Geo-graphy
This geographical feature allowed the Roman Empire to move troops and goods quickly, reaching most of the western empire within a week.
What is the Mediterranean Sea?
The Aztec Empire used this strategy: conquered territories kept their freedom but had to pay food, textiles, or precious stones to the emperor.
What is tribute (or taxation)?
The Spanish Empire's focus on extracting this precious metal from Potosí (in Latin America) demonstrates resource extraction, unlike Britain's emphasis on trade networks.
What is silver?
This powerful "institution" allowed Britain to control key trade routes and strategic locations like Gibraltar from the 1700s onward.
What is the Royal Navy (or British fleet)?
This language, spoken globally today, demonstrates the cultural legacy of the British Empire, which ruled over 458 million people at its peak.
What is English?
This other name for the Ayutthaya Kingdom was the European's preferred one.
What is Siam?
The Roman Empire shared this cultural element across vast territories—from Britain to Egypt—helping unify diverse peoples.
What is language (Latin) OR religion (Christianity, after 300 CE)?
The capture of this single Portuguese ship in 1592, the Madre de Deus, yielded treasures worth nearly half of England's annual treasury income.
What is a caravel (or trading ship)?
The Mongols, known for pillage and plunder, actually did this to Silk Road trade routes rather than disrupting them.
What is protected (or secured) them?
The Commonwealth, formed in 1931, shows how former British colonies maintained this type of connection—economic, cultural, and political ties—after empire ended.
What are soft power relationships (or voluntary associations/shared institutions)?
Modern nations compete for control of this type of geographical feature—narrow passages like the Suez Canal or Strait of Hormuz—just as ancient empires did.
What are chokepoints (or strategic waterways)?
The British used "divide and rule" in India by exploiting these existing divisions among local populations.
What are ethnic, religious, or tribal rivalries?
Jerry Bentley warned that when empires "impose their ways forcibly on another unwilling to accept them," they risk dissipating their strength and doing this to themselves.
What is bankrupting themselves (or depleting resources/overextending)?
Britain's strategy in Nigeria and Uganda of allowing traditional leaders to retain nominal power while controlling broader policy is called this.
What is indirect rule?
The Taj Mahal was built with gold and silver from the Americas, showing how resources from one side of the world funded monuments on the other—an early example of this modern phenomenon.
What is globalization (or global trade networks)?
The Baku fields in Azerbaijan produced over 60% of this resource in 1901, making this resource as valuable then as spices were during the Age of Exploration.
What is oil?
The Inca mit'a system required subjects to perform this for the empire, similar to how modern nations use taxation or military conscription.
What is forced labor (or public service)?
Roman glassware was highly prized in China, while this Chinese fabric caused such an outflow of Roman gold that it was banned.
What is silk?
The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement secretly divided these Ottoman territories between Britain and France, showing how declining empires created power vacuums filled by others.
What are Middle Eastern lands (or Levant territories)?
The Austria-Hungarian Empire's ethnic diversity mirrors this challenge modern nations face when multiple cultural groups with different identities exist within one state.
What is nationalism (or separatist movements/ethnic tensions)?
Port cities like Batavia (Jakarta) under the Dutch VOC charged taxes on imported spices, making them luxury goods. Name one modern "port" or checkpoint where nations still tax goods crossing borders.
What are: customs checkpoints, international airports, shipping ports, border crossings, free trade zones?
This 1917 document promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine while also hinting at Arab independence, creating tensions that persist today—an example of imperial powers making conflicting promises to control territory.
What is the Balfour Declaration?
Modern nations face this "opportunity cost" when shifting from local food production to export crops—the same trade-off ancient empires made with spices and luxury goods.
What is food security (or self-sufficiency/local consumption needs)?
In your summative, you'll need to justify expansion based on solving national problems. Name TWO types of problems modern nations face that might motivate expansion (based on historical patterns).
What are: resource shortages, border conflicts, economic decline, population pressure, security threats, access to trade routes?
Delftware, created in the Netherlands, imitated expensive Chinese porcelain, showing how empires competed not just militarily but also through this economic strategy.
What is domestic manufacturing, or alternatives to imports?