Theme #3 :Empires-An Empire across Three Continents

THE ROMAN EMPIRE

• Two powerful empires ruled over most of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East in the period between the birth of Christ and the early part of the seventh century down to the 630s. The two empires were those of Rome and Iran. These two superpowers had divided up most of the world that the Chinese called Ta Ch’in (‘greater Ch’in’, roughly the west).
• The Roman Empire included most of Europe and a large part of the Fertile Crescent and North Africa
• The Roman Empire can broadly be divided into two phases; ‘early’ and ‘late’, divided by the third century crisis. From the fifth century on, the empire fell apart in the west but remained intact and exceptionally prosperous in its eastern half. The caliphate built on this prosperity and inherited its urban and religious traditions.

The Early Empire (1^st to 3rd C)

• The emperor, the aristocracy and the army were the three main ‘players’ 
• The Republic represented the government of the nobility.Senate.
• The Republic lasted from 509 BC to27 BC.Overthrown Octavian/Augustus., the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar, 
•  ‘Principate’-The regime established by Augustus, the first emperor, in 27 BCE.
• Gradual extension of Roman direct rule,accomplished by absorbing ‘dependent’ kingdoms into Roman provincial territory. The Near East was full of such kingdoms
• At its peak in the second century, the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to the borders of Armenia, and from the Sahara to the Euphrates and sometimes beyond.All the territories were organized into provinces and subject to taxation
• A city in the Roman sense -urban centre with its own magistrates, city council and a ‘territory’containing villages which were under its jurisdiction. The great cities were on the shores of the Mediterranean (Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch were the biggest among them). 
• It was through the cities that ‘government’ was able to tax the provincial country sides which generated much of the wealth of the empire.
• Wheat, wine and olive-oil were traded and consumed in huge quantities, and they came mainly from Spain, the Gallic provinces, North Africa, Egypt and Italy. The big landowners from different regions competed with each other for control of the main markets for the goods they produced. The empire included many regions of exceptional fertility.
• Campania (Italy), Sicily, the Fayum in Egypt, Galilee, Byzacium (Tunisia), southern Gaul and Baetica (southern Spain) were all among the most densely settled or wealthiest parts of the empire, according to writers like Strabo and Pliny.
• On the other hand, large expanses of Roman territory were in a much less advanced state. For example, Transhumance was widespread in the countryside of Numidia (modern Algeria)
• Existence of a paid army. The army was the largest single organized body in the empire (600,000 by the fourth century) and  had the power to determine the fate of emperors.
• Political and economic importance of Italy gradually declined within the empire due to  the rise of new elites of administrators and military commanders  in the wealthier and more urbanised parts of the Mediterranean, such as the south of Spain, Africa and the east.
• Emperor Gallienus (253-268) consolidated new elite  to power by excluding senators from military command.
• Many languages were spoken in the empire, but for the purposes of administration Latin (west) and Greek (east) were the most widely used.
• The empire had a substantial economic infrastructure of harbors, mines, quarries, brickyards, olive oil factories, etc.
• Diversified applications of water power around the Mediterranean as well as advances in water-powered milling technology, the use of hydraulic mining techniques in the Spanish gold and silver mines and the gigantic industrial scale on which those mines were worked in the first and second centuries (with levels of output that would not be reached again till the nineteenth century, some 1,700 years later!),
• Well-organized commercial and banking networks, and the widespread use of money

The Third-Century Crisis

• From the 230s, the empire found itself fighting on several fronts simultaneously.
• In Iran a new and more aggressive dynasty emerged in 225 (they called themselves the ‘Sasanians’) and within just 15 years were expanding rapidly in the direction of the Euphrates.
• Germanic tribes or rather tribal confederacies (most notably, the Alamanni, the Franks and the Goths) began to move against the Rhine and Danube frontiers, and the period from 233 to 280 saw repeated invasions of a whole line of provinces that stretched from the Black Sea to the Alps and southern Germany

Late Antiquity (4^th to 7^th  C)

