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Welcome to the Deep Dive.
Today we're getting into something pretty big, the whole idea of empires.
Right, and when people hear empire,
they often jump to, well, negative ideas, don't they?
Conquest, oppression.
Yeah, exactly, it's definitely got that modern baggage.
But you're saying that view might be a bit too simple.
Well, yes, because if you look back, say over the last 2 ,500 years, empires have been incredibly common, often quite stable, actually.
It was the dominant way societies were organized for a huge stretch of time.
Stable, that's interesting.
So maybe judging them only by today's standards misses something important about, well, how things actually worked for centuries.
There's definitely something to think about.
Maybe a story helps, New Manchia.
Ah, yes, New Manchia.
So this was what?
A small Celtic town in ancient Spain.
That's right, Iberia back then.
And they went up against Rome,
second century BC.
Which is kind of amazing when you think about it.
Rome, the superpower, getting stalled by one relatively small town.
And stalled they were.
The New Manchians were tough fighters, knew their terrain.
They handed Rome defeat after defeat for years.
It got so bad, Rome had to send their absolute top general.
Scipio Aemilianus, the guy who destroyed Carthage.
The very same.
And even he didn't just charge in, he built this massive ring of forts, basically starved them out.
I've seen Scipio for a year, didn't I?
And the ending,
pretty grim.
Very grim.
Roman sources say with food gone,
they burned their town and killed themselves rather than become slaves, a final act of defiance.
But here's the twist, right?
Centuries later, Numantii becomes this huge symbol for Spain.
Exactly, the symbol of Spanish heroism, independence, resisting the big empire.
Serrantes wrote about it, it's a national monument now.
Which is fascinatingly ironic because these Spanish patriots celebrating Numantia,
they're speaking Spanish, a language from Latin, Rome's language.
Right, their laws, religion, Roman Catholicism, so much comes from the very empire the Numantians fought against.
Even the story of Numantii itself, it only survives because Roman historians wrote it down.
For a Roman audience, no doubt.
So Rome won so completely, they even shaped the memory of their enemies.
It shows just how deep imperial influence can run.
Which brings us back to that question.
If empires feel negative to us now, how do we deal with their massive lasting impact?
Because, let's face it, pretty much all of us are descendants of empires, one way or another.
Okay, so let's get specific.
What actually makes something an empire?
It's not just being big, is it?
No, not just size.
There are really two key things.
First, an empire rules over a significant number of distinct peoples.
Different cultures, different territories, all under one political roof.
Maybe 20, 30 groups, sometimes more.
So diversity is key.
What's the second thing?
Flexible borders.
Empires tend to have this
potentially limitless appetite for expansion.
They could absorb more territory, more people, without fundamentally changing their own structure.
Think of the British Empire at one point.
Anywhere could have become part of it.
Right, and just as important is what doesn't define an empire.
It's not always military conquest?
No.
The Athenian Empire started as a kind of voluntary league, actually.
And the Habsburgs famously built theirs through, well, strategic marriages.
And the government type doesn't matter either.
Democracies could be empires.
Absolutely.
Britain, the Dutch Republic, both democracies, both major empires.
And size, like we said, isn't the defining factor either.
Athens and the Aztecs had smaller empires than modern Greece or Mexico, but they ruled many distinct groups.
Whereas modern Greece or Mexico don't rule lots of distinct political units in the same way.
Precisely.
And that imperial process, over time.
Well, it's a big reason human cultural diversity decreased.
Smaller cultures, like the New Manchians, often just got absorbed or wiped out.
Which leads us to that modern criticism, the evil empire idea.
You mentioned two main points people raise.
Yeah, basically two critiques.
One, that empires just don't work long term.
And two, that they're inherently evil.
Okay, let's take the first one.
They don't work.
Well, historically speaking, that one doesn't really hold water.
Like I said, empires were surprisingly stable for millennia.
Most weren't actually overthrown by the people they conquered.
So how did they usually end?
External invasion, usually.
Or splits within the ruling elite.
Internal power struggles.
The subject peoples rarely managed to break free on their own and stay free long term.
And the second point, that they're just evil.
That feels heavier.
It is heavier and more complex.
Because yes, empire building was often incredibly brutal.
We can't ignore that.
But then you have these undeniable cultural legacies left behind.
So when the Western Roman Empire fell, all those groups they conquered, like the New Manchians, didn't just pop back up.
