Pedro de Cieza de Leon ($1520-1554$), a Spanish chronicler of the Inca Empire of the early sixteenth century, came to the Americas as a boy at the age of thirteen. For the next seventeen years, Cieza took part as a soldier in a number of expeditions that established Spanish rule in various parts of South America. Along the way, he collected a great deal of information, especially about the Inca Empire, which he began to publish on his return to Spain in 1550 . Despite a very limited education, Cieza wrote a series of works that have become a major source for historians about the workings of the Inca Empire and about the Spanish conquest of that land. The selection that follows focuses on the techniques that the Incas used to govern their huge empire.

How would you describe Cieza's posture toward the Inca Empire? What in particular did he seem to appreciate about it?

What similarities existed between the Aztec and Inca Empires?

What brought an end to the Inca Empire?

How was daily life in the Incan empire different from that in the Aztec empire?

What was a particularly notable creation of the Aztec Empire?

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Aztec Empire?

Describe the social structure of the Aztec empire.

How did the Aztec empire develop?

Describe the social structure of the Aztec empire .

Summarize the role of women in the Aztec Empire.

Under Suleiman I (r. $1520-1566$), the Ottoman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent and perhaps its golden age in terms of culture and economy. A helpful window into the life of this most powerful of Muslim states comes from the writings of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, a Flemish nobleman who served as a diplomat for the Austrian Empire, which then felt under great threat from Ottoman expansion into Central Europe. Busbecq's letters to a friend, present his view of the Ottoman court and his reflections on Ottoman military power.

How do you think Busbecq's outsider status shaped his perceptions of Ottoman political and military life? To what extent does his role as a foreigner enhance or undermine the usefulness of his account for historians?

The experience of empire for conquered peoples was broadly similar whoever their rulers were. Does the material in this chapter support or challenge this idea?

Like their counterparts in the Middle East and Asia, a number of European states in the early modern era also pursued the twin projects of imperial expansion abroad and political integration at home. But consolidating central authority was a long and difficult task. Obstacles to the ambitions of kings in Europe were many - the absence of an effective transportation and communication infrastructure; the difficulty of acquiring information about the population and resources; the entrenched interests of privileged groups such as the nobility, church, town councils, and guilds; and the division between Catholics and Protestants.

Perhaps the most well-known example of such European state-building efforts is that of France under the rule of Louis XIV (r. $1643-1715$). Louis and other European monarchs, such as those in Spain and Russia, operated under a set of assumptions known as absolutism, which held that kings ruled by "divine right" and could legitimately claim sole and uncontested authority in their realms. Louis's famous dictum "L'etat, c'est moi" ("I am the state") summed up the absolutist ideal. Source illustrates at least one way in which Louis attempted to realize this ideal.

Written by Louis himself, this document focuses on the importance of "spectacle" and public display in solidifying the exalted role of the monarch. The "carousel" described here was an extravagant pageant, held in Paris in June $1662$. It featured various exotic animals, slaves, princes, and nobles arrayed in fantastic costumes representing distant lands, as well as many equestrian competitions. Unifying this disparate assembly was King Louis himself, dressed as a Roman emperor, while on the shields of the nobles was that grand symbol of the monarchy, the sun.

What posture does Louis take toward his subjects in this document?

The peoples of India had only rarely experienced a political system that encompassed most of the subcontinent. Its vast ethnic and cultural diversity and the division between its Hindu and Muslim peoples usually generated a fragmented political order of many competing states and principalities. But in the early modern era, the Mughal Empire gave to South Asia a rare period of substantial political unity. Source offer excerpts from the memoirs of Jahangir, who ruled the Mughal state from $1605$ to $1627$ , following the reign of his more famous father Akbar. Written in Persian, the literary language of the eastern Islamic world, Jahangir's account of his reign followed the tradition of earlier Mughal emperors in noting major events of his lifetime, but it departed from that tradition in reflecting personally on art, politics, family life, and more.

Why do you think Jahangir mounted such an elaborate coronation celebration for himself?