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ok. i did write about this before. but one last time.
as always, i do start with rome. not because rome is the beginning of history but they built a civilization and an empire so vast that it’s the best intersection point in history. rome interacted with almost every major power of the ancient mediterranean and europe.
by studying rome, you’re naturally forced to study everyone around it.
you can go before and after rome interaction in every major civilization and what they did after that interaction.
let me elaborate more.
1. to the east, rome fought the greek kingdoms, the selucids, parthians, and the sassanian persians. you’ll end up learning greece, alexander’s legacy and persia.
2. to their south, they conquered egypt and fought carthage. you’ll learn what happened to egypt before and after, the phoenicians, the deeds of rome in north africa, the army they raised from there, and the after impact.
3. to their north, they encountered the celtic and germanic tribes which later became the franks, the goths, you’ll learn about visigoths, anglo saxons, lombards - and eventually how it led to the foundations of modern france, germany, england and shaped italy.
4. to the west, their expansion into hispania, britain and how they shaped the histories of spain, portugal and the british isles.
5. within their empire christianity emerged - do you naturally study judaism, how they conquered the lands of judea and israel, early christianity, the persecution and how the empire later adopted and later catholic, orthodox and the latter reformation movements like protestant etc.,
6. after rome split, one half became the byzantine empire while the west half fragmented into medieval european kingdoms creating the transition to the middle ages - how the byzantine empire dealt with ottomans, poland etc.,
many institutions that still exist today either originated in rome or were heavily influenced by it:
if you can understand rome, you can trace for these institutions evolved into the modern world.
i mean, it’s less central for civilizations that developed largely independent such as ancient china, early indian history or the pre colombian/discovery meso american civilizations. they need to be studied separately.
now to the map
the romans - punic wars, gaul and britain, greece and macedonia, egypt, judea, germania, parthians and the sassanids.
it’s crisis - east/west division - franks, goths, anglo-saxons, byzantine empire, justinian (important), constantinople (conflicts around it will lead to ottoman to world war 1 to modern turkey)
rise of islam (600s), the arab caliphates, north africa - spain - persia
the vikings, slavs, keivan rus.
the rise of medieval europe (1000-1400) - holy roman empire, crusades, mongols
renaissance, age of exploration by spain and portugal.
age of reformation, global empires by the west, global trade, enlightenment & revolutions - american, french and in latin america.
industrial revolution, nationalism which leads to german and italian unification
and ofcourse from there, ww 1 - russian revolution, great depression,
ww 2 - re distribution of lands and creation of new countries in the middle east and south east asia - and conflicts created by them.
cold war (us vs ussr), and to now.
i left napoleanic wars since you’ll learn it naturally after french revolution and you’ll also learn about the rus and slav people easily there.
more:
when you start from rome, you’ll draw parallels everywhere.
while rome was declining in the west, you’ll see the gupta empire flourish,
and most importantly the rise of the imperial chola empire 300 years after gupta empire (even though as a dynasty they’re older than gupta) and its conquest across south east asia.
it’s addicting.
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