NCERT Solutions for Class 11 History Themes in World History Chapter 2: An Empire Across Three Continents; Nomadic Empires

Chapter at a glance

This file of the textbook contains two chapters: An Empire Across Three Continents (the Roman Empire) and Nomadic Empires (the Mongols). The exercises of both are answered below, numbered as in the book.

An Empire Across Three Continents

Answer

I would rather have lived in a town, because:

1. Towns had better food supplies: in times of famine, cities were privileged and the countryside suffered most, as rural people had to eat roots, leaves and bark (as Galen described).
2. Towns had public baths, theatres, entertainments and other amenities; urban life was associated with a high level of civic culture.
3. Towns had markets, trade and employment, and wealthier, educated communities.
4. Towns were run by municipal councils, which provided services; the countryside faced heavy demands from landowners and tax collectors, and peasants were often in debt or reduced to dependent labour.

However, for the urban poor life was crowded, and slaves had no freedom anywhere. For an ordinary free person, though, the town offered greater security and opportunity.

In the towns: they had better food supply during famines, baths and entertainment, markets and jobs, while peasants in the countryside faced hunger, debt and harsh exactions.

Answer

List

• Towns and cities: Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch, Ravenna, Pompeii, Palmyra, Damascus, Ctesiphon
• Rivers: Rhine, Danube, Euphrates, Tigris, Nile
• Seas: Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea, Adriatic
• Provinces and regions: Gaul, Spain, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Africa (Tunisia), Mesopotamia, Arabia

Three items

1. Constantinople: founded by Emperor Constantine on the site of Byzantium (modern Istanbul) as the new capital, surrounded on three sides by sea; it became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
2. Carthage: a major city of North Africa (in modern Tunisia), part of the wealthy province of Africa which supplied grain, olive oil and wine to the empire.
3. The Mediterranean Sea: the heart of the empire; the Romans called it “our sea”. Trade in wine, olive oil and grain across it bound the empire’s provinces together.

E.g. Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria; Rhine, Danube, Euphrates, Nile; Mediterranean, Black Sea; Gaul, Spain, Egypt, Syria. Three described: Constantinople (new capital), Carthage (rich African province), Mediterranean (trade heart of the empire).

Answer

Shopping list

1. Wheat or bread (grain from Egypt, Sicily or Africa)
2. Olive oil (from Spain or Africa), kept in amphorae
3. Wine (from Italy, Gaul or Spain)
4. Fish sauce (garum) and salted fish
5. Vegetables, fruits, lentils and beans
6. Cheese, eggs and honey
7. Meat (pork) and spices such as pepper
8. Cloth (wool and linen) and thread
9. Pottery: lamps, plates and jars
10. Firewood and charcoal

Grain or bread, olive oil, wine, fish sauce, vegetables and fruit, cheese, honey, meat, pepper, cloth, pottery and fuel.

Answer

• The silver mines of Spain were exhausted, and the government ran out of stocks of silver to mint coins.
• The empire also faced heavy military spending, and debasing coins had caused inflation and loss of trust in the silver currency.
• Hence, the Roman government gave up silver coinage.

It began to use gold. Constantine introduced the solidus, a gold coin of 4.5 grams of pure gold, which remained stable and was minted in huge quantities for centuries.

Because the silver mines of Spain were exhausted and silver ran short; the government switched to gold (Constantine’s solidus).

Answer

This is an imaginative question; possible changes include:

1. Language and law: Latin might have influenced Indian languages, and Roman law might have shaped Indian legal systems.
2. Religion: after the 4th century, Christianity (the state religion of Rome) could have spread more widely, alongside existing faiths.
3. Architecture and towns: Roman-style cities with amphitheatres, public baths, aqueducts and paved roads might have been built.
4. Administration: provinces with governors, a standing army, and a uniform tax system, with Indian cities run by municipal councils.
5. Economy: even stronger trade links with the Mediterranean; spread of gold coinage; perhaps Roman slavery and large estates.
6. Culture: Indian art and learning would have mixed with Greek and Roman traditions, as happened in Gandhara.

On the other hand, India’s rich diversity of languages, religions and traditions would probably have survived, just as local cultures survived in the Roman East (Syria and Egypt).

India might have Roman-influenced law, language, administration, architecture and religion (Christianity), with closer Mediterranean trade, though local diversity would likely have persisted.

Answer

1. Nuclear family: the Roman family was mostly a nuclear family; adult sons did not live with their parents.
2. Women’s property rights: women kept property rights over what they brought into marriage; divorce was relatively easy.
3. Literacy and education: casual literacy was widespread in towns (e.g. graffiti at Pompeii).
4. Urban culture: towns with municipal councils, public baths, theatres and entertainments.
5. Business and trade: large-scale trade in olive oil, wine and grain; industrial-scale production with amphorae; banking, firms and investment.
6. Money economy: a stable gold currency (solidus), and well-organised taxation.
7. Legal system: codified laws with ideas of rights.
8. Technology: water-mills, screw presses, deep mining and agricultural innovations.
9. Paid army: a professional standing army of paid soldiers.

Nuclear families, women’s property rights, literacy, urban civic life, large-scale trade and banking, stable money, codified law, technology and a paid army.

