What Is An Empire?
Head of Augustus, British Museum, London.
Candace of Meroe
It was an insult, a humiliation, and that is how it was intended. When the African kingdom of Meroe captured a bronze statue of the Roman emperor Augustus, in 25 BC, the queen, or “Candace,” of Meroe had the statue’s head removed and buried it under the threshold of her people’s temple. On entering, worshippers stepped on the head of the leader of the most powerful political entity in the world at that time, with the exception, perhaps, of China. The head, unearthed by twentieth century archaeologists, now stands in the British Museum in London. You can still see embedded in it, tiny grains of sand from the Sahara.
The head itself was carefully crafted by the top Roman bronze-workers of the day. It was designed to show Augustus in the best possible light: strong, young, and powerful. As such it was a major piece of Rome’s propaganda campaign, selling the empire to its conquered provinces. In the few years before the appearance of Christianity, this empire stretched from the Atlantic coast of Europe in the West, the Rhine and Danube rivers in the North, Turkey in the East, and in the south, well, it sort of petered out south of Egypt, in the Candace’s territory, which as historian Neil McGregor says, is “a kind of geopolitical fault-line where the Mediterranean world clashes with Africa.”
Augustus had posted statues like these all over his empire, a means, perhaps, of reminding people far from Rome, the epicenter of the empire, who was in charge. Meroe’s leader, referred to by later historians as a “warrior-queen,” was clearly not impressed. The Greek geographer, Strabo, described her unflatteringly as “a masculine woman, who had lost one eye,” and goes on to tell the story of how the queen attacked and destroyed several Roman frontier forts, seeing that the Roman army was busy fighting Arabs elsewhere. She removed Augustus’s propagandistic statue and defiled it. A Roman general responded by attacking settlements in Meroe. “He made prisoners of the inhabitants,” says Strabo, “and returned back again with the booty, as he judged any farther advance into the country impracticable on account of the roads.”
Introduction
What was Rome doing in Meroe anyway? Why would a northern Mediterranean power find it necessary to transport thousands of men across the sea, then march them through Egypt into the eastern reaches of the southern Sahara desert? This question is central to any exploration of ancient empires, including those discussed in this chapter: the Persians, or Achaemenids (550 to 330 BC), the Romans, whose empire lasted from approximately 30 BC to 476 AD, the Han Chinese (206 BCE – 220 CE) and the Mauryan dynasty of India (522-185 BCE).
All these empires were expansionist, embarking on energetic campaigns of conquest. In expanding, empires often created resistance and were obliged to keep garrisons and frontier posts in far-flung places to protect their interests. They wielded great influence in the conquered territories, social, political, economic and religious, as the “export” of much of the culture of the home-country, or metropole, became one of the hallmarks of empire. Such influence resulted in legacies which span centuries, if not millennia, and we can still see their traces in our world today.
Not perhaps the first, but certainly the largest, this chapter will look at how these empires arose and what motivated their growth. Once established, how did they maintain their possessions? What was life like for the citizens of such states, and the conquered people they ruled? How did they balance power between the imperial “center” and the provincial peripheries? What combination of power, both military and other, did they use in this endeavor? Were they generally benign or harmful, destructive or beneficial, and to whom? Finally we must look at the imperial lifecycle, and ask questions about their decline, for decline they do, without exception. We will also look at their legacies, for even after collapsing, their memories linger and their political and cultural forms find echoes throughout history.
1. Why Was Rome in Africa and Not Africa in Rome?
Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years? [220-167 BCE] Polybius.
Claiming that Rome dominated “almost the whole inhabited world,” was a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, if you were the ruler of Meroe in 25 BC you would be wary of this gigantic northern power, apparently intent on swallowing the entire globe. You would likely have felt a deep sense of pride in your position, and in the territory over which you held sway. Quite apart from the natural pride you might feel in your own identity and the reluctance to have strangers take over your society, this part of Africa was enjoying something of a high point in its history to-date.
Several major contributions swept from East to West Africa in the first millennium BC, in specific, iron working (which some scholars believe to have been invented independently in Africa), several new and successful crops, and the development of long-distance sea and land-based commerce. Iron technology began before the classical age, and defined it through the use to which these tools were put, trade and war, most notably. Trade played a vital role in shrinking the world and tying it together in an interdependent web. Sea routes from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe connected resources with markets, and overland routes across Africa and Eurasia (such as the fabled Silk Road) put suppliers and consumers of goods such as precious metals, spices and tools, in touch with each other across Eurasia. Meroe, located in an area often referred to as Nubia, was the product of these developments, and played a large part in spreading technological change to other parts of Africa.
Nubia, which is the generic name for the Nile valley south of the first cataract (shallow area or rapids), is mostly in today’s Sudan, but in ancient times it was home to several complex state-level societies going back as far as about 2400 BC. Nubia always had close—and often violent—contact with its larger northern neighbor, Egypt. Such was the success of one Nubian civilization, however (Kush), that it invaded Egypt in 730 BCE and ruled it for over half a century.
After about 590 BC, Meroe, further south along the Nile than Kush, became the center of Nubian civilization. By 200 BCE it had become a major site for the production of iron, as the heaps of slag—a by-product of the process of smelting iron—attest even today. Local forests, which are long gone now, provided the wood to smelt the iron, which was an extremely fuel-intensive process. Meroe not only used iron effectively in weapons for its military, but traded it along with ivory and gold, long-distance overland to the west and by sea to the east, as well as up the Nile corridor. With its wealthy resource base, it is not hard to see why, by the time the Romans arrived, the Candace did not feel like bowing to them. [graphic source: http://wysinger.homestead.com/nubian_102.html Lion Temple of Naqa. Showing Meroian king and queen striking enemies]
There were big differences, however, between Africa and the Classical Mediterranean world. Although both were literate, we do not have the volume of texts from Africa that we have from the Graeco-Roman world at this time. The significance of this cannot be overstated. One of the primary reasons that Rome is studied so much is that the Romans produced so much literature. We have diaries, histories, essays, poetry, all written by the historical actors themselves, providing us with details about all conceivable aspects of their lives. The Merotic script diverged from Egyptian hieroglyphs over time, and its linear script is still undeciphered. Once translated, it will no doubt vastly increase our knowledge of the civilization—yet without the volume of Rome and China.
Another major difference is population. Some estimates put the Roman and Chinese empires together at around half of the world’s population at this time. What is the significance of population? Large populations create large economies; food is produced in exponentially larger quantities, leading to greater surpluses, and therefore to more specialization in such pursuits as agriculture, metal work, architecture, engineering, warfare—the building blocks of large states and empires. Peasants and farmers could be taxed, in goods and cash, allowing states to amass fortunes the size of which had never been seen in history.
This comparative population differential made it unlikely that Meroe would project its power far beyond its borders, as it would have needed not only a sizable population itself to begin with, but also dense settlement in the conquered areas adjacent to it. Meroe would have used such population density to bolster its own forces, just as the Romans did when they expanded, first from a city-state among other city states throughout Italy, and then around the Mediterranean world, and north into France and Germany. Just as hurricanes need moisture from the evaporating water of oceans to maintain their strength, losing force once they hit land, expanding empires tend to loose momentum if they expand into lightly populated areas from which they can glean no new human resources. Meroe was the population center of gravity for its region, but it had sparsely-populated desert to the south and west, a powerful neighbor, Egypt, to its north, and the Ocean to the East.
