Innovative Tradition
Back in the day, Alexander the Great was big daddy mack. His father Philip rocked Greece; and Alex high in the saddle at 16, commanding battalions from the front. Stories of his divine origins drove his sense of authority to encompass all situations, even leading him to draw down and engaging in heated swordplay with his father. That sense of largess and the desire to command all men drove him to conquer Asia Minor. How has this kingdom expansion been possible when unified governed territories of this size had never existed before?
During his life Alexander pushed for great measure of integration, he adopted Persian dress, court rituals, took a foreign wife and instituted a eugenics program among his military. He married 2-300 of his officers and thousands (up to 10,000) of the army to women selected from his conquested people. For the weddings he took care to find match pairs according to their appropriate standing in society, in an effort to not disrupt the current society and integrate as smoothly as possible. He even went so far as to have himself deified in Greek and Egyptian cultures, referring to himself as Zeus-Ammon.
After his death the empire was thrown into 30 years of all out civil war and fiefdomship by his generals, which settled down and dissolved into stable regional collections. The desire for integration evaporated and the power collected in the Greek speaking, Macedonian/Persian elite who rarely built their capitals far from the Mediterranean sea and modeled their civil structures, (hierarchical and architectural) after classical Greek cities. The most common writing from Ptolemaic Egypt, in the Hellenistic period following Alexanders rule, is the petition, usually a native looking for redress against unfair practices by the Greek speaking ruling class
Sparta as Contrast
Remember Sparta? That legendary military power spent years quelling rebelling cities, in less time Alex was conquering territories the size of India. How?
Sparta declared open war, yearly, on their slave population. Their treatment was looser, on the whole, than most of Greece’s treatment of their slave population. In Athens the slaves lived on property of their owner, in American South sort of way, but they were educated and commonly were craftsmen or held positions of management. In Sparta, their slaves-the helots, were Russian style serfs, more slaves of poverty and tied to the land like sharecroppers. So, if you were a helot, you worked in agriculture or rudimentary cottage industries of cloth, carpentry, etc. You didn’t have someone bossing you around every day, but, you could be killed at any time by almost any Spartan with no recourse. No cultural integration and management in absence through fear. This sort of begrudging tolerances towards native peoples is something Alexander’s empire fell into after his death, but while he lived, he pushed for as great an integration as possible.
The New Deal
Alexander's offer was simple, he was able to provide systems already being sought. Through changing what a kingdom was, and providing a more accepting framework for foreign societies to fill, Alex broadened his own culture to absorb these new peoples. With this, their governance would come from the preexisting power structures and local networks, now even stronger as backed by the resources from the rest of Alexander’s empire.
It’s similar to Saddam sorting out his region, collecting power so that finally his voice would enact action and represent control over the country. Then a country, say, Taiwan, absorbs it into the Taiwanese Empire and better trains and arms the military before leaving him in power. Of course they would also leave high born women, for him to lay with, so to breed an ethnic and cultural mix set for rule in both countries. In a classical Hellenic sense anyway, this is how Alexander spread his empire.
Spartan life would have been difficult to export and maintain in absence, consider the unpleasant lifestyle changes people would encounter if the Amish (who ran brutal, yearly pogroms) rose to complete political and military dominance. Going from a more open society to a more restrictive one would require enforcement, which means garrisoning troops and actively policing a population, which would eat up a governing power’s resources.
The opposite, moving into a more accepting regime, would increase the total amount of economic activity in allowing the professional advancement of a greater part of the population alongside the compounding effects of broader and safer trade. This way, the ruling elite facing Alexander stood to become even wealthier by supporting his regime and having a slice from a huge cake instead of their own little cupcake. With the hearts and minds in hand, Alex would pull resources from his new province and move forward in conquest, leaving the day to day life of the citizens intact.
Limits on Everything
Internal dissent finally came from the Macedonian old guard, far past the time when each member had more wealth than they could control. The endless campaigning was put to an end, and complaints arose concerning his privileged treatment of foreign peoples, “why are you allowing the savages to kiss you on the cheek and call you brother?” Now, Alexander was someone who it was best not to question, at a banquet hall an old guard general spoke out over his lauded superiority to classical Greek heroes, like Hellas and Heracles, and Alexander ran him through with the point of his sword, killed him on the spot. The Greeks were eventually given the privilege of being ‘as his brothers’ and even excepted from his newly instituted desire of being met with full prostration, Pharaoh style, but only after negotiations.
This lack of desire for boundless political dominance developed among his vital supporters, and became the limiting factor in his expansion. At this point, the enormous amount of resources commanded and mobilized would have been comparable to the Second Athenian Empire, with a collection of city states working relatively autonomously towards a common goal. He knew he needed their support to some degree and turned back to rule rather than suffer Thebes fate by the hands of Athens. He demonstrated his frustration by marching his army home through deserts, instead of taking his available fleet of ships. Significant figures died.
*tAkeAwAy*?
In ruling a people and drawing from their resources, education and civil status gets you much further than abject fear. Or, Alleys(over)Subjects