•  Late antiquity’ is the term now used to describe the final, fascinating period in the evolution and break-up of the Roman Empire and refers broadly to the fourth to seventh centuries. Starts with the reign of Constantine I in the early part of the fourth century.
• Changes in the structure of the state that began with the emperor Diocletian (284-305), expansion had led Diocletian to ‘cut back’ by abandoning territories with little strategic or economic value.
• Diocletian also fortified the frontiers, reorganized provincial boundaries, and separated civilian from military functions, granting greater autonomy to the military commanders
• He introduced a new denomination, the solidus
• The other area of innovation was the creation of a second capital at Constantinople (surrounded on three sides by the sea. As the new capital required a new senate, the fourth century was a period of rapid expansion of the governing classes
• Considerable investment in rural establishments, including industrial installations like oil presses and glass factories, in newer technologies such as screw presses and multiple water-mills, and in a revival of the long-distance trade with the East.
• The period saw momentous developments in religious life, with the emperor Constantine (312) deciding to make Christianity the official religion, and with the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Greek and Roman traditional religions had been polytheist. Judaism was not a monolith either. Christianization of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries was a gradual and complex process. Polytheism did not disappear overnight, especially in the western provinces, where the Christian bishops waged a running battle against beliefs and practices they condemned.
• Large parts of the Near Eastern countryside were more developed and densely settled in the fifth and sixth centuries than they would be even in the twentieth century. The general prosperity was still expanding till the sixth century, despite the impact of the plague which affected the Mediterranean in the 540s.
• In the West, by contrast, the empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that are best described as ‘post-Roman’. The most important of these were that of the Visigoths in Spain, destroyed by the Arabs between 711 and 720, that of the Franks in Gaul (c.511-687) and that of the Lombards in Italy (568-774.)
•  By the early seventh century, the war between Rome and Iran had flared up again, and the Sasanians  launched a  invasion of all the major eastern provinces (including Egypt).
• By 642, barely ten years after Prophet Muhammad’s death, large parts of both the eastern Roman and Sasanian empires had fallen to the Arabs .Those conquests, which eventually (a century later) extended as far as Spain, Sind and Central Asia, began with the subjection of the Arab tribes by the emerging Islamic state, first within Arabia and then in the Syrian desert and on the fringes of Iraq.

Social Hierarchies

•   Tacitus described the leading social groups of the early empire as follows: Senators, knights, the respectable section of the people, those attached to the great houses, the unkempt lower class (plebs sordida) that, he tells us, were addicted to the circus and theatrical displays; and finally the slaves
• By the late empire, senators and knights merged into a unified and expanded aristocracy, and at least half of all families were of African or eastern origin. This ‘late Roman’ aristocracy was enormously wealthy but in many ways less powerful than the purely military elites who came almost entirely from non-aristocratic backgrounds
•   The ‘middle’ class now consisted of persons connected with imperial service in the bureaucracy and army prosperous merchants and farmers from eastern provinces
• Below them were the vast mass of the lower classes known collectively as humiliores (lit. ‘lower’) permanently employed on the large estates; workers in industrial and mining establishments; migrant workers; self-employed artisans ,casual laborers and slaves that were still found all over the western empire in particular
• There was of course also a great deal of corruption, especially in the judicial system and in the administration of military supplies
•  Slavery was an institution deeply rooted in the ancient world, under Augustus there were still 3 million slaves in a total Italian population of 7.5 million
• A lot of the poorer families went into debt bondage in order to survive. Parents sometimes sold their children into servitude .Rural indebtedness was even more widespread

Gender, Literacy, Culture

• One of the more modern features of Roman society was the widespread prevalence of the nuclear family.
• Roman women enjoyed considerable legal rights in owning and managing property
• Fathers had substantial legal control over their children
• Casual literacy  was widespread
• The Parthians and later the Sasanians, the dynasties that ruled Iran in this period, ruled over a population that was largely Iranian. The Roman Empire, by contrast, was a mosaic of territories and cultures that were chiefly bound together by a common system of government
• Cultural diversity of the empire was reflected in many ways and at many levels: in the vast diversity of religious cults and local deities; the plurality of languages that were spoken; the styles of dress and costume, the food people ate, their forms of social organization (tribal/non-tribal), even their patterns of settlement
•  Aramaic was the dominant language group of the Near East (at least west of the Euphrates); Coptic was spoken in Egypt, Punic and Berber in North Africa, Celtic in Spain and the northwest. But many of these linguistic cultures were purely oral, at least until a script was invented for them
• Element of ‘criticism’. The Roman state though authoritarian a strong tradition of Roman law had emerged by the fourth century, and this acted as a brake on even the most fearsome emperors. Emperors were not free to do whatever they liked, and the law was actively used to protect civil rights. Rise of bishops was helped by this factor.

