World History: History of the Greatest Empires; Part I

This introductory survey of world history focuses on the rise and fall of history's most powerful states - empires from the rise of the Akkadian Empire (the world's first empire, in the third millennium BCE) to the Ottoman Empire that lasted 700 years and covered three continents. Topics will include the histories of the Assyrian Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Maurya Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Holy Roman Empire, the North Sea Empire, the Mongol Empire, and the Mali Empire. Also, we will learn that although on one hand, the term empire has a negative connotation since it echoes ideas of conquest and oppression, on the other hand, one may see the empire as an engine that helped build modern civilizations. Furthermore, this course departs from traditional European and nation-centered perspectives and instead focuses on how the empires relied on the diversity of various conquered peoples and how these peoples and their various racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds shaped the global order. 

We will focus our attention, for example, on the following questions during the course:
1. How can we define the empire?
2. Why do empires rise and fall? 
3. After an empire falls, what impact does the empire have on history? 
4. How do physical and human geography affect people, places, and regions in various empires? 
5. How can we study empires globally and trans-historically?
6. What role did the Akkadian, Macedonian, Roman Empire, and other empires play in history?
7. Why were the Akkadians, Macedonians, Romans, Mongols, and others able to conquer such vast empires?
8. Are conflicts between the empires and/or neighboring countries inevitable?  
9. What was the dynastic cycle?
10. How did the Akkadian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires collapse? 
11. How does the range of Charlemagne's Empire compare with that of the Roman Empire in the west?
12. Why did Charlemagne's Empire break up after his death?
13. What role did the Byzantine Empire play in the history of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia Minor? 
14. How did the Mongol Empire end?
15. Why did the Caliphal Empire decline?