What Did Empires Look Like from The Outside?
The theme of resistance is a constant in the history of empires. If Meroe represented the southern extremity of Rome’s power, Britain was the northern end. There, resistance is best illustrated by another famous enemy of Rome, the queen of the Iceni Tribe, Boudicca. By AD 40, the Romans had crossed the English Channel and were busy building fortresses and garrison towns in Britain. The island, at this point in time, was home to groups of more or less independent tribes and chiefdoms, each with their own territory. Boudicca’s husband, Prasutagus, was the leader of one of these, and aware that he could not fight the Romans off forever, had become a client king, an arrangement whereby Rome allowed him to continue business as usual for the payment of tribute. The Roman historian Tacitus heard the story from his father-in-law Agricola, who was a general in Britain at the time:
“Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, famed for his long prosperity, had made the emperor his heir along with his two daughters, under the impression that this token of submission would put his kingdom and his house out of the reach of wrong. But the reverse was the result, so much so that his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his house by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war. First, his wife Boudicea was scourged, and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the Iceni, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were stripped of their ancestral possessions, and the king’s relatives were made slaves.”
Inheriting royal property was illegal under Roman law, and Rome was not about to share a kingdom with a woman. The Romans saw in the death of Prasutagus an opportunity to nullify their agreement with him and take over his possessions directly. Boudicca herself was flogged and forced to watch the raping of her teenage daughters. It is not easy to explain why, exactly, such brutality was necessary (surely they could simply have put them in prison, or politely exiled them to France?), but there seems to be an imperial habit to not only defeat, but humiliate and utterly demoralize one’s opponents.
In a sequence seen repeatedly in the history of empires, the heavy hand of the conqueror created a rebellion, in this case of the outraged Iceni and many surrounding tribes who saw in Boudicca’s treatment their own future, no doubt. They turned on Roman towns in Britain and burned them, including the garrison town of Colchester and Londinium (London) which, as Tacitus says, “though undistinguished by the name of a colony, was much frequented by a number of merchants and trading vessels.” Boudicca became the leader of this revolt which nearly catapulted the Romans out of Britain, but instead ended with the tribal alliance broken, and Boudicca dead.
If we ask why it was not Candace who invaded Rome, we can ask the same of Boudicca, or a hundred other local kings, queens or chiefs who interacted with the Roman empire. We cannot rule out the possibility that they would have, had they been able (this recalls the Hobbesian trap described in chapter four). And indeed more than once “barbarian” tribes did attack Rome, effectively ending the Roman empire in its western provinces in 410 A.D.
But at this point in history, Meroe, no peace-loving utopia itself, lacked the resources to project its power as far as Italy, nor did it evidently possess the organizational structure, social, economic, and political, to allow it to generate such resources. Whether they “would have if they could have” gets to the heart of whether or not empires are “inevitable” for those who have the means. The same question could be asked about the Britons, who some 1600 years later would be able to expand far beyond their borders, (though they did not go to Rome, but to Cairo, Delhi, Cape Town, Jamestown, and other distant places). In so doing, the British ironically invoked the “glories” of the Roman empire, even though that ancient empire had in the all-but-forgotten past defiled their ancestors.
Is Empire A Eurasian Thing?
Although empires show up globally, Eurasia generated larger polities earlier than elsewhere. The kinds of polities we find in Africa at this time, for instance, are all significantly smaller than the “mega” states of Rome, China, Persia and India. The same is true of the Americas: the polities of Monte Alban and Teotihuacan, in the Mexican highlands and Mesoamerica respectively, were far smaller, and somewhat later. How can we account for such differences?
Many scholars opt for environmental explanations. It is hard to ignore the influence of environment on humanity, as Africanist Erik Gilbert points out: “On some level we are all environmental determinists, after all no one has ever invested a great deal of time in wondering why Eskimos never developed agriculture.” Gilbert points to particular challenges to the development of big states in Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular the land, which was much wetter, and not given to the production of storable grains, such as wheat, rice and maize, which are the engines of all early civilizations. With the (later) appearance of maize in West Africa, there was an explosion of state building, after all, “yams and even bananas are hard to build an empire on.” Similar challenges faced state and “mega-state” building in the Americas, and might go a long way to explaining their absence there until later historical eras. We will look at this issue in more depth in other chapters, and consider environmental factors as well as different strategies chosen or invented by different peoples.
Why Africa did not produce “Rome” is, ultimately, a misleading question, however, for by some estimates more than half of Eurasia at this time lived outside of states; you could, therefore, ask why Romania did not produce an empire, or northern Thailand, or Wales, etc.
2. Are Empires Just large States?
A Great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Darius king, one king over many, one lord of many. (Inscription on Darius I’s rock tomb at Naqsh-i-Rustam)
Two thousand years ago approximately half of the human population lived under the control of the Chinese Han and the Roman empires. Owing to the state of their geographical knowledge (and perhaps their assumptions of greatness) both empires assumed they were the lords of the entire planet, orbis terrerum in Latin, and tianxia “All under Heaven,” in Chinese.
Big states they certainly were: The Han census of 2 C.E. (carried out for the time-honored purposes of taxation) recorded 59.6 million souls. The Roman population had reached between 65 and 75 million people by around the mid-second century C.E., according to different estimates. Each empire controlled approximately 4 million square miles of territory. Ancient population studies are notoriously unreliable, but recent guesses put the global figure in the first two centuries C.E. at between 170 and 330 million. [graphic source: Persian Empire http://peter.mackenzie.org/history/hist1020.htm]
But apart from size, which is certainly a characteristic of empires, they are different, structurally and functionally. Lets look first at their structure. Empires are made up of states, they are the “Russian-Doll” of polities, states-within-states, each state owing allegiance—usually this means money—to the imperial government. If you imagine your state’s governor as a king, then, if the United States were an empire, the president in Washington, D.C. would be the emperor. The Persian term that comes closest to “emperor,” for example—shah-an-shah, literally means “king of kings,” suggesting that the boss of the Achaemenids ruled over subjugated kingdoms, in effect creating a “super-state.”
The early history of the Achaemenid empire (named after its dynastic founder, Achaemenes), illustrates how this happened. The largest of all the ancient Near Eastern empires, it spanned from Egypt to central Asia and the Indus valley in its heyday. The Achaemenids began as rulers of a regional state, what we would think of as a kingdom—one “king” ruling an ethnically and linguistically homogenous group of people. Excuse the following short piece of what seems to be really old-fashioned history, but this is how it went down: Beginning with conquests by king Cyrus “The Great” (ruled from 559-530) and his son Cambyses II (ruled from 530-22 BCE), the Persians defeated the kingdom of the Medes, in modern-day Iran, and then Lydia, in modern-day Turkey, and then Babylon, in Iraq, all between 550 and 539 BCE. A few years later his son Cambyses II (notice they are keeping it all in the family, another imperial trait) conquered Egypt, helping himself to a rich treasure trove and immense prestige. Imperial expansion slowed under later emperors, notably Xerxes and Darius who launched multiple campaigns, into such areas as Scythia and Greece, with mixed success. That short summary should give you the picture: Conquest of neighboring kingdoms and absorption of them under one polity creates the basis of an empire.