Nope.
They were gone.
Culturally assimilated, mostly.
And what often happened was one empire fell, another one just took its place.
Look at the Middle East.
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, then the British and French.
A constant cycle.
Ancient peoples like the Arameans, Phoenicians, mostly vanished into those larger imperial cultures.
Though there are exceptions, right?
Like the Jews, Armenians.
True.
Remarkable exceptions.
But even their cultures today are deeply shaped by the empires they lived under for centuries.
You know, imagine King David trying to understand a modern synagogue service.
It would be completely alien to him.
Still, the brutality was real.
Wars, slavery, mass deportations, genocide.
These were tools in the imperial toolkit.
That quote attributed to the Caledonian chief, Chalgaicus, about the Romans.
They make a desert and call it peace.
It's chilling and likely reflects a grim reality even if Tacitus, the Roman historian recording it, might have embellished or even invented the speech itself.
A Roman writing down the critique of Rome.
Another layer of complexity.
Exactly.
So immense violence?
Yes.
But dismissing everything about empires as evil means rejecting, well, a massive amount of human culture.
Imperial wealth -funded philosophy, art, justice systems, charity, Cicero, the Taj Mahal, composers like Hayden or Mozart.
Their work was often supported by imperial structures.
And those legacies are baked into our world today, aren't they?
Languages, for instance.
Absolutely baked in.
Han Chinese dialects dominate East Asia.
Spanish, Portuguese, French, English cover huge parts of the Americas.
All languages spread by empire.
Think about Egypt.
People there today strongly identify as Arabs, part of the legacy of the Arab empire that conquered them way back in the seventh century.
Or the Zulus in South Africa who often look back with pride on their 19th century empire, even though many current Zulus descend from the very groups that empire conquered.
It's definitely complicated.
So if they weren't just relying on brute force, how did these empires maintain control and legitimacy for so long?
What was the sales pitch?
Huh, the sales pitch.
Often it boiled down to, it's for your own good.
The Akkadians, maybe the first big empire we know well, Sargon the Great, claimed he'd conquered the world.
Okay, grand claim.
But it was Cyrus the Great of Persia who really refined the message.
He wasn't just ruling for Persian glory like the Assyrians before him.
He claimed he was ruling for the benefit of all the peoples in his empire.
Like letting the Jewish exiles return to Jerusalem.
Exactly.
That was a huge statement.
It's a move away from pure us versus them.
Humans, you know, evolutionarily, we tend to be pretty xenophobic.
Our group is the people.
Everyone else is.
Not.
Like those tribal names, meaning the people.
Right.
Dinka, Noor, Yupik,
lots of examples.
Imperial ideology, starting around Cyrus, began pushing this idea of a basic human unity, a shared world, mutual responsibility.
The ruler as a kind of parent figure.
And we see that idea pop up again and again.
Alexander the Romans, Muslim caliphs.
All the way to modern leaders, arguably.
And it wasn't just in the Near East.
Similar ideas developed independently in China.
The Mandate of Heaven.
Exactly, Tianqi.
The Emperor ruled all under Heaven Tianxia for the benefit of everyone.
This shaped Chinese history profoundly.
Imperial unity meant order, a golden age.
Fagmentation meant chaos.
So there was always this powerful drive to reunite the empire.
So empires weren't just conquering.
They were actively spreading ideas and creating larger shared cultures.
How did that work in practice?
Well, they were great melting pots in a way.
Ideas, people, goods, technology.
They all moved much more easily within an empire's borders than across them.
Makes sense.
And empires often deliberately spread a common culture.
Thanks to standardization, common laws, writing systems, languages, money.
It just makes ruling a huge diverse area much easier.
Administrative efficiency.
But there was also that ideological part.
Spreading a superior culture.
Oh, definitely.
The Romans bringing civilization.
The Chinese viewing neighbors as barbarians needing uplift.
Later, European empires talking about liberalism and progress.
The narrative was often about benefiting the conquered, even if the reality involved, well, exploitation and violence.
And presumably, many of the rulers and administrators genuinely believe they were doing good.
I think many did, yes.
They believed in the system, in the benefits of their culture or political order.
But it's also crucial to remember these imperial cultures weren't static.
They absorbed things from the people they conquered.
Like Roman culture taking so much from the Greeks.
Exactly.
Or the Abbasid Caliphate blending Persian, Greek, and Arab traditions.
