The Rise of Empires

In The Age of Empires written by Francis Joannes, the region of ancient Near East went through several phases of empires, whether the Assyrian empire in the northern part of Mesopotamia and the Babylonian empire in the south. In chapters 2 and 3 of the book, the author discusses the history of the Assyrian empire and its control on the territory. The empire expanded its territory from the ‘Assyrian triangle’ of Ashur, Nineveh, and Arbela to much more through the centuries of the first millennium BCE. These expansions appear to me as precursors to the later vast expansion of the Greek, Hellenistic, empire or the Roman empire, which were quite remarkable in the history. The cities had stored up enough resources and trained enough troops to begin forming campaigns across larger areas. This process is quite interesting to observe and compare with later empires because in later empires, we could notice that the empires encompassed twice or three times the area of the Assyrian empire, possibly due to the better development in agricultural technology and the better administration from the center through improved transportation (roads or canals).

One very important characteristic to notice in the Assyrian empire is its use of policy of terror. The kings, in their campaigns to the surrounding lands, not only sought to defeat the enemies, but also to weaken their morale. They would cut the heads and hands of the enemies to terrify other people from becoming rebellious. Moreover, they employed the method of deportations, which mobilized populations around to mix the different races and also to weaken their identities. I feel that this method (policy of terror) was a very effective way to legitimize their power in the society for a short period of time, albeit at great cost. The structure is thus fragile in nature as the people developed hatred and dissatisfaction for the central agency. Not only did many people (over millions!) were deported to different regions, but also many of them did not survive the journey. Although the empire might have maintained “order” in the region for the time, this would finally lead to the empire’s collapse in the end as they were very prone to rebels and internal conflicts.