The tomb of Darius I (522-486 BC), carved into a massive rock face at Naqsh-i-Rustam near his capital Persepolis, bears an inscription that neatly illustrates this idea of Persian overlordship. It lists the peoples and kingdoms over which he ruled:
“Media, Elam, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandara, India, Scythians, who drink haoma (an intoxicating ritual drink), Scythians with pointed caps, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Sardis, Ionia, Scythians who are across the sea, Thrace, Petasos-wearing Ionians (a type of hat), Lybians, Kushites, men of Maka, Carians.” [graphic source: http://quintinlake.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Drawing-Parallels-Architecture-Observed-Prints/G0000G9u1yEx2orU/I0000cZba_LO4zZw]
Many of these place names have changed, but they cover most south west Asia, a giant tract of land from Egypt across most of today’s Middle East, including Turkey and Iran and into Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Han China differs from Persia and Rome in that it inherited a largely unified polity from the Qin dynasty, which had created the idea of one entity called “China.” To some extent, then, China having done the work of unification some time before the Han, was on its way to governing more like a state than an empire, albeit a very big one. But the work was not complete, as historian Mark Edward Lewis explains: “One generation of imperial Qin was not sufficient to eradicate local loyalties and secure universal acceptance of an absolute autocrat.” After the Qin emperor, Shiu Huangdi, died in 211 BC, the political system he created collapsed. In the ensuing civil war, a general of peasant origin by the name of Liu Bang came to power and, in 202 BC, proclaimed himself emperor (he was later known as Emperor Han Gaozu). Thus began the Han empire.
Ancient Indian empires also fit the king-of-kings model. They left much less historical data than China and Rome, however. The records we have come from Greek writers such as Megasthenes who was a diplomatic envoy of the Seleucid empire in Turkey (a dynastic offshoot of Alexander the Great’s empire). The Arthasastra, an ancient text on Indian statecraft, believed by many to have been written during the Mauryan period (and by others to be somewhat later), also tells us much about the empire. But much of our historical data comes from rock inscriptions in Greek, Pakrit, and Aramaic, the primary spoken languages in the region, in particular the Rock edicts of King Asoka, mentioned in chapter four.
The Mauryan kings of Magadha controlled multiple contemporary city-states, which they had conquered in military campaigns. With their intensive agricultural development and their participation in trade, principally along the Ganges river, they created a single polity which controlled a large part of India’s Gangetic plain and beyond. Historians generally see Chandragupta, the first Mauryan ruler, as having a humble background, although later Buddhist sources claim he was related to the Buddha, which is most likely a political attempt to confer legitimacy on the emperor. (Graphic source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/maur/hd_maur.htm)
Ruling from their base at Pataliputra, in the far north east of India, the Maurya conquered a territory that stretched from Bengal in the east, Afghanistan in the west and to most of the southern part of the Deccan peninsular (modern day India). Their polity was relatively short-lived, however, beginning around 322 BC and dissolving after the death of Asoka in 232 BC.
Empires ruled over diverse peoples, with multiple linguistic, religious and ethnic background, as a result of their conquest of them. Because of the difficulty of effectively governing such large areas, most empires devolved authority, and running costs, upon local rulers. Ancient empires were, therefore, tolerant of regional diversity, and often set modest goals in terms of how much influence they wielded in far flung provinces, seeing it as sufficient to receive tribute, or taxes, to make the effort of conquest financially worthwhile.
But tolerant of diversity did not mean egalitarian. “The concept of empire,” say historians Jane Burbank and Frank Cooper, “presumes that different peoples within the polity will be governed differently.” Ethnic differences within the empire, in particular perhaps in Rome, ensured differences of treatment, and this was evident in Roman law. In the provinces—the conquered territories outside of Italy—Romans had their legal matters decided as in Rome, whereas non-Romans had to rely on local legal practices, and in cases involving Romans and non-Romans, still further sets of legal rules were drawn up.
But as in non-imperial states, there were other divisions in the social fabric of the empire, most notably that of class. China was populated mainly by rural peasants. Many of these were small landholders, able to farm their land, under the Han this would have been a few acres, in return for a large cash or produce tax which was payable to their local government representative. When payment was impossible their land was often forfeited and they would be forced to work harder to rent it back. Apart from peasants, merchants represented another class, often very wealthy, in spite of the Confucian hostility towards profit.
The Roman republic was built by a system of citizen-soldiery, in which every citizen provided extensive military service. The lower classes, or Plebians, therefore actually wielded some power under the Republic, and had their representative, or Tribune, in the Senate looking after their interests. With citizen-participation at its core, Rome’s soldiery felt some sense of ownership of military endeavors. The Plebians were not shy of standing up for their rights; “class struggles,” says sociologist Michael Mann, “contributed much to the military effectiveness of the Roman Republic.” In the later Republic the power of the plebs waned as aristocratic families, enriched by conquest, gutted the institutional power of the senate.
During the last two centuries B.C.E, extraordinary wealth, in the form of coin, precious metals and other resources, poured into Rome from its conquests. Did a rising tide float all boats? Not really. As archaeologists from the Anglo-American project in Pompeii have discovered, Pompeii’s society was sharply divided between haves and have nots during the Roman empire, and this is in contrast to what they found in early Roman eras and before. Preserved in volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, Pompeiian villas tell of a world of elite aristocrats. In some cases multiple houses have been knocked together to make one enormous home, complete with separate quarters for slaves and servants. Earlier archaeological remains reveal a far more standardized residential picture, with no such villas. The take-home message is that the wealth of conquest created distinct social inequality, which widened through the late republic and into the phase of the empire. The many eateries or bars in Pompeii suggest that the majority of the population lived off a kind of ancient fast-food, as thousands of peasants, thrown off the land to make room for huge estates worked by foreign slaves, poured into the city to look for work. [Graphic: Via Consulare in Pompeii. Source: http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/pompeii/tour.html
In Rome the situation was much worse. With a population of around one million in the early empire it was the largest city on earth, and was packed with people living on the bread line. Crime was rife, disease endemic. Riches from ceaseless conquest created architectural splendor; the aristocrats to whom the treasure accrued spent most of it on themselves, building lavish houses and country estates and developing ostentatious lifestyles. Social safety nets were not a part of the Roman world, and poverty was such that there may have even been benefits to slavery—slave-owners at the very least fed and housed slaves, even if they extended them no civil or human rights whatsoever; slaves could be raped, beaten, even killed with immunity.
Instead of welfare, the emperors instituted what they called “Bread and Circuses,” for the diversion of the population: free bread was often available, and the free circuses involved chariot and horse racing, which was wildly popular, as well as the gladiatorial battles which were held in amphitheaters large and small, the largest being the Coliseum in Rome, built around A.D. 70 under the supervision of the emperor Vespasian. Capable of seating 50,000 people it hosted mock battles of hundreds of men, mostly captured slaves and some professional gladiators, mercenaries and ex-soldiers, as well as battles against wild animals, thousands of which were imported from North Africa, largely depopulating that region of these beasts. Nine thousand wild animals were killed over 100 days in Rome to mark the dedication of the Coliseum. Eleven thousand were killed to celebrate Trajan’s conquest of Dacia. These isolated “special” orgies of killing do not include the regular, scheduled, massacres. By the early centuries CE, elephant, rhino and zebra were extinct in North Africa, hippos from the Lower Nile and the tiger in Northern Iran.
