As we saw in the opening chapter, there are many ways of defining “empire.”
Unlike various forms of diversity and some degree of core-periphery stratification, size as such need not count as an essential ingredient. In practice, however, internal stratification has commonly been associated with claims to spatially extensive territories and/ or substantial populations.
Given that for most of recorded history, empire-building was the most effective way of scaling up social cooperation beyond the level of local communities, city-states, and small territorial states, most of the best-known imperial polities were very large and sometimes enormous. Traced over the long run of history, from the earliest empires of the Fertile Crescent to the global network of possessions of the modern European colonial powers, changes in the geographical and demographic scale of empire add up to an evolutionary profile which in turn casts light on some of the driving forces behind these shifts. This chapter approaches this topic from several angles, by looking at spatial reach and duration, population size, and long-term patterns in different parts of the world. In so doing, this survey provides context for the many chapters that follow and helps situate individual cases on a broad spectrum of historical outcomes.
More on the topic As we saw in the opening chapter, there are many ways of defining “empire.”:
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- The Opening of the South
- Reciting the Opening Formula Aloud (al-Jahr bi'l-Basmala)
- From the Opening of the Straits to Steam Navigation
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