FINAL EXAM:

ESSAY QUESTION: How do empires rise or come to be? How do they fall? Using examples
from the textbook and from our class notes, what are the common features in the rise and fall of
the early empire? Think about key concepts that we have discussed repeatedly throughout the
class.
ANSWER:
★ The Rise of Empires or How Empires Came to be:
The rise of empires or rather the emergence of empires in Afro-Eurasia during the first
millennium BCE is due to several factors. The first factor was climate change. Commencing
approximately in 1200 BCE, Afro-Eurasia saw another period of warming, which had diverse
impacts throughout the region. Prolonged drought in certain regions resulted in social disruptions
and migrations. This drove nomadic and semi-nomadic groups, who had previously resided on
the outskirts of settled civilizations, to abandon their native territory and relocate to the lands
occupied by the settled communities. Elsewhere, the warmth caused a swift increase in
population and resulted in soil exhaustion, compelling many to abandon their dwellings in
pursuit of sustenance and fruitful terrain. The influx of renewed migrations led to the downfall of
urban societies and the obliteration of the administrative hubs of monarchs, religious leaders, and
ruling families, hence creating opportunities for the emergence of new governments.

A second factor was the large-scale and violent movement of peoples, often connected with
climate change. Invaders emerged from loosely structured peripheral communities and attacked
the urban centers and territorial kingdoms of mainland Greece, Crete, Anatolia, Mesopotamia,
and Egypt. Intruders from the Mediterranean basin and the Syrian desert disrupted the diplomatic
contacts and intricate web of global commerce that had connected Southwestern Asia and North
Africa. In East Asia, nomadic peoples from the vast grasslands of Inner Eurasia clashed with and
eventually defeated the ruling Shang power in the Yellow River basin. In the Indus Valley,
successive invasions by nomadic peoples from the northwest were drawn to the rich farmland in
the south. Upon arrival, they became largely an agrarian society. The process of completing a
workable society took many centuries, but by the time of Alexander the Great, the glory of India
had become legendary. Convergence of nomadic and sedentary populations provided
opportunistic individuals the opportunity to either enlarge existing territorial kingdoms or
establish new governments that would eventually defeat other kingdoms. Through this process is
where a new form of political organization developed: the empire. An empire is a group of
governments or different ethnic groups being ruled by one central authority. Empires facilitated
the spread of influence over long distances by having common languages, professionally
multilingual people, shared systems of government, and a common religion. Some areas were not
affected by an empire arising. For example, people in South Asia have been united as much by
cultural and religious tradition as by forms of government. Trade united geographical territories.
For instance, the economic activities of coastal towns like Byblos and Tyre equaled and at times
even surpassed the territorial gains of empires. There were massive differences within and
among the regions of Afro-Eurasia.
A third factor was technological change. Contributors to the development of imperial institutions
included the incorporation of camels for transportation, seaworthy ships, iron tools for
agriculture, and iron weapons for waging war. The empires of the first millennium were highly
centralized and militaristic states that used force to gain territory. Changing technology had an
important impact on the ability to make this expansion possible. It is during this time that the
camels became the most vital freight carriers across the Syrian and Arabian deserts and thus
played an instrumental role in establishing trade routes. To elaborate, the humps on a camel's
back store fat which enables them to walk continuously for long distances and withstand
inhospitable deserts. Second, the hoofs of a camel have thick pads which make them fit to move
smoothly on sand. The first animal to be domesticated was the dromedary, otherwise known as
the one-humped camel, which is native to the Sahara Desert. Much later on, others, probably
living in central Asia, domesticated the bigger, two-humped Bactrian camel. This beast was
stronger and harder, hence, compared with the dromedary, better suited to endure the blistering
heat of northern Arabia and the freezing winters on the route from China that would later be
called the Silk Road because so much silk was transported along this route. From 1600 BCE
until today, new shipbuilding technology has grown up rapidly and is nowadays seriously
influencing the building of new vessels.

That's to say, the vessels that were previously used for only limited navigation along rivers,
across lakes, and along sea coasts could now be built stronger and large enough to sail across the
ocean. Newly constructed ships were of larger and sturdier hulls with stronger masts and rigging,
all these to help the sails gather the power of wind fully. These and other advances in steering
and ballast, amongst others, now allowed intrepid seafarers to sail out into vast expanses of open
ocean, such as the Mediterranean Sea.