[Colloseum. graphic source: http://www.visitingdc.com/rome/colosseum-picture.asp
The circuses were a necessary diversion. Civil disorder was never far away, banditry was common in the countryside and those lucky enough to have estates kept them well-gated and guarded. Roman sources tell us about several slave revolts in the later empire, but whether there were plebian uprisings is not so clear, as Michael Mann points out: “We cannot really be sure whether it is revolts or records that are absent. The literate class did not seem keen on noticing or chronicling the discontent of their subordinates.”
The class and ethnic divisions of empire highlight how deeply stratified and exploitative empires were. Elites made history; their footprints remain. Their grand houses, public monuments and literary records survived while the remnants of the poor often disappeared with time.
Who is the Emperor?
Even an emperor needs legitimacy. Chinese political theories of legitimacy well preceded the Han. The Mandate of Heaven posited that rulers were divinely appointed, but at the same time suggested that they could forfeit the position through unjust or foolish policies. The Han built on Qin models and developed more complex forms of legitimacy. Historian of the Han, Sima Qian, recorded how, shortly after becoming emperor, Han Gaozu invited his advisors to tell him why he had triumphed in the civil war: “Speak to me frankly, and dare to hide nothing. Why did I gain the empire? Why did Xiang Yu lose it?” According to Sima Qian, it appears that the emperor was more interested in telling his own perspective rather than listening: after naming three of his top aides, whom he considered more skilled than he in their fields, he says: “These three are great men, and I was able to employ them. That is why I gained the empire. Xiang Yu had only Fan Zheng and he could not use him. That is why he was slain by me.” [Pic of Lui Bang, Source: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/images/han-fdr.jp
So is an emperor just someone who can delegate? Uniting the empire won Han Gaozu enormous prestige and helped legitimize his rule; the idea that the emperor should embody excellence and bestow boons on his people had been part of the Qin’s criteria for legitimacy. But there had to be more, and this is where religious ideology and the cosmic order crept it. Sima Qian reports that Gaozu’s mother had been impregnated by a dragon, the “Red God,” and this bestowed him with his extraordinary physiognomy. The Han court, at a later date, adopted the Qin’s use of the “Five Phase Theory,” which suggested that their rise to power represented the arrival a new cosmic period. A story circulated within the Han that when he rose against the Qin, Gaozu had killed a serpent, which was the son of the White God. The succession of the god of one color by another marked the turning over of a new cosmic phase. In this way the emperor was linked to something beyond mere mortal flesh. Beware, was the implication; his authority is from the heavens and not to be questioned by humans.
The Han emperor embodied the state. All state employees were his servants. All salaries and positions were gifts from him. In some later Han writing he is even referred to as Guo Jia (the state). All imperial proclamations had the force of law, and the Han legal code was, in fact, constituted in its entirety by the emperor’s decrees, instead of a formal body of accepted legal doctrine, developed by scholars, like the Graeco-Roman model.
The Han emperor was enshrouded in a host of rituals and rites whose origins date to much earlier times. Half of the capital, Chang’an, contained residences and palaces of the imperial family. Their tombs created a man-made mountain that loomed over the capital, and required several nearby cities to maintain them. The religious leaders organized regular sacrifices and rituals among these tombs. A multitude of rules marked off the imperial being from ordinary humans, and transgressing these rules was often punishable by death.
The historian Mark Edward Lewis makes the point that recent scholars have challenged the cliché of “Oriental Despotism,” seeing in it an attempt by Europeans to belittle the participatory role of Asians in their own destiny. The emperor’s authority, argue the anti-Orientalists, was in reality limited by bureaucracy, suggesting that his power was not all-encompassing. “However laudable the intent behind these arguments,” says Lewis, “they are wrong.” The formal Chinese bureaucracy had no permanent power base, and was usually trumped by the “inner court” which was made up by those close to the emperor, his friends, family and eunuchs who frequently enjoyed close ties to the emperor. “As chief administrator, high judge, and chief priest, the emperor knew no limits to his authority, except the not-inconsiderable ones imposed by his biology.” These sometimes provided a real check to imperial authority—as Lewis points out, some emperors were simply lazy and left the business of state-craft to the professionals. That may have reduced his authority somewhat, but for those looking for concrete checks on imperial power, it does not stand for much.
The Roman emperor was similarly all-powerful. The English word “Empire” is derived from the Latin imperium, the power given to the Roman kings to order executions, draft citizens into armies, and collect taxes. Rome, which was a kingdom at 700 BCE, became a republic in the succeeding centuries, in which power was shared between the Senate—a collection of rich old men, and the people (known as plebians), collectively known by its acronym: SPQR (senatus populusque romanus, “the Senate and the People of Rome”).
This sounds like a great recipe for democracy; by evolving from a kingdom to republic, much of the power of imperium was transferred to different government agents, such as Consuls and Praetors, who wielded civic and military authority, and staffed major institutions in Rome’s administration. But as students of another (fictional) empire understand, the force can be used for good…and evil. Under the later republic, military leaders (such as Julius Caesar, and Pompeii) wielded disproportionate amounts of power, threatening the very foundation of the state, and raising the specter of a return to monarchy. Ultimately, the republic dissolved into one civil war between Caesar, Pompeii, and their followers, (40’s BCE) and another (30s BCE) between the remnants of the Senatorial elite and Caesar’s nephew and adopted son, Octavian (later renamed Augustus) who went on to become Rome’s first emperor.
In Augustus’ early days, he sported a signet ring with Alexander the Great’s head on it, showcasing his role-model. When he developed more confidence he replaced this with one of his own head, feeling no more need for role models. Like the Han emperor he embodied the state, as his statues reflected, (why the Candace of Meroe garnered so much satisfaction from burying the statue of Augustus underfoot). After his death the Roman senate declared him a god, and he was worshipped by Romans in cults throughout the empire (this practice was continued with later emperors even if occasionally ridiculed; Vespasian, feeling he was nearing the end, is said to have quipped: “I think I’m becoming a god!”) His personal finances were almost synonymous with the state treasury; conquests and inheritance had made him so wealthy that he was able to bail out the treasury from his personal property, like the President of the United States paying off the country’s national debt from his personal bank account. A state office called Fiscus (loosely translated as Money Bag) administered both the emperor’s personal finances and the state’s.
Upon his death, Augustus left instructions that a kind of autobiography, or list of accomplishments (The Deeds of the Divine Augustus), be inscribed outside his tomb in Rome, and published throughout the empire. “These are the deeds performed by the deified Augustus,” it reads, “by which he subjugated the entire world to the power (imperium) of the Roman People.” The use of the term “Roman People” reveals how he saw himself as the embodiment of them, and the state itself. “I often waged war,” he continues, “civil and foreign, on the earth and sea, in the whole wide world, and as victor I spared all the citizens who sought pardon. As for foreign nations, those which I was able to safely forgive, I preferred to preserve rather than to destroy.”
