Sapiens: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Harari argues that the Romans were used to losing battles. Empires, he notes, persist if they can sustain blows and losses. In 134 B.C.E., a small Iberian Celtic town called Numantia successfully resisted Roman conquest until they were surrounded by Roman troops. The citizens burned their town to the ground and killed themselves to avoid becoming Roman slaves. Numantia later became a symbol for Spanish independence. Yet, Spaniards in subsequent centuries celebrated Numantia in Spanish (a Latin language), rather than Celtic, showing that the Roman empire prevailed, even though the town of Numantia was never conquered.

Harari characterizes empires in a few distinct ways: empires connect people in diverse cultures under universal rule, they have flexible borders, and they’re potentially unlimited in size. Empires need not emerge from military conquest (the Athenian empire was a voluntary enterprise, while the Hapsburg Empire was formed by a string of aristocratic marriages). Empires can also be tiny. The Aztec empire was smaller than modern-day Mexico, but it consolidated 371 different tribes.

Many people in the world think that empires don’t work in the long term, and they exploit people. Harari disagrees; he sees empires as the “world’s most common” and “stable” form of political organization. Empires consolidate different cultures into one larger culture. He thinks Jewish people in modern Israel, for example, owe a lot of their cultural practices (like their clothing and food) to the empires they lived under for over 2,000 years. Admittedly, empires use ruthless tactics like wars, slavery, and genocide to establish themselves, but to Harari, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily evil—he thinks they leave behind good things like languages that many people share.

The Persian empire (established around 500 B.C.E.), for example, sought to unite people in the Mesopotamian region, and its ruler Cyrus the Great often proclaimed that he was establishing a unified empire for his subjects’ benefit. To Harari, this vision presents a stark contrast with ethnic segregation and “us” and “them” thinking. Harari thinks another empire founded on the vision of global unity was the Chinese empire (founded by Qin Shi Huangdi around 250 B.C.E.). Harari thinks such visions depart significantly from the modern “Western” view that a “just world is composed of separate nation states.”

Harari thinks empires unify people by making it easier for them to share language, goods, and currencies. An empire’s imperial elites usually genuinely think they’re doing something good by enabling others to share in the benefits of their culture. Harari thinks that the modern-day American empire’s elites similarly think they need to spread democracy and human rights, even if they do it with bombs and weapons. Harari thinks that assimilating into an empire can be tough. He imagines an Iberian Celt in the Roman empire who follows all the rules but is still treated like an outsider. Eventually, Harari thinks, the Celt’s desire to fit in will make him demand equality, which will cause the empire to evolve.

Many modern cultures, says Harari, even owe a debt to their “imperial legacies.” British imperialists killed, imprisoned, and subjugated many Indians, but Harari thinks they also laid the groundwork for creating a unified Indian state by uniting warring regions and tribes and creating infrastructure. He imagines many Indians today enjoy cricket, even though the sport is a remnant of British rule. Harari thinks modern day societies share increasingly global threats (like climate change), and he wonders if a new empire will emerge that can make people cooperate on global issues. He also worries about scientific developments like artificial intelligence, and he wonders how they’ll change the face of the world in the future.