Theme #2: Early Societies-Writing and city life

Mesopotamia (middle – land), the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers.Through Mesopotamian history, nomadic communities of the western desert filtered into the prosperous agricultural heartland These included the Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians and AramaeansIn the beginning of recorded history, the land, mainly the urbanized south was called Sumer and Akkad. After 2000 BCE, when Babylon became an important city, the term Babylonia was used for the southern region. From about 1100 BCE, when the Assyrians established their kingdom in the north, the region became known as Assyria.

Urbanization in Southern Mesopotamia:

• Agriculture began between 7000 and 6000 BCE
• From 5000 BCE, settlements had begun to develop in southern Mesopotamia.
• The earliest cities emerged from some of these settlements earliest cities in Mesopotamia date back to the Bronze Age,
• These were of various kinds:
• those that gradually developed around temples;
• those that developed as centers of trade;
• and imperial cities
• Uruk developed  into a huge city, increasing use of bronze toolsc.3000 BCE.
• Early settlers (their origins are unknown) began to build and rebuild temples at selected spots in their villages.
• The division of labour is a mark of urban life.Food production, trade, manufactures, and services , and storage
• Required keeping of written records.
• Some people give commands that others obey,a mutually reinforcing cycle of development in which leaders encouraged the settlement of villagers close to themselves, to be able to rapidly get an army together
• a ruling elite  emerged
• Its mineral resources were few. Most parts of the south lacked stones for tools, seals and jewels; the wood for carts, cart wheels or boats; and was no metal for tools, vessels or ornaments
• in Mesopotamian society the nuclear family was the norm
• Instead of being stamp seals as in Harappa in Mesopotamia until the end of the first millennium BCE, cylindrical stone seals
• Narrow winding streets and the irregular shapes of house plots also indicate an absence of town planning.

• There were no street drains of the kind we find in contemporary Mohenjo-daro
• After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished.Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade -goods that were carried in boats along the Euphrates – between the south and the mineral rich up lands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon,Although the kingdom of Mari was not militarily strong, it was exceptionally prosperous

The Development of Writing

• Writing began when society needed to keep records of transactions. later for dictionaries, giving legal validity to land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land
• The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers.
• The first known language of the land was Sumerian.
• It was gradually replaced by Akkadian around 2400 BCE when Akkadian speakers arrived.
• This language flourished till about Alexander’s time (336-323 BCE), with some regional changes occurring.
•  From 1400 BCE, Aramaic also trickled in. This language, similar to Hebrew, became widely spoken after 1000 BCE. It is still spoken in parts of Iraq.
•  By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian and later Akkadian. Continued to be used till 1^st  CBC.(more than 2000 years)
• Mesopotamia’s writing system and literature spread to the eastern Mediterranean, northern Syria, and Turkey after 2000 BCE, and to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
• Cuneiform script did not represent consonants or vowels but syllables (la put etc
• Writing was a skilled craft (wet clay tablets) and intellectual achievement (100s of complex symbols in script).Very few were literate.
• It was kingship that organized Trade and writing.
• Writing was seen as a sign of the superiority of Mesopotamian urban culture.

The Legacy of Writing

• Dating around 1800 BCE are tablets with multiplication and division tables, square- and square-root tables, and tables of compound interest.The square root of 2 was given as:1 + 24/60 + 51/602 + 10/603
• The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around the earth, the division of the month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes – all that we take for granted in our daily lives – has come to us from the Mesopotamians. These time divisions were adopted by the successors of Alexander and from there transmitted to the Roman world, then to the world of Islam, and then to medieval Europe

Theme #1 :Early Societies-From the beginning of time

• 13 bya -Big Bang
• 4.5 bya-Earth forms
• 4 bya -first life
• 3.5 bya –photosynthesis
• 380 mya -first vertebrate land animals
• 230 - 65 mya dinosaurs

The story of human evolution

• Between 36 and 24 mya -primates emerged in Asia and Africa
• 24 mya,a subgroup  called hominoids emerged. quadrapeds
• 5.6 mya, the first hominids. While hominids have evolved from hominoids. Bipedal (as early as 3.6 mya)
• Hominids are further subdivided into as genus, of which australopithecus (southern –ape )and homo are important
• Australopithecus - relatively small brain size in comparison to homo, large back teeth and limited dexterity of the hands. Upright walking was also restricted, as they still spent a lot of time on trees.
• Positive feedback mechanism increased favorable characteristics of homos       