In a contrast to Chinese and Roman models, the Persian emperor Darius I did not claim to be a god, (to be fair, though, Augustus was only deified after death), but did allow himself the privilege of being selected by the “Great God” to rule over the earth, as recounted in the quote above. “I am Darius, the great king, king of kings,” he proclaims, “king of countries containing all kinds of men, king on this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having an Aryan lineage.” Here, he makes a big deal about his ethnicity, illustrating how the Persian empire, like many, involved an ethnic hierarchy, privileging the rulers. The great majority of high officials in the Persian empire were Persians, these positions being reserved for that elite group (although there were rare exceptions).
3. Why Do Empires Exist?
In the search to explain why empires exist, you could do worse than think back to Hobbes’ ideas on gain, glory and distrust (Ch. 4). These three elements operate at both an individual and collective level to promote expansionist policies. As historian Charles Maier puts it: “Societies in which aristocracies play major roles and have organized their collective consciousness and efforts around military activity generate, and indeed inculcate, military values and often reward aggressive behavior.” When the Persian king Cambyses, consummate warrior from a war-like aristocracy, conquered Egypt in 525 BC, what greater reward could there have been than its untold riches?
Rome’s military aristocracy led it in a similar direction. The origins of the transformation of Rome from Republic to Empire lie in the concentration of power in individuals, beginning notably with Julius Caesar and his military successes in Gaul. These made him extremely wealthy. He sent slaves and war treasure back home, bestowing “gifts” on the people, in effect creating an end-run around the Senate and making himself popular. Caesar was wanted in Rome to stand trial for illegal activities before he left, and for illegal actions carried out in Gaul where he was campaigning (successfully, as it turned out). But Caesar knew that to return to Rome was suicide, and made the weighty decision to return to Italy at the head of his legion, an action which was punishable by death under Roman law. When he crossed the small river known as the Rubicon (which separated Italy from Cisalpine Gaul) he became a criminal in the eyes of the senate. Fortunately for him senators were so terrified by his advance that they fled to country estates, allowing Caesar to enter Rome unchallenged. The ensuing civil wars were played out across the Mediterranean as Caesar pursued Pompeii, the leader of the senate, and his allies, for the better part of a decade, and ended when Augustus defeated Mark Anthony (Caesar’s former ally), and the remnants of the senate leadership. “I raised an army,” says Augustus in his memorial inscription, “with which I set free the state, which was oppressed by the domination of a faction.” In terms of its expansionist policies, Rome was already an empire before it had an emperor. With the waning of the republican system it added dictatorship to military expansion, and the package was complete.
What is the Economic Motivation for Empire?
Trade and war have always been closely related, for what cannot be bought can sometimes be taken. In commercial relations, parties (be they firms or individuals) require assurances that goods will be available at specific prices, in specific quantities. But in business as in international relations, how can an entity ensure the benign behavior of partners? The more control one has over them, the better. Power is the only guarantee one has that clients, friends, partners will act in accordance with your will. In other words, if you want something done properly, own the means of doing it. This is a nut-shell explanation of why empires exist: An expansionist, militaristic polity better serves the exploitative and consumptive nature of states.
The Mauryan empire was the first polity in India to encompass all the territory from the Arabian sea in the East to the Bay of Bengal in the west. This feat was accomplished by dogged military action, and was probably not undertaken with the explicit intent of “unifying” India. “More probably,” says historian John Keay, “its westward extension was intended to engross that lucrative maritime trade pioneered by the Harrapans in timbers, textiles, spices, gems and precious metals between the ports of India’s west coast and those of the Persian Gulf.” In this case, the Mauryans did not necessarily want to steal all those goods—that would have made too many enemies—but simply to be in a position to trade directly with the suppliers, instead of going through numerous middle-men.
In Han China, as in Rome, or India, relying on “friendly princes” to remain friendly did not amount to security. Rome relied increasingly on its provinces for grain, with which it fed its impoverished subjects, and its enormous armies. Egypt was famously referred to as the “bread basket,” of Rome, Sicily also served this purpose, as did the north African colonies in today’s Tunisia and Libya. These areas eventually lost their ability to supply Rome, as they lost topsoil to erosion, and became barren desert instead of fertile bread basket. This has been highlighted as one of many reasons for Roman decline.
Sima Qian reports that towards the end of the first century of Han rule all economic indicators were looking promising: “The granaries in the cities and the countryside were full and the government treasuries were running over with wealth. In the capital the strings of cash had been stacked up by the hundreds of millions until the cords that bound them had rotted away and they could no longer be counted. In the central granary of the government, new grain was heaped onto of the old until the building was full and the grain overflowed and piled up outside, where it spoiled and became unfit to eat.”
Indicators for Rome’s economic well-being generally rose in periods of expansion, too, and were at their height when the empire’s territorial size was greatest. Rome’s economy grew between 150 BC and 150 A.D. in large part due to the resources that flowed into the empire from its provinces, from booty from conquest, taxes from new subject populations, and from trade, which brought goods from the south and east to the north and west, along newly-opened trade routes. Slaves (free labor) added dramatically to the empire’s surplus production. In the early years of the empire, they made up an estimated 30-40% of Rome’s imperial population. Estate owners were free to squeeze all the possible labor they could out of slaves should they be so inclined, because, as Michael Mann points out, “agricultural slaves were denied membership in the human race.”
Is There an Evolutionary Motivation for Empires?
If one of the major drivers of imperial growth is economic exploitation, are there any others? The Historian Walter Schiedel, argues that there are Darwinian motives for empires. The struggle to increase reproductive success drives evolution. How can we measure this in historical terms? Scheidel points to the phenomenon of harems in ancient empires. The Han emperors, he says, amassed some 6000 women in imperial harems by the second century BC, and the Achaemenids routinely collected hundreds of women within their harems. All Persian emperors had multiple wives, this was not uncommon, nor was the amassing of women from conquered territories or as tribute. When Alexander the Great conquered Darius’ Persian empire he already had four wives, yet he appropriated Darius’ harem of 360 women. Beyond the (to modern minds) obscene need of desire-fulfillment, these harems produced a commodity much valued by the emperors: Children—the fruits of reproductive success, and the index by which one has fulfilled one’s biological purpose.
“In view of the constraints put on male lifetime fertility by female reproductive physiology,” says Scheidel, “reproductive self-restraint in the face of growing resources would not have made sense for the beneficiaries of imperial exploitation.”
Rome’s flooding with slaves from conquered territories did not only provide labor. Many scholars think it likely that female slaves were used primary for sex. As historian Laura Betzig puts it: “Slaves were kept to breed their masters’ bastards.”
Roman law was explicit on the fact that for a woman, sex with a slave counted as adultery. Not so for a man. Sex with slave girls (and boys) was common, as the Roman writer Plutach suggests: “If a man in private life, who is incontinent and dissolute with regard to his pleasures, commits some peccadillo with a paramour or slave girl, his wedded wife ought not to be indignant or angry, but she should reason that it is respect for her which leads him to share his debauchery, licentiousness, and wantonness with another woman.” The sexual function of female slaves may provide an answer to the mystery about what they actually did.