Iron is more easily available than tin and copper combined, which constitute bronze, but it has
the disadvantage that it is hard and thus much more difficult to shape and fashion. Iron is a
ductile metallic element naturally occurring in numerous compounds all over the world. It
became of substantial importance and the most vital and widely used metal throughout world
history after the Bronze Age. Blacksmiths learned to smelter ore, reheat it in high temperatures
that make it soft, and remove impurities in order to create the iron tool. It turned out later that
adding carbon to iron helped people create a primitive kind of steel. As the technology of
smelting and hardening iron improved, bronze tools and weapons began to be replaced by their
iron counterparts. The use of iron was an outstanding innovation that reached beyond
geographical and cultural borders. Iron played a big role in revolutionizing agricultural
techniques. People learned how to tip their plowshares with forged-iron edges, which could be
Hammered into shape and easily sharpened anew. With the iron-tipped plow, farmers could now
clear vast areas of the dense jungle on the Ganges plain and harrow the topsoil again and again,
thereby removing the weeds and improving the soil. Floods no longer had to be relied on to
inundate the fields with rich earth. Now it was possible for farmers to break up the turf and turn
it over, exposing the fertile subsoil. This changed things fundamentally. The agrarian frontier
stretched far beyond classic floodplains flanking rivers. Agrarian technologies constituted the
technological underpinning for sustaining larger, more integrated societies held together by roads
and canals. Ultimately, what served as final catalysts were improvements in military and
administrative governance.

Military power was undoubtedly the means for the growth of the early empires. For instance,
annually, an Assyrian king would lead a military campaign to assert and extend his dominance
over the countryside by making use of a very highly sophisticated arsenal of weapons and
protective equipment. They had used deportation in order to break up the entity of opposition to
their rule, provide forced labor in areas around the empire lacking manpower, and merge their
realm. During the 300-year reign, the Assyrians built a huge network of roads, garrisons, and
relay stations all over their whole empire, making timely communication and army mobility very
easy to put into practice. Moreover, they compelled conquered people to pay them in product,
livestock, raw materials, and workers, which they utilized to construct great cities and further
prosper the Crown. During the course of succeeding centuries, such methods would turn out to
be common among empires, employing or utilized diverse degrees of violence as a controlling
tool.

For example:
● Ancient Near East: The Neo-Assyrians made the leap from a state to an empire through
the application of raw military power, both in conquest and massive deportations, in
founding and maintaining the world's first empire. The Persians rely on persuasion
instead of coercion to create a tolerant and international empire.
● South Asia: People in the Vedic unify their society by creating religious and economic
connections.
● China: The Zhou dynasty might be the inventor of the classic state model where the
tribute system and the mandate of heaven principle are applied (good governance and
upright behavior = legitimate rule).
● Mediterranean World: Greeks, Phoenicians, and Israelites provide the case for states'
smallness being beneficial, as they were the initiators of writing, commerce, and new
approaches to religion that the European continent would soon have contact with.
★ How Did Empires Fall?
Empires fell due to a variety of factors. Military defeats. The Neo-Assyrian Empire experienced
defeats in the military such as the one suffered against the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians in
612 BCE that led to the Empire's disbandment. The Persians also lost the empire when they were
defeated and taken over by the Greeks in the wars against the Athenians and the Spartans. These
battles were disastrous for the empires in military power and also in keeping control over the
territories.
Internal rebellions. The main cause of the decline of the two empires was the internal rebellions
that took place. The Neo-Assyrian Empire was destabilized by internal revolts and uprisings that
took place within the empire. There were also revolts and uprisings in various regions which
were the cause of class control and stability to come in the Persian Empire.

Decline of central authority. The breakdown of the central control was the implosion of power
turmoil and break down of the centuries-old empire. The breakdown of political power could be
tied to the inability of the empires to rule their lands successfully and to win their people's
loyalty.

Political instability. Political uneasy situations within the empires, including the power struggles,
succession disputes, and ineffective leadership, were also the factors that the empires.

Economic hardship is the one of the causes which made the empires weakened. Although other
factors like financial barriers, environmental degradation, and economic inequality were also
responsible for the decline of the empires. Thus, the empires were weakened by economic
hardship which caused them to lose both military and infrastructure support and meet population
needs as well.

Social upheavals, such as the alienation of people, the current inequality of society, and the
people's resistance to the navigational rule, also provided an impact in the empires' decline.
Social unrest weakened the empires' social consistency and hence became the main reasons for
their momentary destruction.

Additionally, in China, the Qin dynasty collapse because of taxes were high, forced work or
labor, nomads in the north attacking, internal affair such as the second Qin emperor was weak
and committed suicide, rebels tried to re-install Zhou leadership and eventually, Han leadership
took over. Moreover the Han dynasty collapse because of emperor Wu's expansions were costly
(Military and Human lives), raised taxes, population despite high taxes because majority could
not afford it, rebel groups arose, millenarian movements (popular people's movements that
promised social change and reorganization of society), and then resulted in Wei and Wu split the
empire for 300 years.
★ The Common Features in the Rise and Fall of the Early Empires:
One of the factors that the rise and fall of early empires shared was climate change. Climatic
conditions were one of the causes of the birth of early empires. The warmup that engulfed Afro-
Eurasia about 1200 BCE brought various impacts and, including the movement of people,
population explosions, and changes around agriculture.

