The Dawn of Empire in the Near East

Agriculture began in the hill and valley country north and west of Mesopotamia, around 8500 bce, soon spreading into river plains,^[1140] which provided the optimum habitat for farming.

City-states emerged before 3000 bce in southern Mesopotamia, and at the same time in Egypt, indicating probable linkages; Egypt was growing Near Eastern crops, not native Egyptian plants.^[1142] Conflict, often over land, led to the conquest of some

Environmental History”; Ohio University Press's “Ecology and History”; Cambridge's “Studies in Environment and History”; and Taurus's “Environmental History and Global Change.” states by others, and the emergence of larger states through conquest or military alliance.

By 2300 bce, this process had advanced far enough to be able to speak of real empires, which began in Mesopotamia. We define an empire as a state that has conquered other polities, and holds them in some form of subjection, ruling from a distance and without totally assimilating them. This produces a significant (if not always present) difference between an empire and a state (see Chapter 1 in this volume). A state ordinarily homogenizes its ecology and agriculture, in interests of legibility, if nothing else.^[1143] Empires are more diverse, normally encompassing re­gions of different ecologies and agricultural systems. This allows for, among other things, borrowing and learning within an empire.

An empire normally has a center, with a highly productive agriculture able to support a large capital city and standing army. It also requires a large hinter­land of easy-to-conquer territory into which it can expand. Under pre-modern conditions, this occurred in steppes, fertile plains, maritime fringes, and other areas where it is easy to march, haul wagons, and/or ship provisions. The logis­tical difficulties of transporting, feeding, and supplying an army posed problems for empires in deserts, and almost insurmountable ones for empires in vast dense forests. Mountain fastnesses were also hard to conquer and hold, but usually could be surrounded or bypassed and subdued later.

Before the Industrial Revolution, most empires were of two types. The majority were agrarian empires, such as in China and India, located in extremely fertile valleys in easily conquered plains and steppes. A few were thalassocracies, seaborne or maritime empires conquering outward from major port and trade centers, such as the Carthaginian empire in ancient times, and more recently the Portuguese empire after 1400 ce. Empires that did not fit these patterns, such as the nomadic Central Asian empires, usually did not last long, unless they conquered and moved to a fertile central zone, as the Mongols did in China and the Near East.

Empire's Origins in the Ancient Near East

Early Mesopotamian states and empires created a wholly artificial environment of cities and carefully irrigated, grid-patterned fields around them, growing only cul­tivated plants. This lifestyle fostered a growing distaste for natural environments, promoting a view of them as alien and hostile, which grew to include “barbarian” herding tribes of mountainous uplands. It is to this—not to later phenomena such as science or capitalism—that the West traces its chronic fear of nature and belief that “progress” means replacing natural environments with wholly artificial ones.^[1144] Egypt, and other early civilizations, had weaker forms of this idea; they were more willing to work with nature.

Empires depend on external and internal trade. Ancient Near Eastern empires expanded along trade routes, often to gain control of local sources and networks. They desperately needed wood, which is sparse in Egypt and Mesopotamia’s alluvial valleys. The best wood—cedar—came from Lebanon and the Taurus Mountains. Lebanon especially became a battleground between Egypt and Near Eastern regimes, notably with and after Tuthmosis (Thutmose) I’s conquests just before 1500 bce.^[1145]

Trade in cedars reached far into Egypt and Mesopotamia, and was critical to naval strength since no Egyptian wood makes seaworthy vessels.^[1146] Empires stripped Lebanon’s forests. Without strong conservation measures—well attested in the Bible (e.g., Nehemiah 2:8) and the Epic of Gilgamesh^[1147]—it would have lost its last cedar thousands of years ago. As it is, a few survive even today.