Although children from extra-marital unions were not recognized in law, they did provide a way for what Scheidel refers to as “marginal reproductive success,” that is a spreading of genes without producing children that can inherit property. On the deepest evolutionary level, gene spreading will suffice, and the wealthier and more powerful the man, the greater his access to this reproductive resources. This benefit, therefore, accrued not only to emperors, but to all privileged males, including the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who served in imperial armies and as such had access to women of conquered provinces in large numbers.
4. Do Empires Survive Through Military Force Alone? (Or: What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?)
[Graphic Source: Aqueduct in Israel. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/israel/caesarea-history.htm
The British Comedy troupe Monty Python famously satirized the idea of imperial resistance in their film The Life of Brian, in which they portray a group of Jewish freedom fighters plotting to kick the Romans out of Judea (modern-day Israel and the Palestinian Territories). Although this is a fictitious story, it refers to the Roman occupation of Judea, which began in 63 BC. The leader asks his followers: “What have the Romans ever done for us?” The answer to this rhetorical question should of course be a resounding, Nothing! But someone pipes up and mentions “the aqueduct,” (a structure for transporting water). Then another offers up the roads and another one mentions public safety, law, health, etc. When the list is finally over, the leaders admits that, yes, these are all well and good, but apart from all of that, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” A pause. Then someone says, Brought peace? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oRzIHxZKnA] Or: A comic oratorio, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oRzIHxZKnA]
Peace, as it turns out was no small feat. In the process of being created, both the Roman and Han empires had been through massively destructive civil wars. In China, the death of the Qin emperor plunged them back into the turmoil of the Warring States period. Liu Bang finally triumphed after several years of struggle, decapitated 80,000 prisoners of war and pronounced himself emperor. Rome had experienced civil wars for some fifty years before Augustus emerged as the top dog. Both empires then began a prolonged period of internal peace. By any standards what ensued was a period of remarkable prosperity, in which almost all indicators of productivity rose. Egyptian records from the Roman era show that their farmers were getting ten pounds of wheat to every pound sown, a 10:1 ratio which was unprecedented in the ancient world. Technological innovations also greatly increased agricultural output, in particular wind and water. To date, all energy had been produced by human muscles or biomass power. In the first century C.E., however, both Rome and China produced the waterwheel, which they employed to power bellows, used to heat up furnaces, and to grind grain for flour. Increased production at iron foundries and on the farm meant more stuff, and improvements in ship design and building produced better, cheaper and larger ships that were able to move goods further for less, creating economic benefit in the process. All of this amounted to a net gain of the human condition as measured by such indices as overall population growth and average mortality. Notwithstanding the massive wealth differentials in Rome and China, as archaeologist Ian Morris puts it: “Compared to earlier populations, Romans lived in a consumer paradise. Per capita consumption in what became the western provinces of the Roman Empire rose from a level near subsistence around 500 BCE to maybe 50 percent above it six or seven hundred years later.” In both Rome and China, while much poorer than today, “compared to all that had gone before, this was a golden age.”
To avoid perpetual revolts an empire must wield what political scientist Joseph Nye calls “Soft Power.” This certainly includes the economic benefits of peace experienced by Romans and Han, but it also includes such attributes as appealing values and ideology, law—religious or otherwise—and culture, broadly defined. Often the ideas of justice, tolerance and law, which developed in imperial centers, extended across its breadth along with imperial expansion. The Indian work the Arthasastra combines such high ideals with legalistic proclamations. We find, for example, a section promoting freedom from sexual assault on the part of female slaves: When a man commits or helps another to commit rape with a girl or a female slave pledged to him, he shall not only forfeit the purchase-value, but also pay a certain amount of money to her and a fine of twice the amount of sulka to the government. And later we read what is probably one of the earliest written prohibitions against non-consensual sex: “No man shall have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will.”
The Arthasastra contains not only prohibitions but specific penalties and punishments which go along with certain criminal acts, such as this section dealing with marriage:
“If a woman either brings forth no live children, or has no male issue, or is barren, her husband shall wait for eight years before marrying another. If she bears only a dead child, he has to wait for ten years. If she brings forth only females, he has to wait for twelve years. Then, if he is desirous to have sons, he may marry another. . . If a husband either is of bad character, or is long gone abroad, or has become a traitor to his king, or is likely to endanger the life of his wife, or has fallen from his caste, or has lost virility, he may be abandoned by his wife.”
All empires involved inequality, and prejudices against gender and ethnicity are near-universal. Yet such early expressions of justice and equality, mediated through a body of law, often appealed to the ruling classes, and occasionally even benefitted the ordinary people, presenting us with a paradoxical view of imperial life. In Rome, law was a part of society from the early republic, and the Romans created the first legal profession, employing lawyers to interpret the law on a case-by-case basis. In the early empire it was not recorded in an orderly way, but from the mid second century B.C.E. jurists appeared in Rome, advising clients, teaching students and creating legal documents.
For Romans, respect for law and ideas of civilized behavior were expressed in the word Humanitas, the root of the English Humanity, or Humanities in a scholarly context. Generally used to mean civilized behavior, it referred to such areas of life as education, relations with others, limits on power, and abuses thereof. Barbarians, considered the opposite of Romans, were not thought to possess humanitas, being instead ignorant, badly behaved and possessed of poor personal hygiene. The concept of humanitas, however, also hid the reality of ancient life, its brutality and inequality. The British rebel leader Galgacus, according to Tacitus, described the Roman empire thus: “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and they call it peace.” While humanitas may have been a Roman preoccupation to begin with, the spreading of imperial culture through Rome’s absorption of local elites disseminated these cultural ideas and practices beyond the Italian mainland. (Images here from Roman art, showing learning, education, the arts, etc., and Chinese of same.)
Just like the ancient Mediterranean world, China had developed multiple philosophical schools, through hundreds of years of civilization. The two predominant schools in the Han era were the Legalists and Confucians. The Legalist School was most influential during the warring states period, and won considerable influence with the Qin dynasty, influencing the Qin towards rigid centralizing policies, harsh punishments for legal infractions, but meritocratic promotion through the ranks of the army and administration and also private ownership of land for peasants. Confucius, or Kongzi, (b. 551 BCE) deplored Legalism and promoted a return to the beliefs and practices of the early Zhou, most importantly, perhaps, the importance of a religious and political elite aristocracy to perform ritual functions which would maintain the “balance” of the cosmos. Under the Han, Confucian ideas were recorded, systematized and written down as a code of conduct. The ultimately conservative values of stability promoted by Confucianism gave the empire a moral structure (within which there was considerable variation). As historians Jane Burbank and Frank Cooper put it: “These values, like humanitas for Romans, provided a framework for elite education and ideal behavior.”
But China’s intellectual fervor was not limited to these two ends of the spectrum. Notable for his secular and rationalist thinking, Xunzi, attempted to make Confucianism relevant to his times, and put forward the novel idea that natural disasters were not signs of divine displeasure with the leadership, but random acts of nature. What was important about such disasters was how the leadership responded to them, a perspective that would be at home in twenty-first century politics.
