Big Questions, part 2: Empires

The agrarian empire was the principal form of political organization throughout the Middle East from the middle of the third millennium BCE to the early modern era. To understand it it will he helpful to consider the following questions:

--What are the main characteristics of the universal cosmopolitan agrarian empire? What distinguishes it from earlier forms of political organization or the modern nation-state?

--What held empires together? How much weight should we give their institutions (everything from the army to the tax collecting apparatus) and how much to their social and cultural policies and practices?

--Why did empire-builders find it so useful to adopt the architectural and ceremonial forms of previous empires?

--What roles could conquest by pastoralist peoples play in creating ever-larger empires?

--Why was the creation of a distinctive cosmopolitan culture so politically useful? What do we call a cosmopolitan culture that broadens and deepens following the disappearance of the empire that brought it into being?

--What was the relationship between imperial state structures, the cities they created and from which they ruled, and complex irrigation systems?

--What were the means by which empires exploited their subjects? How did they learn over time to supplant the use of force with regular taxation systems? What was the advantage in replacing the regular sack of one's neighbors with the demand for tribute, and in replacing the latter with regular taxation?