The first point was the shape of the technological change. The appearance of camels for carrying
loads, a redesigned version of ships, and the utilization of iron tools and weapons turned out to
be very helpful in the process of territorial power growth through fighting and the integrating of
larger states. The camel was thus the most significant overland trader known, as it bridged the
vast deserts for trade, while iron tools and weapons replaced the ones made of bronze,
contributing to the expansion of agricultural frontiers and the establishment of larger, more
integrated societies.

Military innovation and warfare triggered by military innovation also took a key part in the rise
of early empires. Warrior/political leaders who had fallen from the previous influential empires
and city-states were forced to break the existing centers of power, thus hybrid societies were set
up in regions like Assyria, Persia, Vedic South Asia, and Zhou China. On the back of armed
warriors, territories and towns were thus connected under a central ruler. This consolidation was
an offshoot of increased farming yields, population growth, and, eventually, the establishment of
the first empires.

The fall of the early empires had similar features which were social and political upheaval,
invasions by nomadic people, and the decline of centralized power. The nomadic and settled
societies' mixing was the opportunity for men with ambition to either extend the old territorial
kingdoms or create new states and then conquer the others, which therefore brought forth the
empire formation. Yet, the disappearance of centralized authority, wars, social dislocations, and
changes in landowning over time resulted in the weakening and collapse of these early empires.

In conclusion, it could be said that the rise and fall of early empires occurred as the various
periods of climate change, technological innovation, military conquest, and ensuing social and
political turmoil influenced the course of human development.

SHORT QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:

1. Explain what a "buffer kingdom" or "buffer state" is - you may use Google in addition to
your textbook - but you MUST use the textbook.
ANSWERS: A "buffer kingdom" or "buffer state" is a political entity which acts as a
protective barrier between two larger and potentially hostile powers that, in turn, deter
direct confrontation and conflict. These centers take punches in the face of conflicts and
aggression, positioned wisely to control stability and security in the affected area. They
would be pondered over to say if they are neutral, the buffer countries or states would be
considered as one of the peaceful warring powers, the mediator in the already violent
historical and geopolitical dynamic to maintain peace and avoid massive conflicts. They
are most effective in waging cultural, economic, and political influences to the minimum,
thus bringing separation and peace between the neighboring areas and powers. For
example, the Mali Empire can be said to be a buffer kingdom. Since it was a wall
between the great states in North Africa and the marine roads of the Indian Ocean.
Equally, the Khitan Liao dynasty is also seen as a buffer state and was the country that
was acting as a protective screen between the Song dynasty in China and the nomadic
societies to the north. These buffer kingdoms or states were like the cement that was used
to provide a good enough background that helped these large powers around them remain
their position stable and secure.
2. How did the early Khmer kingdom and other mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms act as
buffer states between India and China?
ANSWERS: The ancient legends of Khmer and other mainland Southeast Asian
kingdoms were there as buffer states between India and China by providing a political
and geographical barrier between the two, a way that both regions could keep to their
traits and characteristics (as being most influential and powerful) by not having direct
contacts with each other. The Khmer kingdom, with its capital in Angkor, was
strategically located in present-day Cambodia, and it was the leader and a guarantee for
the communities along the route, which was actually the basis of circulation, to live in
peace and trade comfortably. It sounds like it was a supplier at that time but where did
that supplier get the goods and market for them? The Kingdom's location along the
Mekong River basin provided an excellent channel for controlling the trade and business
between India and China, therefore opening a medium for the exchange of goods, ideas,
and cultural influences.
The Khmer kingdom and other mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms were a kind of shield
to the politicians, creating tensions between Great China and India, which
straightforwardly led to military conflicts. The Khmer rulers established mixed polities
and incrementally extended their control over all the adjacent kingdoms and thus
prevented the Chinese invasion and even the massive control of India.
Also, in the timeline, the Khmer kingdom and other mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms
displayed the unique ability to gain and adjust Indian cultural influences and at the same
time to include Chinese ones, which in essence were the main factors that helped to be at
the focal point until a unique and diverse cultural mosaic was created. The culture of the
region was rich and diverse due to the influence of Vedic and Buddhist kingdoms from
India, along with the impact of Chinese culture and religious practices.
In conclusion, the early Khmer kingdom and the other mainland Southeast Asian
kingdoms were considered as buffer states between India and China which meant that
they played the role of both the political and geographical barriers and the main factors in
maintaining stability and prosperity in the region and were also a kind of whey to absorb
and assimilate the cultural influences coming from India and China to make the piece a
unique and diverse cultural mosaic.