the mediterranean and asia 447
Empire. Perhaps this has to do with the region’s long history of urbanization and
connectedness, whose inner dynamics were rarely or extensively disrupted by invad-
ers. Neither the Muslim conquests from the 630 s nor even the relentless waves of
Crusader invasions saw wide-scale destruction of cities or populations. Anatolia suf-
fered massive disruptions during the Arab incursions, as it did during the Turkish
conquests from the late eleventh century (Vyronis, 1971), but within its West Asian
context Anatolia was exceptional. Rather, Roman emperors, Arab caliphs, and Turkish
sultans were the beneficiaries of tax-based states which could raise great armies, keep
peasantries in check, and intervene more effectively in the affairs of society (Wickham,
2004: 145). Each could depend on a stable and lucrative source of revenue, given that
taxes far exceeded all other potential sources of revenue (Wickham, 2004: 144).
From the end of the Bronze Age the Mediterranean would be dominated politi-
cally by great eastern powers. The significant exception here was the Roman Empire
when it was based in central Italy, but the city of Rome ceased to be the emperor’s
residence sometime during the crisis-ridden third century ce, and by 330 ce the
Emperor Constantine had established his new capital in the east. And it was still the
Roman imperial capital in 1453. Although technically on the European continent,
Constantinople was chosen because of its proximity to the empire’s richest provinces
and its optimal position on trading routes. Constantine did what Philip II of Spain
failed to do by remaining in Madrid: to relocate his residence and create an imperial
metropolis that was close to the areas of greater strategic and economic significance.
From such a location, claims Braudel, an imperial capital can “create an order” and
serve as a civilization’s “hothouse” (Braudel, 1972–3: 351).
The Far Easts: long-distance exchanges
As the first “world” empire, Achaemenid Persia effectively ruled over most of the
world that was known to Mesopotamians, Greeks and Egyptians—beyond it were
realms that were the object of fantasy. The known world, which stretched from the
Nile to the Himalayas and the Aral Sea, was also connected; historical sociologists
would describe such connected entities as “world systems” (Frank, 1990; McNeill
and McNeill, 2003). The domain of the Great King was where one would have found
the greatest number of cities, royal courts and luxury-good consuming aristocracies,
infrastructures (roads, ports, bridges, canals), market centers, and the greatest volume
of circulating commodities. Recent archaeological research has confirmed that the
system existed long before the Persians superimposed their super-state: indeed it had
been formed near the beginning of the Bronze Age. Around 2500 bce, a network of
walled cities extended from Egypt to the Iranian plateau, Anatolian Plateau and the
Hindu Kush (Wengrow, 2010: 91). This specific Eurasian sub-system was composed
of many kinds of ecological niches with different resources, and thereby featured
interdependencies such that the economic fortunes of these societies were tied
(Wengrow, 2010: 93). Significantly, the system overlapped with other systems,
included the ancient “Silk Roads” that extended from the Black Sea steppe to China,
and to an emergent Indian Ocean exchange zone, which stretched from east Africa
and to the Maldives and beyond (Hansen, 2012; Pollard, this volume). It was no
coincidence that dense urbanization first began in Sumer, near the mouth of Persian
Gulf, the point where two major systems converged (McNeill and McNeill, 2003: 45)