- [Instructor] What we're
going to do in this video is think about the rise of
empires and make the comparison with four very early empires
that we have studied, Achaemenid Persia, the Maurya
Empire in India, Han China, and the Roman Empire. So let's just start with
a general framework. So the first question
is what is an empire? A broad definition of an
empire is when one group has control over a fairly
diverse population. One group has control over another group that might have different
linguistic practices, different culture, that's when
it is considered an empire. Well what's the general framework for how empires tend to form? Well let's say that I
am a ruler and I control this territory right over
here and either through my charisma, my military tactics,
maybe I have a new weapon, some political intrigue,
some weak neighbors, I'm able to conquer some more
territory right over here. What does that do for me? As I expand, this gives me more land and more people to rule over and I can tax that land and
people to have more wealth and larger armies and so these two things are pretty good ingredients
to be able to take on even more of my neighbors
and expand even further. And so you might say well,
why doesn't that process just keep on going on indefinitely? Well it does go pretty far,
you see these various empires are quite large especially when
you consider the technology of the time, the communications
ability of the time but at some point, you
might have weak leadership, you might have trouble
controlling these large and spread out empires especially
if you can't communicate, if you can't get good information. But now let's dive a little bit deeper into the four empires we just referred to. So let's start Achaemenid
Persia, founded in 550 BCE by Cyrus the Great. This is so far in the past
that most of our accounts of how Cyrus comes to
power come from the Greeks who were not friends with the Persians, they were famous rivals,
but one thing comes clear in the narrative, which
is that Cyrus the Great was considered a very
strong and effective leader so I'll definitely put leadership there. He starts off as a relatively minor king subject to you could say
the emperor of Medes, who is his grandfather, and
he's able to overthrow him but because of his military leadership, his ability to bring people into the fold, he was known as being
tolerant of the people he would rule over, that
that all helped him control and expand a large empire. So I would say leadership is
definitely first for Cyrus the Great and then I would say
culture would be part of it. Now let's think about Maurya, India. Maurya, India was founded
by Chandragupta Maurya and here once again,
I would say leadership was a major factor, he was
aided by his political advisor Chanakya who is famous in Indian history for his strategic thinking. Chandragupta Maurya, legend
has it, met Alexander the Great when he came into the
Indus but once Alexander the Great left, there was a power vacuum. You could say that that
power vacuum helped the Maurya Empire be founded. It's similar to the notion
of having weaker neighbors once Alexander the Great left. And so Han China, Han
China is interesting. The first emperors of Han
China aren't the ones to first unify China, that happens
under the Qin Dynasty, Q-I-N, Qin Dynasty that
preceded the Han Dynasty and they were able to do
that by being very strong, very authoritarian, very
centralized but once the Qin emperor dies, it leaves
a clear power vacuum and then you have a succession battle but eventually the Han Dynasty is formed. One of the ways that the Han
Dynasty is able to keep power despite not being as
authoritarian as the Qin is that they revitalized
Confucianism and used that ideology and used that culture in order to more unify the Chinese people. The Roman empire we study in some detail. It's hard to pin a date on exactly when it becomes an empire. On this timeline, this
first period right over here is when we have the Roman
kingdom, then you have the Roman Republic, and then you
have the Roman Empire. And so you could debate when
it actually becomes an empire, even when it was an early
kingdom, it was conquering neighboring people on
the Italian peninsula and at that time period, it
might have felt like an empire because those people
might have felt different. As time passed and they
were under a unified state, under a unified kingdom, they
probably felt more similar but then when they conquered
even more territory, that might have felt more
and more like an empire. But what is clear is even as we get into the late republic
period, it was an empire. Julius Caesar famously
conquered Gaul, these Germanic peoples, before coming back
and essentially taking control to be succeeded by the
first official Roman Empire after a long and bloody
civil war, Augustus Caesar. These other three empires
happened relatively quickly, we're talking within a
period of less than 50 years while the Roman Empire took
hundreds of years to form. And so it's hard to ascribe
the empire to any one leader. You could say that there
was a culture of expansion, one could make the argument
that they were more technologically sophisticated
than some of their neighbors, especially when it came to military might and as it expanded, it definitely
was able to take advantage of weak neighbors so now
let's just take a step back. What we've done in this exercise
is a rough approximation of the various dimensions that might lead to an empire rising. It's by no means comprehensive
and I suggest for you to think about what dimensions
would you add to this? Maybe you could add a political dimension or maybe that's captured by leadership. Maybe you would add an economic dimension, how much wealth a nation has. And as we go forward in history,
we're gonna see different weights on these different dimensions for how important they
are for empire formation. Especially as we get closer
and closer to modern times, technology increases as a factor in terms of creating an empire. Ideology plays a
significant role in empires based on religion but we
also have empires based on economic ideology,
communism versus capitalism. And on political ideology. And does an empire have
to be strict control? Can you have a cultural empire without necessarily having
direct control over people? So I will leave you with these questions, they're fascinating
questions to think about within the context of these empires but also as we study all of world history.