History empires Asia and Australasia (from silk road till now).
History empires Asia and Australasia (from silk road till now).
Order Description
essay is to be done on one of the following looking at empires in Asia and Australasia starting from the silk road till now. looking at a variety of different empires. Pick one of the following.
1. To what extent is the term ‘globalisation’ applicable to pre-modern empires?
2. To what extent do empires stifle social and cultural diversity, and to what extent do
they foster it?
3. How do empires affect the spread and transmission of ideas across cultures?
4. How have empires used ideology to legitimise their claims to rule?
5. How have empires used ideology to provide, or impose, a sense of unity? How
successfully have they done so?
6. Is it possible for cross-cultural encounters to lead simply to mutual knowledge and
understanding? Or is some form of exploitation and domination inevitable in such an
encounter? Is such an encounter always ‘lopsided’?
Page 9 of 13 HIST252: Empires: From the Silk Road to the Asian Century, Semester 1, 2017, Strathfield
7. To what extent is the cross-cultural exchange of material goods and ideas that occur
within and across empires ‘one-way’, and to what extent does such exchange and
influence go ‘both ways’? What factors affect the nature of this process?
8. How have empires mediated tensions between their centre and their peripheries?
9. Do you think it is valid to draw a clear-cut distinction between the nature of Asian
empires, on the one hand, and European empires on the other? Why? Why not?