Eurasian Empires

China = Buddism.

Collapsing of empires
What is an Empie?
Reserved for larger and more aggressive states.
- Conquering rule
- extract resources from other states and people.

Civilizations have flourished without a single all-encompassing state or empire.
Civilizations were expressed in elements of a common culture rather then a political system.

Collision of Empires and civilizations
Classical era = witnessed the flowering of second-wave civiliazations in the Mediterranean World,Middle East, India, and China.

- distant civilizations did not directly encounter one another ( each established its own political system, cultural values, and learned how to organize their own civilizations.

Persian Empire: most impressive world empire in 500 B.C.E. Based on Iranian plataeu.
- Constructed imperial system- such as Babylonial and Assyrian cultures.
- Elaborate cult of Kingship (worshipping).

Greeks: 750 B.C.E as the new civilization and flourished for 400 years until incorperated into a succession of foriegn empires.
- Divided by steep mountains and Valleys.
- Greeks were expansive people like the Persians, but expansion took the form of settlement in distant places instead of conquest and empire.
- The greeks believed in citizenship. In the beginning only the wealthy and healthy had the right to full citizenship.

Greco-Persian Wars: The worlds largest empire grew out of their respective patterns of expantion.
Persians began to spread west as they began to class with Greek cities.
This resulted in the defeat of Persians from both land and sea.
- This was an enormous sence of pride for the Greeks.

Rome and how do Empires arise?

In rome, their empire took shape on the margins of the civilized world and began to become an enormous imperial state that encompassed the Med. Basin.
It also included parts of continental Europe, Britain, North Africa, and the middle east.

Values of republic, rule of law, rights, moral behavior were the ways of the ancestors.

China warring states to empire:

- Emerged as early as 2000 B.C.E.
Legalism- advocated clear rules and harsh punishments as a means of enforcing the authority of the state.
With this source, China had then launched a military campain to reunify themselves and create an eternal empire.
China and Rome shared a lot of common features and were defined as universal terms.
Both invested heavily on roads, aqueducts, canals, and protective walls ( this would stregthen their military).
Rome = Christianity

Collapse of Empires
- Empires may rise at certain points, but also have the tendency of falling.
China- the Hans dynasty came to an end in 220 C.E
Rome- 476 C.E

The states simply got to big, to overextended, and to expensive to be sustained by the available resources.
- People began to pay less taxes and diminish the authority of the central government.
- China had led to a major peseant revolt.
- Epidemic deseases began to spread killing many. Roman empire declined by 25 percent in the two     centuries following 250 C.E.