• 2.5 mya ice age –forests got replaced by grasslands due to lower temperatures, homos were better suited.
• Scientists distinguish amongst several types of homo
• Homo habilis (the tool maker),
• Homo erectus (the upright man), (5mya )
• Homo heidelbergensi  found in Heidelberg, Germany (800,000 – 10,000 ya )
• Homo neanderthalensis. Those found in the Neander valley  (130,000 -35000 ya)
• Homo sapiens (the wise or thinking man)./modern humans (40,000 ya)
• Modern human beings  two  models of origin
• Regional continuity model (with multiple regions of origin)
• Replacement model (with a single origin in Africa). Complete replacement everywhere of all older forms of humans with modern humans

Life of Early Humans

Ways of obtaining food: Gathering, Scavenging and Fishing, Hunting (about 500,000 ya), planned hunting (about 35,000 ya),

Tools Axe and chopper. About 35,000 years spear throwers and the bow and arrow

Patterns of residence:

·         Trees,

·         Caves and open-air sites began to be used (Between 400,000 and 125,000 ya)

Modes of communication: language and art

·         Hominid language involved gestures or hand movements;

·         That spoken language was preceded by vocal but non-verbal communication such as singing or humming;

·         That human speech probably began with calls like the ones that have been observed among primates

·         Evolution of the vocal tract was equally important. this occurred around 200,000 years ago

·         Hundreds of paintings of animals (done between 30,000 and12,000 Years ago) have been discovered

Settling down

• Between 10,000 and 4,500 years ago, learnt to domesticate certain plants and animals..
• the last ice age came to an end about 13,000 years. Warmer, wetter conditions. Favorable for the growth of grasses such as wild barley and wheat.
• At the same time, as open forests and grasslands expanded, the population of certain animal species such as wild sheep, goat, cattle, pig and Donkey increased.
• Around 10,000 Years ago farming and pastoralism began in the Fertile Crescent, extending from the Mediterranean Coast to the Zagros Mountains in Iran.
• New kinds of stone tools came into use. Tools such as the plough were used in agriculture.
• Gradually, people became familiar with metals such as copper and tin.
• The wheel, important for both pot making and transportation, came into use.
• About 5,000 years ago, even larger concentrations of people began to live together in cities

Themes in Indian History

Chapters in 12 th standard NCERT textbook

1. BRICKS, BEADS AND BONES -The Harappan Civilisation 
2. KINGS, FARMERS AND TOWNS -Early States and Economies(c.600 BCE-600 CE)
3. KINSHIP, CASTE AND CLASS-Early Societies (c. 600 BCE-600 CE)
4. THINKERS, BELIEFS AND BUILDINGS--Cultural Developments (c. 600 BCE-600 CE)
5. THROUGH THE EYES OF TRAVELLERS:Perceptions of Society(c. tenth to seventeenth Centuries)
6. BHAKTI –SUFI TRADITIONS:Changes in Religious Beliefs and Devotional Texts(c. eighth to eighteenth centuries)
7. AN IMPERIAL CAPITAL:VIJAYANAGARA(c. fourteenth to sixteenth centuries)
8. PEASANTS, ZAMINDARS AND THE STATE:Agrarian Society and the Mughal Empire(c. sixteenth-seventeenth centuries)
9. KINGS AND CHRONICLES:The Mughal Courts(c. sixteenth-seventeenth centuries)
10. COLONIALISM AND THE COUNTRYSIDE:Exploring Official Archives
11. REBELS AND THE RAJ:1857 Revolt and its Representations
12. COLONIAL CITIES:Urbanisation, Planning and Architecture
13. MAHATMA GANDHI AND THENATIONALIST MOVEMENT:Civil Disobedience and Beyond
14. UNDERSTANDING PARTITION:Politics, Memories, Experiences
15. FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION:The Beginning of a New Era

15 themes each of 25 pages approx

Themes in World History

Chapters in 11th standard text book

• Early Societies

1. From the Beginning of Time
2. Writing and City Life
1. Empires 
1. An Empire Across Three Continents
2. The Central Islamic Lands
3. Nomadic Empires

• Changing Traditions
1. The Three Orders
2. Changing Cultural Traditions
3. Confrontation of Cultures
• Towards Modernisation 
1. The Industrial Revolution
2. Displacing Indigenous Peoples
3.  Paths to Modernisation

Each theme is around 25 pages.11 themes in total

Introduction

This blog is my attempt to keep a track of what I learn of Indian History while I am preparing for UPSC exam.My main sources are NCERT textbooks for 11th and 12th standard (Themes in World History and Themes in Indian History.Please comment if you too can add something to my knowledge or help me in my preparation