Empires: Administration
Empires from 1450 to 1750 lasted by combining force, legitimacy, and strong administration. Rulers faced slow communication, tax collection, diversity, and corruption across large territories. They used elites, bureaucracies, and state service to govern. They also used religion, ideology, art, and public ceremony to justify rule. Armies, roads, canals, and postal systems helped them control territory. The main challenge was balancing central control with local autonomy.
- Empires from 1450 to 1750 needed military force, legitimacy, and administrative skill to endure.
- Ruling large territories created communication, taxation, diversity, and corruption challenges across expanding empires.
- Imperial rulers depended on elites and bureaucracies to administer territory and secure state service.
- Rulers justified power through religion, political ideas, architecture, and public ceremony.
- Empires maintained control through armies, infrastructure, and different balances of centralization and local autonomy.
Driving Question: How did rulers legitimize and consolidate their power in land-based empires from c. 1450 to 1750 CE?
The large, land-based empires of the fifteenth to eighteenth century had to tackle the momentous task of consolidating, legitimizing, and maintaining power over diverse populations. In order to do this, governments around the world developed ways to collect revenue, develop militaries, and use culture and religion to retain and expand power.
Learning Objectives:
- Examine how rulers used a variety of methods, such as the use of bureaucracies, religion, art, architecture, and tribute and tax collection, to legitimize and consolidate their power in land-based empires from 1450 to 1750.
- Learn about the historical reasoning process of analyzing change and continuity over time (CCOT).
- Use a graphic biography as a microhistory to support, extend, or challenge the narratives of this period.
Definitely don’t pass up the whole-class graphing portion of the CCOT activities, which helps students assess whether the changes and continuities they’ve identified are positive or negative. Students get to move around the sticky notes of other groups, which generates some lively discussions.
Understanding how things change over time is important for understanding and properly analyzing history. This activity will help you become cognizant of such changes.
Successful leaders may vary in their approach, but often there is a commonality among those who are able to hold on to (and maintain) power.
-
Guiding Questions
This graphic biography provides students with a great example of how individuals challenged the power of large land-based empires. An added bonus: Qing Shih’s life as a pirate keeps students interested in the content
What can a pirate queen teach you about the expansion and power of land-based empires?
-
Guiding Questions
This closer is a great way to formatively assess your students’ understanding of the tactics land-based empires used to expand and maintain control of their territories. Students will also make some real-world connections to today, which will help the content stick.
Ever heard of pin the tail on the donkey? Now it’s time to pin the state on the strategy!
