Unit 8 Final Assignment (HIS101)

Unit 7 Assignment: Thesis Statement & 5 Sources for Empire Comparison Essay

CeTreiva Whitmore Lockett

HIS101 – World Civilization

Professor Stephanie Staffey

December 13, 2020

Introduction

Global history has been majorly shaped by the current riots, conflicts, and protest against worldwide terrorism against the west and corporate globalization. These events perfectly fit the description of societies' rise and fall both in ancient times and today. Major world empires such as Austria-Hungary, mandarin China, British, Japan, and Ottoman Turkey collapses in the twentieth century. The underlying support that has facilitated the rise, survival, and decline of all historical societies is the use of their surplus resources and income. Without these products such as luxuries, arms, food, services, among other products produced by the craftsmen, farmers, traders, and servants, there would be progress in any society, and the society would remain beyond primitive.

Without civilization, most world societies would not afford laws and order, protection, spiritual advice, administration defense, cultural production, among other essential details for their survival. This development is so apparent, and it does not even need to be expressed because it defines how the societies rose from chaos to civilization experience. The basic purpose of forming such societies was to acquire tools development unified language and oral traditions to express it appropriately.

Thesis Statement: Extraction and distribution of surplus production play a vital role in the historical transformation, from the ancient Egyptian civilization to the modern 21st century.

Sources

Bard, K. A. (2015). An introduction to the archaeology of ancient Egypt. John Wiley & Sons.

This source gives an account of the ancient Egyptian civilization that flourished more than 5000 years ago. This source emphasizes that this civilization is credited for many profound architectures, inventions, and social and government structuring. This source explains the three social classes that existed in the ancient era and slaves. The three-class comprises the upper, middle, and lower class. The upper class was made up of the royal family doctors, wealthy landowners, and high priests. The middle class comprised artisans, skilled laborers, manufacturers and merchants, and the lower class. This source also highlights the scribes who played a key role in ancient Egyptian society. The scribes spend over 12 years to perfect their careers before becoming teachers, librarians, and civil servants. This source differentiates from the classes that emerged later in Europe and China that would be ascended by marriage and hard work.

The ancient Egyptians believed in polytheism their derived their Gods from nature deities representing the wind, sky, water trees, and animals. As civilization progressed and the population grew, they started believing in local Gods alongside the major ones, such as God Ptah. He was worshiped and credited for creating Memphis City in Egypt. The sources also describe how the God-King also knows Pharaoh unified all the people and land of Egypt comprised of 42 providences, also known as nomes, and were headed by nomarchs. Modern Egyptian civilization inventions include creating the first 365-day calendar, usable paper from papyrus, and the first flexible writing system.

LIU, R., Pollard, A. M., LIU, C., & Rawson, J. (2020). Every Cloud has a Silver Lining: Using Silver Concentration to Identify the Number of Sources of Lead used in Shang Dynasty Bronzes. Acta Geologica Sinica‐English Edition, 94(3), 585-593.

This source expounds about the Shang Dynasty of between 1600 to 1050 BCE. This empire was marked in the mid-Bronze Age in China. During this era, China experiences immense progress as this dynasty contributed a lot to the Chinese civilization. From the books of history and Chinese records, the Shang Dynasty is credited to have left the archeological evidence of its existence in the first written records. This asertion is evident because two dynasties existed before the Shang dynasty. These dynasties include Neolithic and Xia cultures, although Western scholars claim that there is no evidence to prove it existed.

The Shang dynasty contributed a lot to the Chinese civilization. This source will give the four main contributions of this dynasty and include writing that documented the modern Chinese characters and defining their key principles of writings, bronze technology, use of bronze and chariot weapons in warfare, and stratified governments and society.

Luttwak, E. N. (2016). The grand strategy of the Roman Empire: from the first century CE to the third. JHU Press.

This source documents the Roman empire and its contribution to civilization, its rise, and fall. At the height of 117 CE, the Roman empire had the most extensive social and political structure in western civilization. In 284-305 CE, Emperor Diocletian divided the empire into the western and eastern empires. The roman empire invented many things that we still use today, and modern civilization owes a lot to the roman empire. This source highlights the roman empire's contributions, such as public health programs, religion, architecture, realistic structures, customs, literature works, and other inventions.

These sources also further highlight the cause of the fall of the Roman empire. This source highlights all the possible theories that led to this civilization's fall. These theories range from the conflicts between the emperors and the senate, embezzlement of funds, Economic decline, political corruption, military spending, and others.

Vasunia, P. (2011). The comparative study of empires. The Journal of Roman Studies, 101, 222-237.

This source gives a comparative study of empires. The authors in this paper give an insightful comparison of British and Roman imperialism. This analysis gives a retrospective perspective of the Greek thoughts on religion and the anti-colonial movements. These articles compare the empires to sharpen the distinctive nature of objectives under scrutiny and clarify phenomena. This comparison helps seek these civilizations' genuine contributions and strengthens our understanding of contemporary society's long-standing assumptions and critical issues. The author in this source seeks to demystify and change the historical outlook. This source also attempts to compare China and Rome's writing and their different perspective, conceding the same. It also highlights their contribution of the biopower, mobilization of individuals and bodies, standardizing, categorize, and the Chinese challenges and their obsession with organizing bodies for their productive activities.

Chase-Dunn, C., Niemeyer, R., Alvarez, A., Inoue, H., Lawrence, K., & Love, J. (2012). Cycles of Rise and Fall, Upsweeps and Collapses: Changes in the scale of settlements and polities since the Bronze Age. Globalistics and Globalization Studies, 79.

This source gives the reason as to how the empires rise and fall. It accounts for the cycle rise and the collapse of empires, evolution, population, and global trade governance since the bronze age. It notes that ever since the start of modernization, there is a distinct long-term trend of bulging population and territorial size. However, this trend has not been visible in recent centuries because it has been masked by the colonization and emergence of nation-states that have increased the formation of smaller territorial counties. This source also highlights the growth and emergence of an international political organization. Additionally, there has been an increase in expanded global participation of civilians in the international political organization.