The Chinese were also committed to rule by law, but under different assumptions: Law was a set of rules emanating from the emperor, sidestepping the need for a separate judiciary as in Rome. But while law emanated from the emperor, it also had to be in accordance with religion. The relationship between Chinese religion and law was close and complex, going back to the time of the Zhou. The government was required to comply with religious beliefs, or the laws of Heaven and Nature. Executions, for example, could only be held in autumn and winter, the seasons of death and decay. One story tells of an official at the time of the emperor Wu, who was tasked with executing thousands of members of powerful local families, for economic and political misdeeds. When spring came he reportedly stamped his foot and sighed, “If only I could make the winter last one more month it would suffice for me to finish my work!”
Notwithstanding the often deeply exploitative stance of the imperial Han state towards its people, Sima Qian tells of instances in which the government can be seen to be working in the interests of the common people. In 120 BC floods reduced many people to starvation. The emperor ordered provincial granaries to be opened and food to be distributed. More action was needed, so he then called upon wealthy families to make loans to the victims. When this was not enough he resettled some seven hundred thousand people in New Ch’in and south of So-fang. “Food and clothing were to be supplied to them for the first few years by the district officials, who were also instructed to lend them what they needed to start a livelihood.” The expenses of the move were of “incalculable proportions.”
Scant evidence can be found of comparable acts of Roman largess, with the possible exception of the Bread and Circuses, which were transparently political. But the Romans nevertheless practiced a kind of economic development as they advanced through their provinces, usually as a by-product of satisfying their imperial aims. Michael Mann describes this as the “Legionnaires Economy.” The Roman army, divided into Legions, was economically productive, building infrastructure as they conquered. Provincial cities were rebuilt with Roman architecture and specific attributes, such as grid systems, sewerage and civic buildings such as the amphitheaters and coliseums.
Mostly built by the army, Roman roads covered, at the height of the empire, some 52,000 miles. Likewise, a single Chinese road, the North-South highway of the Qin dynasty, finished around 210 BC, was between 700 and 900 kilometers long. The Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC) described the Achaemenid road system this way: “Now the true account of the road in question is the following: Royal stations exist along its whole length, and excellent caravanserais (rest stops for “caravans”); and throughout, it traverses an inhabited tract, and is free from danger.”
The road described above linked Susa to Sardis, with way-stations providing food and rest at one-day intervals. Use of these was restricted to imperial officials, and was controlled by issuing “passports” to users. If such roads primarily served the governmental and military needs of the empire they had a “trickle down” effect for residents and citizens; travel was facilitated and more goods were available; the economy in general experienced a stimulus from the new ease with which goods could move. If you have ever checked the “no-highways” box on your computer search for directions, and driven that course, you will have some appreciation of the extent to which highways improve travel.
4. How Do Empires Maintain Themselves?
Central or Feudal Government?
Such infrastructure as described above enabled imperial governments to communicate more effectively with their provinces, and communication was essential in the daily tasks of running an empire. But how much control did empires wield, and what was left to local authorities? This was the basic question for empires.
Emperor Han Gaozu began his career by hiving off the eastern part of the old Qin empire and giving it to a collections of his relatives and warlords with whom he cut deals. This compromise was no doubt a necessary evil. He ruled the western part directly from his capital. But Gaozu’s initial system ultimately proved unsatisfactory because the independent kings acted too…independent. Like the Qin, later Han emperors found themselves struggling against powerful lords: “The main problem,” says Harvard historian John Fairbanks, “was how to check the reemergence of aristocratic local families with their own resources of food and fighting men.” The later Han centralized increasingly. The emperor Han Wudi, perhaps the most influential of the Han emperors, did the most to increase the government’s revenues, in part by establishing centralized government monopolies on salt, iron, copper, bronze and alcohol. Direct rule of distant lands, however, was expensive, and at the end of his reign Han Wudi left the government struggling to pay its bills.
Some empires left the administrative structures of conquered states in place, using the existing elites to run them, those very elites were usually absorbed over time into the imperial elite, and thus contributed to spreading the culture and ideals of the “center.” This was Rome’s modus operandi; the local elites were over time Romanized, in other words—taught Latin, and educated like Romans of similar social standing. “After about a century of Roman dominance,” says Michael Mann, “it generally became impossible to detect local cultural survivals among elites of the western provinces.” Lack of obvious regional ties has been a hallmark of many “elites” in large states the world over as they tend to belong to a non-regional, or pan-imperial culture. This being the case, how would there have been local resistance once the elite leadership had been co-opted? Rome’s ability to re-create its class system was at the root of its success.
Even if empires last for centuries, or millennia in some cases, there are often built-in flaws which eventually hit a nerve. The wealth generated by Roman conquests eventually destroyed a central feature of earlier Rome— participatory citizenship, making the naked exploitation and inherent inequality all the more apparent. There was a common saying as early as the third century B.C.E. that provincial governors required three fortunes, one to recoup electoral expenses, another to bribe the jury at his trial for mis-governance, and a third to live off. If the fostering of Roman elite culture among the local leadership prevented locals from initiating independence movements, the concentration of power and wealth among so small a class might have played a part in the eventual downfall of the empire, a topic we will address further below.
The Persians used governors, or Satraps throughout their empire, who were appointed by the emperor and reported to him. These were almost always drawn from a small ethnic Persian elite, and had their capitals often in the former royal capitals that had been conquered, for example the satrapal center in Egypt was in Memphis, the capital of Ancient Egypt. The Satraps collected and stored taxes for the empire, taking what they needed for the running of their province before forwarding the rest to the capital. There is, however, plentiful evidence that local governing structures were often left in place at the level below the satraps, and that the Persian provincial authorities used these to carry out the business of government (very limited in terms of what governments today usually do). Pheonician cities, for example, continued to be ruled by their traditional dynasts, and Jerusalem retained its sacred laws and priests and was administered largely by Jews.
What Was the Role of the Imperial Court?
When Emperor Han Gaozu died in 195 BC, he left his fifteen-year-old son on the throne. Because of the boy’s youth, the empire was indirectly ruled by his mother, the formidable Empress Lu. When her son died in 188 BCE, she placed an infant on the throne, and when that young emperor died she replaced him with another baby. With this ruse, she managed to hold on to power until 180 BCE. Although in reality a competent leader, she was regarded by later Confucian historians as a ruthless usurper. After her death her relatives were purged from leadership and power was restored to the Liu family.
Han-era terr-cotta figures depicting eunuchs. Source: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-than-3000-han-dynasty-naked-terra.html
As long as an emperor was young, power devolved to whomever could make decisions for him. During the Han’s last century no adult ever reached the throne. Even if the emperor was too young to make policy, authority still rested in him, therefore those closest to him made the decisions. These were often eunuchs, who, apart from mothers, also played a central role in Chinese court politics. Allowed into the emperor’s inner circle, originally because they were recruited to look after the imperial harem, many eunuchs became confidantes, friends and even lovers of emperors. In the later Han there were thousands of eunuchs, becoming so powerful that they were granted the right to adopt heirs of their own. In 159 CE eunuchs helped an emperor to execute the entire family of the mother of his predecessor, thus eliminating threats to his throne.
Court Historian Sima Qian had first-hand knowledge of eunuchs, because after enraging the emperor (Han Wudi, 141-87 BCE) with his support of a wayard general, the emperor sentenced him to death, and then commuted his sentence to castration. He lived out the rest of his life as a eunuch, choosing not to commit suicide (the “honorable” way out) but to finish his historical masterwork, which today serves as the top primary source for the early Han dynasty.
