Peter Haugen - World History For Dummies

In 322 BC, a nobleman named Chandragupta Maurya (sometimes spelled Candra Gupta Maurya) overturned Alexander the Great’s Indian conquest by leading a successful revolt against governors in the Punjab (modern Pakistan and northwest India). He also seized Magadha, the main state in northeast India, and formed the biggest Indian political force yet, the Mauryan Empire. Seleucus, the general who became Persia’s king after Alexander died, invaded from the west in 305 BC, but Chandragupta defeated him and won a treaty from him setting an Indian border along the Hindu Kush Mountains. The Hindu Kush, an extension of the Himalayan range, is the barrier that Alexander crossed when he invaded India.

Chandragupta’s son and grandson enlarged the empire, especially to the south, but war sickened the grandson, Asoka. After early victories, he became a devout Buddhist, devoted to peace. Instead of troops, he sent missionaries to win over Burma and Sri Lanka.

After Asoka died in 238 BC, his successors proved less able to hold the large territory together, and the Mauryan Empire declined. An ambitious rival from the Sunga family assassinated the last Mauryan king, Birhadratha, in 185 BC, and seized power. The resultant Sunga Dynasty couldn’t prevent the subcontinent from breaking into a number of independent kingdoms and republics — something like what would soon happen during the medieval period in Europe.

Another leader, another Chandragupta, united India again about 600 years after the Mauryans did. The new power grew into the Gupta Empire, achieving great wealth through widespread trade and intelligent government, and bringing about the greatest cultural flowering ever to rock India.

Known as Chandragupta I, this conqueror started in the kingdom of Magadha in 320 AD, bringing surrounding kingdoms under his influence by force and persuasion. He revived many of Asoka’s principles of humane government. Much as the Romans did, he put local leaders to work for him instead of killing or imprisoning them; he propped up regional authorities and made them dependent on his administration. This model for governing India government worked for a long time. It served the Mughal emperor Akbar in the 16th century and even the British in the 19th century.

Chandragupta had able successors, including his son Samudragupta, who spread the Gupta territory to the north and east. Grandson Chandragupta II, a great patron of the arts, ruled from 376–415 AD, spending tax money to promote architecture, painting, and poetry. The Gupta era gave India glorious temples, palaces, sculpture, music, dance, and poetry.

The Guptas weren’t without enemies. Huns from Mongolia and northern China battered the northern frontier of India in the fifth century. In the 480s AD, after the last Gupta king died, Huns took over the north. (For more about the Huns and what they were doing to Europe around the same time, turn to Chapter 6.)

Divided into seven warring states, China was in turmoil from 485–221 BC. Then the king of one of those states, a place known as Qin, emerged as the dominant leader. He united China for the first time by beating his rivals and consolidating their territories into greater Qin, calling himself Qin Shi Huang (sometimes written Shi Huangdi), meaning the First Emperor of Qin, which suggests that he thought there would be more emperors after him. He was right. From Qin (which you also can spell Chi’in) came the name China.

Qin Shihuangdi got things done. He may have been inspired by the great Persian road-builder Darius I, because just as Darius built a 1,500-mile highway, Qin Shihuangdi linked the various defensive walls on China’s northern border into one Great Wall. His successors continued to work on the wall until it was more than 2,500 miles long; you can see it in Figure 5-2. Darius also inspired the Parthian empire-builder Mithradates, whom you can read about earlier in this chapter. (For more on Darius, see Chapter 4.)

Tonefotografia / Adobe Stock

FIGURE 5-2:Qin Shihuangdi started linking defense works that became the Great Wall.

Qin Shihuangdi also built roads and canals with a fury, and from his northern power base, he conquered southern China. He got rid of feudalism and disarmed nobles, dividing the country into 36 military districts, each with an administrator who reported to the emperor. He was a firm believer in big government, using his clout to reform weights and measures and to standardize everything from Chinese script to the length of cart axles.

The emperor looked after himself and his entourage, building a palace complex that doubled as a massive barracks, sleeping many thousands. He also linked hundreds of lesser palaces via a covered road network. You may conclude from these facts that he didn’t like to be alone, and perhaps this trait accounts for what researchers found when they opened his tomb in 1974: 7,000 warriors, each a distinct individual, sculpted of terra cotta and standing in battle formation as if to protect their king. With painted faces and uniforms, the sculptures still hold real weapons. Terra-cotta drivers man real chariots hitched to terra-cotta horses.

There’s nary a hint of historical authenticity in the 2008 action-horror-comedy film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Warrior . Still, the filmmakers seem to have been inspired by Qin Shihuangdi’s sculpted army. The film features Brendan Fraser battling 10,000 terra-cotta soldiers who answer to an evil, immortal ancient Chinese king.

The first Chinese emperor died in 210 BC, and his dynasty didn’t last long, yet the family that emerged as rulers only four years later, in 206 BC, was smart enough not to undo the Qin work. Building on Qin Shihuangdi’s reforms, the rulers of the Han Dynasty reigned until 220 AD.

Relatively late in the Han Dynasty, during a time called the Eastern Han, the Chinese invented both paper and porcelain, among other important technological advances that flourished under later dynasties such as the short-lived Sui and the succeeding Tang.

During the Roman era, not all the action was in Europe and Asia. Empires formed in the Americas too.

The Maya culture took shape in Central America by about 1 AD, rising to prominence around 300 AD and enjoying what historians call its Classic Period until about 900 AD, when it went into a long decline.

In the tropical rainforests on the Yucatan Peninsula, in an area spreading over what’s now southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize, and western Honduras, the Maya built on inventions and ideas developed by nearby cultures such as the Olmec (see Chapter 4). The Maya also shared aspects of their culture with the Toltec of northern Mexico, whose great city of Tula (about 40 miles north of present-day Mexico City) covered 13 square miles and was home to as many as 60,000 people. The Toltec predated the Aztecs, who met the Spanish when they arrived in Mexico in 1519. (For more on the Toltec, take a look at Chapter 6.)

The Maya developed astronomy, a sophisticated calendar, and a writing technique similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics. They built terraced cities in neat grids and pyramid temples in ceremonial cities such as Copan, Palenque, and Tikal. Both the cities and temples are now ruins for archaeologists to study and tourists to climb on.