The Beginning of "Empires"

Sept. 16, 2012

   After writing the essay comparing Xinchen and Claudius, and how they differed as rulers, I started to ponder something that began to arise in this period of history: the emergence of "rulers" and "emperors." In a small-scale society, a leader arises because of hunting prowess or some other skill, but when larger scale civilizations began to form, simple tribal style leadership became obsolete. It makes sense because in a population of thousands of people, there is going to be several who have the requisite skills and intelligence to lead. So how does a ruler/emperor come into power?
   That very question will be at the forefront of my mind as we continue studying early large- scale civilizations. At this point, I can take a guess and imagine rulers becoming powerful by showing prowess at making war, or bringing prosperity to the people, but I do not know the whole story. Think about our system today: people from the "general population" are voted into power by popular elections, or are appointed by people who were previously voted into their positions in government. How often did that happen in ancient times? There must have been records, and I am interested to learn more. Without more details, I imagine at this point that many of these early civilizations did not practice general elections as we know them today.
   In addition to wondering how early leaders were granted their power, I also started to wonder what the rest of the story was with the Han dynasty of Xinchen- from the descriptions in "Ways of the World," the overall situation for many people in that era was not very great. From "Ways" pp. 159: "During the Han dynasty, growing numbers of impoverished and desperate peasants had to sell out to large landlords and work as tenants or sharecroppers on their estates, where rents could run as high as one-half to two-thirds of the crop." This reminded me of the sharecropper situation in the early American South, which was also the cause of hardship and misery for people in the "peasant class." "Ways of the World" goes on to discuss political movements of the population seeking for a more fair and equal distribution of wealth- Sound familiar?? Human civilization runs in cycles- sometimes we can work together and make progress, and other times the greedy scoundrels lording over all the resources subject the rest of the population to hardship and poverty. Either way, everything will cycle around to its opposite condition. History teaches us so much, but so many times the lessons go unheeded.