5. Why Do Empires Collapse?
“Empires are epics of entropy,” says Charles Maier, reminding us that decline is built-in to the imperial experience: “Ultimately the lights will go dim on the imperial stage and the curtain will descend.”
Thomas Cole: The Course of Empire: Desolation. Most of the ancient world’s empires were taken over by outsiders, and/or broken up into multiple small nations (as in the case of Rome’s western empire, which eventually became the nation-states of Western Europe). Such is the strength of ideas, however, that many imperial forms, political, social and economic, continued under different people. The idea of “collapse” itself is often taken too literally, then, and gives the impression of instantaneous cessation of existence as opposed to a process of long slow decline, or a change of leadership followed by gradual dissolution.
There are lots of ways, however, for empires to stop existing. Before Rome becomes a world-power, Alexander defeats Darius III in 333 BCE at the battle of Issos. Within two years he has taken all the Persian centers. The Achaemenids are history. That such a vast empire can be brought to its knees in so short a time seems surprising. But in 330 BCE, the Persian empire is in political trouble. Battles over succession battles have weakened the imperial court, provincial rebellions, notably in Egypt, have weakened the economy and reduced the income tax, satraps are increasingly likely to make bids for independence. When Alexander arrives, with new military strategies and veteran troops, he meets a fatigued imperial power.
Rome, by the time it “falls” is in poor shape also. In 410 the Visigothic king Alaric is able to “sack” it, riding roughshod over its cobbled streets. This is, no doubt, crushing for those in Rome, but by this time the empire has already split in two: the eastern part is now ruled from Byzantium (today’s Istanbul), while the west from Rome. Alaric’s victory is often seen as a symptom of Rome’s internal collapse, and for this there are multiple reasons, such as the profligacy of Rome’s government, the incompetence—and assassinations—of its emperors, the over-extension of its military, and the influx into the empire of non-Roman people. All of the above cause an historic moan, heard around the imperial domain. As historians Burbank and Cooper say, “The imperial project based on conquest and the projection of a single civilization over the Mediterranean and its hinterland fell on many swords.” The rise of Christianity, which appears about the same time as Augustus, re-orients Romans away from the focus on the earthly city, to the “City of God,” and this too plays a part in undermining the empire.
After a rebellion in 9 CE under Wang Mang, in which a new dynasty (Xin) holds power briefly, a Later, or Eastern, Han dynasty (25-220 CE) re-emerges with its capital at Luoyang. But after another two hundred years, its reaches the end of its life-cycle. Turmoil at the Han court weakens the government, and allows provincial and military leaders to ignore the imperial capital and the dues they owe. Barbarians, in the form of nomads in the north and west, in particular the Xiongnu, threaten imperial territory, as they have always. The Han has paid them off for years, to prevent them attacking border towns. It is fruitless to chase them into the steppe territory from where they emerge: the imperial advantage of huge numbers and concentrated infantry is lost in such a vast featureless landscape where the enemy melts away.
The later Han initiate a disastrous policy of ending peasant conscription. Instead they rely on mercenaries and nomads from outside the empire who they resettle in walled frontier towns. In the long run this policy turns against them and creates disloyal units with their own tribal allegiances. In 184 a rebellion brakes out amongst the followers of a Daoist cult known as the Yellow Turbans. This spreads widely, and the country spirals into civil war, with regional leaders declaring their independence. The Han empire officially comes to an end in 220 C.E., splitting into three rival kingdoms.
Over and above (or perhaps below?) these proximate causes of decline, there loomed larger more menacing issues. In particular, both empires were affected by our old friend climate change, which, over the hundreds of years of imperial life cycles, was active once more. Much of the highpoint of the Roman and Han empires took place during what scientists call the Roman Warm Period. This made several geographic regions more productive agriculturally, such as England, France and parts of Eastern Europe, as well as Korea, Manchuria and parts of Central Asia. Rome’s command of maritime trade in the Mediterranean made it easy for it to exploit the gains to be made by such warming, by shipping goods where they were needed. The same was true, if to a lesser extent, in China, which used the rivers as trade corridors.
But one consequence of this increase in trade and the mixing of peoples from different regions by trade, war, enslavement or otherwise, was the exchange of microbes. Diseases first encountered when the first farmers cohabited with domesticated animals, found new populations with little or no immunity to them, just as would happen hundreds of years later when Europeans took their diseases to the Americas. People exposed to such germs for the first time had no defenses. Increased traffic between core settlement areas in around the second century CE exposed millions of people to these unfamiliar germs.
In 165 CE Roman soldiers in Syria suffered an unknown pestilence. A few years earlier, Chinese troops fighting nomads succumbed to something similar, loosing a third of their number. In the following decades outbreaks of deadly disease struck repeatedly in China and the Roman provinces, one such killing a third of the Egyptian population. Few records tell of similar events in India, and it is therefore possible that the germs passed north of the peninsular, following the Silk Road routes into Asia. In the middle of the second century, for several years, some five thousand people were reported to die every day in Rome itself. And in China, several decades later diseases similar to smallpox or measles showed up with deadly consequences, especially in the northwest.
Ancient Roman Ruins, Aphamia, Syria. Source: http://www.theodora.com/wfb/photos/syria/syria_photos_6.html
Then the weather got colder again. All climatological sources point to a drop of several degrees between 200 and 500 CE. Rainfall fell off, monsoons lost their strength. With the advent of the Roman warm period, the empires in their younger days had responded with innovation, but this time around, hampered by major diseases, innovation was not so easy to come by. With ecological factors combining (sometimes causing) political and economic challenges, the cycle of empire took a distinct downward turn.
Rome and China had many things in common over the course of their empires. One major point of divergence, however, is that Rome, once down, did not get up again. While the Han collapsed under similar pressures, and China suffered a terrible setback in terms of its standard of living, successive dynasties ultimately reassembled China, and two thousand years later its political integrity remains in tact.
Conclusion.
Empires might decline and fall, but they seldom disappear without a trace. The legacy of Rome has been discussed endlessly in classrooms and lecture halls for generations, and Roman cultural and political forms have been copied repeatedly. One reason for this is the habit of invading barbarians to absorb the culture of the people they invade. Such “Barbarians,” often portrayed as uncultured and bent on destruction, are often quick studies, and interested in furthering legacies. Not so Barbarian after-all, it turns out, but just unfairly stigmatized by imperial historians, these inheritors of empire usually pass along the “goodies” of empire because as it turns out, good ideas are not just good ideas for Romans or Han or Persians. They are good for most people and as such eagerly exploited.
Rome’s legacy lives on in multitudes of ways, forms that can be seen in language and architecture all over the world, up until the present. From the Russian “Tsars” whose title derives from the Latin word “Caesar,” to the “emperor” Napoleon, the British Empress of India (Victoria), and the emperor Bokassa (of the Central African Republic), the ideas and aspirations of ancient empires live on, even if their political viability is limited. Ultimately the great empires were unsustainable. Such massive aggregations of power and wealth are subject to so much internal and external pressure, that break up was all but inevitable. Even if they survived for hundreds of years, in one shape or another (which is more, so far, than our present political form, the nation state), empires and the states which spawn them still only represent a tiny fraction of human history.
