Following the flourishing of the 9-10th and 15th-16th centuries, what would a third Golden age of Islam look like?
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This exercise requires you to look back at earlier successful periods of Islamic rule and argue for features that would be part of a modern Golden Age. You could also note failures, such as the ISIS Caliphate and Turkish neo-Ottomanism.
The Achaemenid Empire vs The British Empire
The Achaemenid Empire was the first Persian Empire and is considered to be the largest “superpower” of that time. It started at 550 B.C and ended at 330 B.C. Cyrus the great (or Cyrus II) was the first King of Persia, who was able to unite what is now called Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Afghanistan and many more areas. He was able to abolish slavery, gave everyone the right to choose their own religion and he even removed racial discrimination in the aspects of the law. The Achaemenid Empire was controlled by regional monarchs who were extremely loyal to the king (they were known as “Satrap”). In addition, roads were created that provided a great communication network and through that, Cyrus was able to spread his positive influence on politics and especially human rights.
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The empire was a fertile place for trade because, as mentioned above, of their advanced road system. In addition, the empire was able to impose tariffs on trade, which was one of their main sources of income to the empire, on top of their thriving agriculture. They were very rich in gold as well. With the road systems and the wide land area of the empire, the cultures of different areas spread. We can understand this empire through their cultural art works, rock carvings and metal work. This empire was also allying with the Roman Empires as well as some Asian Empires because of their trades.
The British Empire started to emerge during the 17th century, with monarchs ruling the entire British empire and the colonies were run my military officers and military dictatorship. James the first (James I) the son of Mary, the queen of Scotland, was able to unite England and Scotland after many years of conflicts and considered himself to be the “King of Great Britain”. They had a long list of colonies to spread establish trade and sell their goods to them and vice versa (mercantilism). They also exploited their colonies and extracted their natural resources to benefit their own industrial revolution. Tons of gold was extracted from India and taken back to the “motherland” (Britain) to strengthen their currency.
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The British Empires’ culture was heavily influenced by Christianity as well as their colonies’ culture. For example, the Indian, Africans, Asian culture. Muslims were also very prominent in the British Empires’ culture. The British Empire was very powerful and thus, had quite a few allies in Asia and Europe. But, being a very powerful Empire comes with a lot of enemies. The French Empire and the British Empire were the ultimate rivals for a long period of time and it ultimately led to many conflicts between them such as the Anglo-French War.