almost no direct contact 

Rome: From City-State to Empire 

• An empire that encompassed the entire Mediterranean basin and beyond
• The growth of the empire represented opportunity
• Drawing on the growing population of Italy, that army was often brutal in war
• A Roman woman could participate proudly in this warrior culture by bearing brave sons and inculcating this values in her offspring 
• Upper class Roman women had never been as secluded in the home as were their Greek counterparts, and now the legal authority of their husbands was curtailed by the intrusion of the state into what had been private life
• Roman women of the wealthier classes gained almost complete liberty in matters of property and marriage 
• Roman conquests brought many thousands of men and women into the empire as slaves, often brutally treated and subject to the whims of their masters 

China: From Warring States to Empire

• Shihuangdi launched a military campaign to unify China and in just ten years soundly defeated the other warring states
• He laid the foundations for a unified Chinese state, which has endured, with periodic interruptions, to the present
• Imposed a uniform system of weights, measures, and currency and standardized the length of axles for carts and the written form of the Chinese language 
•  It was Han dynasty rulers who consolidated China's imperial state and established the political patterns that lasted into the twentieth century

Consolidating the Roman and Chinese Empires

The Collapse of Empires

• Roman empire: The western half collapsed whereas the part maintained the tradition of imperial Rome
• They both got too big, too overextended, and too expansive to be sustained by the available resources, and no fundamental technological breakthrough was available to enlarge these resources
• The collapse of empire meant more than the disappearance of centralized government and endemic conflict
• Also meant the decline of of urban life, a contracting population, less area under cultivation, diminishing international trade, and vast insecurity for ordinary people 

Intermitten Empire: The Case of India

• Political fragmentation and vast cultural diversity
• A distinctive religious tradition, Hinduism, and a unique social organization, the caste system
• Despite there good intentions, these policies did not long preserve the empire, which broke apart soon after Ashoka's death 
• The Gupta era witnessed a flourishing of art, literature, temple building, science, mathematics, and medicine, and much of it patronized by rulers
• Its cotton textile industry long supplied cloth throughout the Afro Eurasian world