Another vital resource was stone. Mesopotamia, in particular, a vast expanse of essentially stone-free alluvial land,^[1148] needed to import all stone for tools, construc­tion, ornaments, and other purposes. Valuable gemstones came farthest; Baltic amber and lapis lazuli from northeast Afghanistan were the most distantly sourced. More important still was the development of metal. The rise of empires was linked with the rise of metallurgy. Copper use led to the invention of bronze, making tin as well as copper a necessity. Neither is particularly common in nature, though both occur in northern Near Eastern mountains and could be traded from there.^[1149] Iron was important by 1000 bce, and quickly became the universal working metal, since it is tougher than bronze and more widely distributed.

As mountainous areas became increasingly important, needs for metals increased, resulting in environmental damage. By Greek and Roman times, authors were highlighting pollution (including air and water) associated with mining and metalworking.^[1150] Scholars often traditionally considered trade to be small-scale until recently, when this interpretation changed with the discovery of shipwrecks like the 16-meter-long boat wrecked at Uluburun, Turkey, around 1325 bce, which was carrying surprising quantities of metal (10 tons of copper alone), wood, and manufactured goods, including precious things like ivory.

These early empires were built on wheat and barley. Barley was often the major grain, because it is the most tolerant of heat, drought, and salty soil. Very small concentrations of salt kill most plants, including wheat, but barley tolerates a sig­nificant (if still rather small) amount. It thus assumed ever greater importance as irrigation accumulated salts in soil. The Nile's annual flooding, washing out the salt from most areas, spared Egypt from this problem but barley triumphed anyway, be­cause of Egypt's hot and dry climate (Egypt later produced much wheat for Rome, however). Other grains did not thrive, until sorghum moved up from the south somewhat later.^[1152]

Also critical to trade and commerce were domestic animals: sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, pigs, and dogs. Sheep wool provided a source of cool-weather clothing and a trading item (Linen, and sometimes other plant fibers, provided warm­weather clothing). Unless carefully herded, intensive grazing by sheep and goats— and browsing by goats—degraded range and soil. From what we know of modern graziers in the area, these animals were probably fairly well-managed in most cases. However, overgrazing, already a local problem long before states and empires arose, surely grew worse with empires. An empire requires enormous amounts of tribute and usually depends on trade, with wool being valuable and produced in large quantities. No other pre-modern empires relied so heavily on animals as those of the Near East and Mediterranean—they were unique in their dependence on meat, milk, and wool, and the environment suffered accordingly. Alfred Crosby noted that the combination of crops and intensive livestock-raising made farmers in this cultural tradition formidably successful managers of the environment, enabling them to spread widely and change whole regions.

Early empires institutionalized the basic pattern seen in world-systems ever since: trade of high-value-added manufactured goods from metropoles for raw materials from peripheries. Centers imported wool, raw metal, and wood, while exporting cloth, tools, and crafts. Primitive transportation made shipping large quantities of grain difficult, except along rivers, and meant grain was less com­monly traded. Instead, food had to be produced near cities, dictating their location in the centers of the most fertile valleys. Egypt faced less constraint, since barges could carry enormous amounts of goods up and down the Nile, but even there the cities stuck to fertile land.^[1153]

Empire-protected trade brought exotic goods from long distances without overwhelming expense. In Egypt, products from northeast Africa came down the Nile—everything from myrrh to elephants—while Near Eastern goods such as cedar wood and precious stones went the other way. In Mesopotamia, southern manufactures moved north, while northern products such as good wool clothing, ores, and precious stones moved south in increasing quantities. How much this had to do with diversifying crops is not clear, but Mediterranean empires drew on a rapidly widening roster of plants for food, spicing, and medicine. Knowledge also spread. Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean civilizations by 1500 bce shared many bodies of knowledge, while the application of some knowledge, such as of metallurgy, architecture, and irrigation, left long-lasting marks on the landscape.

People also widely shared environmental ideology. The memorably beau­tiful praise and love of nature in Psalm 104 of the Old Testament echoes Egyptian sources; some of it appears to be directly taken from Akhenaton's Hymn to the Sun.^[1154] Many other documents record conservation, love of nature, and concern for animals and plants as worthy beings quite apart from their resource-value. However, it is also clear that the great Mesopotamian empires, in particular, dam­aged natural environments, both for economic reasons and to prove domination and regimentation.