An empire is a powerful society that has many characteristics, such as a central leadership, a strong military, shared beliefs and allegiance, and a focus on expansion. Central leadership is when an empire runs on one emperor and one capital city, such as the Roman empire, which has the capital of Rome.
When an empire has a strong military, it means that the empire has good quality weapons and armor, and a well trained, professional army. Shared beliefs means that the citizens of the empire all believe and follow the same things, for example, the romans all believed their emperor was a god.
An empire with a focus on expansion means that expansion is one of the top priorities for the empire, and they spend a lot of their money on conquest and construction. There are three big empires that fit into all four of these characteristics very well, The Roman Empire, The Gupta Empire, and The Islamic Empire.
The Roman Empire covered the entire Mediterranean basin and many parts of western Europe, and lasted from 27 BCE – 476 CE. The Gupta Empire covered most of north and central India, along with Bangladesh, and ruled from 320 CE – 550 CE.
Lastly, The Islamic Empire was located in the Arabian Peninsula all the way to modern Spain, and lasted from 632 CE – 1258 CE.
With all the characteristics of an empire, I believe focus on expansion is the most important, without it, empires couldn’t grow as much, the economy would crumble because a huge chunk of it depended on conquest, and many supplies that the empires depended on were gathered through conquest and expansion.
The Roman Empire had giant focus on expansion, which greatly helped it survive for how long it did. Conquering and expanding quickly became a very big and important role in the Roman Empire. For example, Rome conquested parts of Europe, England, and Western Asia during its existence.
Rome had also built thousands of miles of roads to connect its owned land. Lastly, Rome’s economy was dependent and built from the resources collected through conquest. While Rome was expanding, another empire across the east was also expanding in a similar way, The Gupta Empire.
The Gupta Empire had a big focus on expansion as well, which had helped become as powerful as it was. Expansion was very important to the Gupta Empire. Over the course of Gupta’s existence, it became a giant empire with much power. They had expanded to control many parts of India.
Gupta also primarily expanded through military conquest, quickly growing in size. The first ruler, Chandragupta, rapidly expanded Gupta, which overtime made it into a successful, thriving empire.
“Chandragupta I started a rapid expansion of the Gupta Empire and soon established himself as the first sovereign ruler of the empire.” Historian Dola RC says. Nearby to the west, a different empire was expanding rapidly by conquest, trade and migration.
Expanding was a top priority for Islam and they’d always seek more people to be a part of their religion and empire. Islam was an inclusive religion, open to anyone wanting to join, unlike Judaism, which is an exclusive religion. It was constantly recruiting people to convert and grew quickly.
Islam had many ways of expanding, one of which was conquest. It used conquest to control most of the former Roman Empire. The Prophet Muhammad had also made treaties with other countries to show that his empire could have attacked, but decided to make peace instead.
Here is the meaningfulness of the decision to make treaties is someone else’s words, “The treaty also serves as an example that Islam was not merely spread with the sword, as Muhammad had an army that could have attacked Mecca, but Muhammad chose to make a treaty instead of attacking.”.
Clearly, all characteristics of an empire are important, but some are more important than others, including a focus on expansion.
With the three empires in mind, Roman, Gupta, and Islam, each value expansion greatly, and a focus on that is the most important thing for an empire to have. In all kinds of empires in fact, a focus on expansion is the most important.
Without expansion, any empire would become weak fast, and the whole course of history would change. In the world today, almost every country wants to expand like empires did, in order to increase population and become more powerful overall. Could history repeat itself in the future?
