Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

Map 4. The Akkadian Empire and the Persian Empire
.
The kings of Assyria always remained the kings of Assyria. Even when they
claimed to rule the entire world, it was obvious that they were doing it for the
greater glory of Assyria, and they were not apologetic about it. Cyrus, on the
other hand, claimed not merely to rule the whole world, but to do so for the sake
of all people. ‘We are conquering you for your own bene t,’ said the Persians.
Cyrus wanted the peoples he subjected to love him and to count themselves lucky
to be Persian vassals. The most famous example of Cyrus’ innovative e orts to
gain the approbation of a nation living under the thumb of his empire was his
command that the Jewish exiles in Babylonia be allowed to return to their
Judaean homeland and rebuild their temple. He even o ered them nancial
assistance. Cyrus did not see himself as a Persian king ruling over Jews – he was
also the king of the Jews, and thus responsible for their welfare.
The presumption to rule the entire world for the bene t of all its inhabitants
was startling. Evolution has made 
Homo sapiens
, like other social mammals, a
xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’
and ‘they’. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and
customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We
were always distinct from them, and owe them nothing. We don’t want to see any
of them in our territory, and we don’t care an iota what happens in their territory.
They are barely even human. In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan,
‘Dinka’ simply means ‘people’. People who are not Dinka are not people. The

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Dinka’s bitter enemies are the Nuer. What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer
language? It means ‘original people’. Thousands of kilometres from the Sudan
deserts, in the frozen ice-lands of Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, live the
Yupiks. What does Yupik mean in Yupik language? It means ‘real people’.
3
In contrast with this ethnic exclusiveness, imperial ideology from Cyrus onward
has tended to be inclusive and all-encompassing. Even though it has often
emphasised racial and cultural di erences between rulers and ruled, it has still
recognised the basic unity of the entire world, the existence of a single set of
principles governing all places and times, and the mutual responsibilities of all
human beings. Humankind is seen as a large family: the privileges of the parents
go hand in hand with responsibility for the welfare of the children.
This new imperial vision passed from Cyrus and the Persians to Alexander the
Great, and from him to Hellenistic kings, Roman emperors, Muslim caliphs, Indian
dynasts, and eventually even to Soviet premiers and American presidents. This
benevolent imperial vision has justi ed the existence of empires, and negated not
only attempts by subject peoples to rebel, but also attempts by independent
peoples to resist imperial expansion.
Similar imperial visions were developed independently of the Persian model in
other parts of the world, most notably in Central America, in the Andean region,
and in China. According to traditional Chinese political theory, Heaven (
Tian
) is
the source of all legitimate authority on earth. Heaven chooses the most worthy
person or family and gives them the Mandate of Heaven. This person or family
then rules over All Under Heaven (
Tianxia
) for the bene t of all its inhabitants.
Thus, a legitimate authority is – by de nition – universal. If a ruler lacks the
Mandate of Heaven, then he lacks legitimacy to rule even a single city. If a ruler
enjoys the mandate, he is obliged to spread justice and harmony to the entire
world. The Mandate of Heaven could not be given to several candidates
simultaneously, and consequently one could not legitimise the existence of more
than one independent state.
The rst emperor of the united Chinese empire, Qín Shǐ Huángdì, boasted that
‘throughout the six directions [of the universe] everything belongs to the
emperor … wherever there is a human footprint, there is not one who did not
become a subject [of the emperor] … his kindness reaches even oxen and horses.
There is not one who did not bene t. Every man is safe under his own roof.’
4
 In
Chinese political thinking as well as Chinese historical memory, imperial periods
were henceforth seen as golden ages of order and justice. In contradiction to the
modern Western view that a just world is composed of separate nation states, in
China periods of political fragmentation were seen as dark ages of chaos and
injustice. This perception has had far-reaching implications for Chinese history.
Every time an empire collapsed, the dominant political theory goaded the powers

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that be not to settle for paltry independent principalities, but to attempt
reunification. Sooner or later these attempts always succeeded.
When They Become Us
Empires have played a decisive part in amalgamating many small cultures into
fewer big cultures. Ideas, people, goods and technology spread more easily within
the borders of an empire than in a politically fragmented region. Often enough, it
was the empires themselves which deliberately spread ideas, institutions, customs
and norms. One reason was to make life easier for themselves. It is di cult to rule
an empire in which every little district has its own set of laws, its own form of
writing, its own language and its own money. Standardisation was a boon to
emperors.
A second and equally important reason why empires actively spread a common
culture was to gain legitimacy. At least since the days of Cyrus and Qín Shǐ
Huángdì, empires have justi ed their actions – whether road-building or bloodshed
– as necessary to spread a superior culture from which the conquered bene t even
more than the conquerors.
The bene ts were sometimes salient – law enforcement, urban planning,
standardisation of weights and measures – and sometimes questionable – taxes,
conscription, emperor worship. But most imperial elites earnestly believed that
they were working for the general welfare of all the empires inhabitants. China’s
ruling class treated their country’s neighbours and its foreign subjects as miserable
barbarians to whom the empire must bring the bene ts of culture. The Mandate of
Heaven was bestowed upon the emperor not in order to exploit the world, but in
order to educate humanity. The Romans, too, justi ed their dominion by arguing
that they were endowing the barbarians with peace, justice and re nement. The
wild Germans and painted Gauls had lived in squalor and ignorance until the
Romans tamed them with law, cleaned them up in public bathhouses, and
improved them with philosophy. The Mauryan Empire in the third century 
BC
took
as its mission the dissemination of Buddha’s teachings to an ignorant world. The
Muslim caliphs received a divine mandate to spread the Prophet’s revelation,
peacefully if possible but by the sword if necessary. The Spanish and Portuguese
empires proclaimed that it was not riches they sought in the Indies and America,
but converts to the true faith. The sun never set on the British mission to spread
the twin gospels of liberalism and free trade. The Soviets felt duty-bound to
facilitate the inexorable historical march from capitalism towards the utopian
dictatorship of the proletariat. Many Americans nowadays maintain that their

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government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the bene ts of
democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles
and F-16s.
The cultural ideas spread by empire were seldom the exclusive creation of the
ruling elite. Since the imperial vision tends to be universal and inclusive, it was
relatively easy for imperial elites to adopt ideas, norms and traditions from
wherever they found them, rather than to stick fanatically to a single hidebound
tradition. While some emperors sought to purify their cultures and return to what
they viewed as their roots, for the most part empires have begot hybrid
civilisations that absorbed much from their subject peoples. The imperial culture of
Rome was Greek almost as much as Roman. The imperial Abbasid culture was part
Persian, part Greek, part Arab. Imperial Mongol culture was a Chinese copycat. In
the imperial United States, an American president of Kenyan blood can munch on
Italian pizza while watching his favourite lm,