Nomadic Empires

Answer

1. The resources of the steppe were scarce: the Mongols depended on pastoralism and hunting, and the steppe could not provide grain, metal, cloth and other necessities.
2. They had to trade with their agrarian neighbours (China) to obtain these, exchanging horses, furs and game.
3. Trade was mutually beneficial but often tense; when bargaining failed, the Mongols raided Chinese territory.
4. Under the empire, the Mongols protected trade routes (the Silk Route) and merchants, which brought them wealth and revenue, and helped them administer the empire.

The scarce steppe could not meet their needs, so trade with agrarian neighbours was vital; later, protected trade across the empire brought wealth.

Answer

• The old tribal groupings and clans were a source of rivalry and conflict; tribal loyalties competed with loyalty to the ruler.
• Genghis Khan wanted to create a unified, loyal army that owed allegiance to him alone.
• So he reorganised the army into decimal units (10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 soldiers). Members of different tribes were deliberately mixed in these units, and soldiers could not move from one unit to another.
• This broke down old tribal identities and made the army effective and loyal; his commanders, the nokers, were chosen for loyalty and merit.

To break tribal loyalties and rivalries and build a unified, disciplined army loyal only to him, he mixed tribes in decimal military units.

Answer

• The yasa originally meant the customary laws and decrees of Genghis Khan, issued at the 1206 assembly (quriltai).
• By the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols had become rulers of settled, sedentary societies (China, Iran) and were adopting new cultures and religions (Buddhism, Islam).
• They began to describe the yasa as a law code given by Genghis Khan, using it to claim a shared identity and legitimacy as his descendants.
• Yet they no longer lived as nomads, and some customs of the yasa clashed with the practices of their subjects. So they kept appealing to his memory while moving away from his way of life.

This reveals an uneasy relationship: they revered Genghis Khan as the source of their identity, but needed to reinterpret his legacy to rule settled populations.

Later Mongols, now ruling settled peoples, used the yasa to claim identity and legitimacy from Genghis Khan, while drifting from his nomadic ways, so they reinterpreted his legacy rather than following it.

Answer

Yes, largely.

• Nomads left few written records of their own. Most accounts were written by urban, sedentary writers (Chinese, Persian, Arab chroniclers), who saw nomads as barbarians, destroyers of cities and civilisation.
• These writers suffered from the Mongol conquests, and they were biased by their own values and fears.

This does help explain the exaggerated casualty figures in Persian chronicles. For example, they claimed that 1.3 million people were killed in the capture of Merv and 1.6 million in Herat (the latter more than the city’s likely population). Writers dramatised the destruction to express horror and resentment.

However, the hostility was not only bias: the Mongol campaigns really were destructive, with mass killings and the ruin of irrigation in Iran. Also, some later Persian chroniclers worked for Mongol rulers and praised them.

Yes; urban writers viewed nomads as destructive barbarians, which explains inflated casualty figures in Persian chronicles, though Mongol campaigns were indeed very violent.

Answer

Differences

1. Religion as unifier: the Bedouin tribes of Arabia were united by Islam in the 7th century; the Mongol empire was built through military conquest by Genghis Khan, with religious tolerance, not one faith.
2. Integration with settled society: the Bedouin empire quickly merged with the urban and trading culture of the Islamic world, and Arabic and Islam spread widely. The Mongols remained distinct from their subjects for long, and later assimilated into local cultures (Chinese, Persian, Russian), losing their identity.
3. Continuity: the Islamic caliphates created lasting cultural and religious unity; the Mongol empire broke up into separate khanates within about a century.
4. Economy: the Bedouins were closely linked with towns such as Mecca and long-distance trade; the Mongols lived in the harsh steppe, depending on pastoralism and trade with China.

Explanations: the role of a shared religion and language in Arabia; the closeness of the Bedouins to urban trading centres; the vast diversity of peoples in the Mongol empire; and the Mongols’ dependence on military organisation and personal leadership.

The Bedouins were unified by Islam and merged into an urban Islamic civilisation that lasted; the Mongols united by conquest, ruled diverse peoples, and later assimilated and fragmented. Religion, urban links and diversity of subjects explain the difference.

Answer

The account shows the Pax Mongolica (the “Mongol peace” across Eurasia) to be:

1. Cosmopolitan: people from far-off lands (a Frenchwoman from Lorraine, a Parisian goldsmith) lived and worked at the Mongol court in Karakorum.
2. Open to talent: skilled craftsmen were employed by the royal family whatever their origin.
3. Religiously tolerant: Nestorian Christian priests, Muslim clergy, and Buddhist and Taoist monks all took part in court festivals and blessed the Great Khan; members of the royal family themselves followed different faiths.
4. Well connected: European envoys could travel safely across Asia, showing secure routes, diplomacy and contact between Europe and Asia.

So the Pax Mongolica was a period of peace, safe travel, exchange of people, ideas and goods, and multi-ethnic, multi-religious coexistence under Mongol rule.

It shows the Pax Mongolica as cosmopolitan and tolerant: Europeans served at the court, all religions were honoured, and secure routes allowed travel and exchange across Eurasia.

Topic checklist

• Roman Empire: early empire, third-century crisis, late antiquity
• Roman society, family, slavery and economy
• Mongol society and Genghis Khan’s career
• Army organisation, yam, yasa and Pax Mongolica
• Writing of nomadic history and its biases

Total questions answered: 12 of 12