Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to understand content and feature usage to drive site improvements over time. To learn more, review our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Empires: Administration

Teacher Resources

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:

  1. 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.
  2. Learn about the historical reasoning process of analyzing change and continuity over time (CCOT).
  3. Use a graphic biography as a microhistory to support, extend, or challenge the narratives of this period.

Vocab Terms:

  • imperial
  • infrastructure
  • revenue
  • Sikh
  • sultan
  • tariff
  • tsar
STEP 1

Opener: Empires: Administration

Understanding how things change over time is important for understanding and properly analyzing history. This activity will help you become cognizant of such changes.

STEP 2

Legitimizing and Consolidating Power

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.

STEP 3

Graphic Biography: Qing Shih

What can a pirate queen teach you about the expansion and power of land-based empires?

STEP 4

Closer: Empires: Administration