Key Concept 4.3 State Consolidation and Imperial Expansion

Empires expanded and conquered new peoples around the world, but they often had difficulties incorporating culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse subjects, and administrating widely dispersed territories. Agents of the European powers moved into existing trade networks around the world. In Africa and the greater Indian Ocean, nascent European empires consisted mainly of interconnected trading posts and enclaves. In the Americas, European empires moved more quickly to settlement and territorial control, responding to local demographic and commercial conditions. Moreover, the creation of European empires in the Americas quickly fostered a new Atlantic trade system that included the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Around the world, empires and states of varying sizes pursued strategies of centralization, including more efficient taxation systems that placed strains on peasant producers, sometimes prompting local rebellions. Rulers used public displays of art and architecture to legitimize state power. African states shared certain characteristics with larger Eurasian empires. Changes in African and global trading patterns strengthened some West and Central African states — especially on the coast; this led to the rise of new states and contributed to the decline of states on both the coast and in the interior.

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I. Rulers used a variety of methods to legitimize and consolidate their power.

A. An individual’s claim to have authority over other people is not something we humans take for granted. We need a reason to obey. Coercion and force have long been a part of political power, but we yield to them out of fear or for pragmatic reasons rather than our belief that they constitute legitimate reasons for our consent. A state has political legitimacy when subjects choose to recognize its authority because it has some intrinsic validating quality. Notions used by states to legitimize their rule in this period (1450-1750) are examples of important continuities of state-building we have seen since the River Valley Civilizations in Period I. Religion and art continued to be closely connected with the political power of states.

Some examples of religious ideas legitimizing states are:

• European notions of divine right. The divine right of kings
  
  is an important political ideology in Western Europe. It maintains that the king’s authority comes from God and, as such, the king is accountable only to God for his actions. Thus it supports the idea of absolute monarchy in which the monarch’s power is not checked by any earthly agent. In Roman Catholic countries it means that the king’s power must be endorsed by the pope, a tradition that goes back to Charlemagne’s coronation in the year 800 C.E.
  
• The Safavid's use of Shiism. The Safavids rose out of the dissolution of the Timurid Empire, the state formed by the conquests of Timur, also known Tamerlane. After his death, Timur’s empire fell to warring family members. (One of his descendants, Babur, conquered northern India and began the Mughal Empire.) In Persia, Mesopotamia, and Eastern Anatolia, the disintegrating Timurid Empire opened the way for Shi’ite and Sufi Muslims to proliferate. Taking advantage of the absence of any centralized state, Ismail—a leader from a prominent Sufi family—conquered most of these areas in the late 15th century and began the Safavid Empire. However, despite unifying Iran (Persia), much of the population did not accept their authority.

B.

C.

D.

E.

II. Imperial expansion relied on the increased use of gunpowder, cannons, and armed trade to establish large empires in both hemispheres.

A.

B.

Required examples of Land Based Empires: