by Aseem Gupta | Jan 26, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
Herodotus was born around 484 BCE in Halicarnassus, a Greek-speaking city ruled by the Persian Empire. That position placed him between worlds. He belonged to Greek culture, yet he grew up inside the political order that Greece would later remember as its great...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 25, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
India is at once a modern republic, a geographical region and a civilizational space whose boundaries have never remained fixed for long. The kingdoms and empires of the past rarely governed the exact territory marked on today’s political map. Many of the most...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 24, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
More than eight billion human beings now live within systems of extraordinary scale. Food crosses oceans before reaching supermarket shelves. Governments administer millions of strangers through laws, records, taxes, and public institutions. Financial decisions made...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 23, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
In 149 BC, Rome went to war against an enemy it had already defeated. Carthage no longer possessed the overseas empire that had once challenged Rome for control of the western Mediterranean. Its navy had been reduced, its army restricted, and its foreign policy placed...
by Aseem Gupta | Jan 22, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
On an August day in 216 BC, Rome suffered one of the worst military defeats in its history. Near the small town of Cannae in southern Italy, Hannibal Barca surrounded the largest army the Roman Republic had ever assembled. For hours, Carthaginian troops cut down...
