A Meditation on Empire
The first empires in human history were created in the Near East in the late 3rd millennium B.C., and by the time the Carthaginian empire died, on the field of Zama in 201 B.C., more than a dozen Near Eastern empires had come a…
A Meditation on Empire
The first empires in human history were created in the Near East in the late 3rd millennium B.C., and by the time the Carthaginian empire died, on the field of Zama in 201 B.C., more than a dozen Near Eastern empires had come and gone—some in glory, some in obscurity. The place to begin our study of these, the earliest empires, is by asking
what makes a state an empire. Is an empire a form of government, like monarchy or democracy? Or is it a form of rule that one state exercises over the peoples and places that it brings under its sway? How do empires rise? How are they ruled, and how are they defended? And finally, why do they fall?
Lands, Seas and Sources
The empires of the ancient Near East played out their dramatic history on a stage 5,000 miles wide, stretching from the Pillars of Hercules to the western frontier of India and from the Ukraine to the Sudan, a stage whose complex scenery of seas and mountains, plains and deserts was shaped by immense tectonic forces and the shifting climates
of the post–Ice Age world. An understanding of that scenery is crucial to understanding the history that unfolded on that stage, and so also is an understanding of the nature of the sources from which we draw that history. As complex and diverse as the geography of the Near East, those sources both reveal and obscure the world they record, and they
challenge anyone who would study its history to be both a detective and a historian.
Robert L. Dise Jr. has taught at the University of Northern Iowa since 1992; prior to joining its faculty, he taught at Clinch Valley College (now the University of Virginia’s College at Wise). He received his B.A. in History from the University of Virginia (at Charlottesville), concentrating on the history of the ancient world, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, specializing in the history of Rome.
If you wish to support this channel and the effort put into selecting, finding and uploading these valuable historical works, you may do so either directly through paypal or by downloading and using the revolutionary Brave browser via this referral link https://brave.com/ele794
Crypto donations:
bitcoin: 1FXkq3WfwJgsCse9xbsZdrqY37eEXNZwW8
ethereum: 0x03d5593CD950333aA4eC14cd15ed9F7a9Ba09b88
litecoin: Lar3AsEwk4B53JPwnZspwY6ySjn6p1fwhJ
BAT: 0x03d5593CD950333aA4eC14cd15ed9F7a9Ba09b88