The Mongol Empire in China adopted huge amounts of Chinese culture.
Even the US, you could say, is constantly absorbing global influences.
It's usually a hybrid culture that emerges.
But for the people being absorbed,
that process must have been difficult.
Losing your own traditions.
Oh, incredibly difficult.
Often deeply traumatic.
You're forced or pressured to give up ways of life that have defined your community for generations.
It's not a smooth transition.
And even if you did adopt the new culture, you weren't necessarily accepted right away.
Not at all.
There was often this long painful period of being stuck in between.
You'd adopted the conqueror's ways, but the elites still looked down on you, discriminated against you.
Think of Gandhi, educated as a British lawyer, still getting thrown off a train in South Africa.
A stark reminder.
But eventually, sometimes, those barriers did break down.
Yes.
Sometimes.
Over generations, conquered peoples could gain full rights,
citizenship, even rise to the very top.
We saw that in Rome, emperors eventually came from Gaul, Iberia, Syria, North Africa.
People whose ancestors, Rome, had conquered.
And in the Arab Empire, too.
Similar process.
Non -Arabs converted, adopted Arabic culture, and eventually, people of Persian, Turkish, Berber background were running the show.
In China, the assimilation was maybe even more complete.
So many different groups over millennia effectively became Han Chinese.
And you see a parallel with modern times, like decolonization movements.
Absolutely.
Think about it.
Many anti -colonial leaders were educated in the West.
They used Western ideas, self -determination, democracy, human rights to argue against colonial rule.
They adopted parts of the imperial culture to fight for their own equality, much like those earlier examples.
So it really does complicate trying to just label empires as purely good or bad.
It really does.
Most cultures today are deeply interwoven with these imperial pasts, trying to surgically remove all imperial influence.
It's probably impossible.
And sometimes those calls for purity are just, well, nationalism in disguise.
No culture today is pure in that sense.
Take India and the British Raj.
A brutal system in many ways.
Immense suffering, exploitation, yes.
But it also, perhaps unintentionally, unified the subcontinent politically in a new way.
Built railways, left administrative and legal systems.
India adopted democracy, uses English.
Would modern India vote to erase all of that?
It's a tough thought experiment.
And if you try to define authentic Indian culture before the British, you run into the Mughal Empire.
Exactly.
The Taj Mahal, a global symbol of India, is a Mughal and Islamic imperial creation.
Go back further.
You hit other empires.
Where does authentic begin?
It shows how layered these identities are.
Simple judgments just don't capture the reality.
Which brings us to a really provocative idea.
Could we be heading towards a new kind of global empire today?
It's a serious possibility, I think.
You see, nationalism, while still powerful, may be starting to lose ground as the ultimate source of political authority for some people.
More focus on humanity as a whole, on global problems.
Like climate change, pandemics,
things that don't respect borders.
Precisely.
And having almost 200 separate countries can seem like a real barrier to tackling those effectively.
It's almost like we need a new kind of mandate of heaven, but one given by all of humankind, not just one nation.
And the power of individual nation -states seems to be eroding anyway?
It does.
Global markets, multinational corporations, international NGOs, global public opinion, international law.
They all chip away at pure state sovereignty.
States increasingly have to conform to global standards, whether it's trade rules or human rights norms.
So this wouldn't be like the Roman or British Empire, ruled by one state or ethnicity.
Probably not.
More likely, it would be ruled by a kind of multi -ethnic global elite.
People connected by a shared culture, maybe the culture of Davos, of international business, science, academia, and shared interests, rather than a single homeland.
And individuals are already sort of opting in.
Choosing loyalty to that global network over just their home country.
You see that increasingly,
yes.
Entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, academics,
their networks, and often their loyalties are becoming more global than purely national.
They might feel they belong more to that international empire than to their country of birth.
So wrapping up our deep dive today, it's clear empires in various forms have been absolutely central to human history.
They've shaped our maps, our societies, our cultures, even how we think.
Right.
And understanding that complex, often contradictory history, the good, the bad, the lasting legacies is crucial if we want to understand ourselves and the world we're living in now, and maybe where we're heading.
Definitely food for thought.
And maybe a final question for everyone listening.
Think about your own life, your language, your beliefs, the structures around you.
How much of that is an inheritance from empires past?
What parts do you accept?
What parts do you question?
And what does that reveal about your own identity in this long, ongoing story?
Something to ponder.