Dorks And Losers

The beauty of The His­tory Chan­nel is its abil­ity to sim­plify many com­plex details of his­tor­i­cal events and select the most impor­tant facts to form con­cise sum­maries. In rel­a­tively short run­ning times, the channel’s pro­grams pro­vide sur­pris­ingly com­pre­hen­sive and acces­si­ble his­tor­i­cal examinations.

Hosted by Peter Weller and nar­rated by Michael Car­roll, THC’s series Engi­neer­ing An Empire ana­lyzes the world’s major civ­i­liza­tions and rec­og­nizes the sig­nif­i­cant engi­neer­ing achieve­ments that led to each empire’s rise and last­ing legacy on the mod­ern world.

Nat­u­rally, each episode starts with a brief intro­duc­tion to the begin­ning years, and fol­lows with engi­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions related to the empire’s growth and to its cul­ture. Each episode also fea­tures inter­views from his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars who offer exper­tise on the mod­ern con­text of those projects as well as sig­nif­i­cant events within the period.

In “Greece” and “Greece: Age of Alexan­der,” the famous Greek city-states and impor­tant rulers are high­lighted for their indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions to Greece’s fame. Under con­stant threat from the Per­sian Empire, a few of the city-states helped estab­lish the Delian League (a mod­ern day NATO orga­ni­za­tion). The Parthenon, the the­ater, and the Light­house and Library of Alexan­dria are observed, as well as Alexan­der the Great’s reign.

In “The Aztecs,” the Aztec Empire was founded on the island Tenochti­t­lan, which forced them to estab­lish an advanced aque­duct, a cause­way and levee sys­tem, and an amaz­ingly effi­cient agri­cul­tural struc­ture. Weller offers an aside about the often over­looked Aztec inno­va­tions com­pared to their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts: when Michelan­gelo was carv­ing the David, the Aztecs were con­struct­ing a tem­ple out of the side of a moun­tain. The episode con­cludes with Hernán Cortés’ famous destruc­tion of Tenochti­t­lan, which lies under­neath mod­ern day Mex­ico City.

In “Carthage,” we see how the Carthagini­ans imple­mented the first uni­fied plumb­ing sys­tem in the world (pre­dat­ing Rome) as well as an advanced har­bor struc­ture. Much of the episode is devoted to the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome over Sicily and rule over the Mediter­ranean Sea, fea­tur­ing the advanced Carthagin­ian war­ship, Hannibal’s reign includ­ing his cross­ing of the Alps, and the Carthage’s even­tual fall to Rome.

In “China,” the episode fol­lows the uni­fi­ca­tion of China with the Qin, Han, Sui, and Ming Dynas­ties, start­ing with hydro­logic and met­al­lur­gic advance­ments. Famous projects like the Great Wall, the Mau­soleum of the First Qin Emperor with the thou­sands of Terra Cotta Army stat­ues, the Grand Canal, and Zheng He’s great naval fleet are fea­tured. It’s inter­est­ing how each sub­se­quent dynasty after the Qin kept repeat­ing the mis­take of inflict­ing harsh rule over the peas­ant pop­u­la­tion lead­ing to mul­ti­ple upris­ings. It’s also inter­est­ing to see how close China was to rul­ing the world before imperialism’s popularity.

In “Rus­sia,” the coun­try began as sep­a­rate areas and cities before the city of Moscow grew through the age of the tsars start­ing with Ivan the Great. He over­saw the con­struc­tion of the Cathe­dral of the Assump­tion, and cre­ated an inde­pen­dent Russ­ian state. Ivan the Ter­ri­ble, Peter the Great, and Cather­ine the Great fol­lowed to make Rus­sia an empire. There are mag­nif­i­cent archi­tec­tural mas­ter­pieces like Peter­hof, the Win­ter Palace, and the Alexan­der Col­umn, as well as build­ing of the Trans-Siberian Rail­road to con­nect west­ern and east­ern Russia.

In “Britain: Blood And Steel,” THC exam­ines the rel­a­tively young British Empire as it uses tech­nol­ogy to power its thirst for con­quest. The coun­try used rev­o­lu­tion­ary naval design and weapons to con­quer the seas and expand its influ­ence all across the world, and advances in the steam engine to use the rail­road to cre­ate a more con­nected main­land. A few projects high­lighted are the rebuilt House of Par­lia­ment and Big Ben, the mas­sive world­wide tele­graph cable sys­tem, the largest sewer sys­tem in the world at the time (located in Lon­don), and the Tower Bridge.

In “The Per­sians,” the Per­sian Empire started by cre­at­ing under­ground canals that pre­dated the Roman aque­ducts. It would be Cyrus the Great who would build Pasar­gadae to be the cap­i­tal of Per­sia. Like Greece’s sit­u­a­tion after Alexan­der the Great’s death, Cyrus’s death cre­ated inter­nal chaos with many peo­ple vying for the crown. Dar­ius takes the throne and begins many engi­neer­ing projects, includ­ing his own per­sonal cap­i­tal in the grand city of Perse­po­lis, a large stone road sys­tem (The Royal Road), and a 130-mile canal link­ing the Red and Mediter­ranean Seas.

In “The Maya: Death Empire,” the Mayan Empire lasted for cen­turies with sim­i­lar build­ing ambi­tions in the pyra­mid as their coun­ter­parts half a world away. But unlike their coun­ter­parts, the Mayan peo­ple felt oblig­ated to serve their kings in build­ing these pyra­mids and other projects. It’s inter­est­ing to note that the Mayans knew of the wheel and of met­al­lurgy, yet didn’t use them in con­struc­tion because they believed that phys­i­cal labor con­tributed to the projects’ grandeur. The Mayans also mas­tered math­e­mat­ics (espe­cially the con­cept of zero, some­thing that alluded the Romans), which they used in con­struc­tion; were fas­ci­nated by astrol­ogy and devel­oped a cal­en­dar sys­tem; as well as under­stood early con­cepts of water pres­sure, a pre­req­ui­site for mod­ern plumbing.

In “Napoleon: Steel Mon­ster,” the episode begins with the cre­ation of Gothic archi­tec­ture start­ing with the 200-year build­ing of Notre Dame Cathe­dral, which rep­re­sented new engi­neer­ing tech­niques like scaf­fold­ing and the fly­ing but­tress. Louis XIV believed that major projects would help con­tribute to his per­sonal grandeur and ordered the con­struc­tion of the Palace of Ver­sailles, as well as approved of the Canal du Midi, link­ing the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediter­ranean Sea with the build­ing of the largest dam and reser­voir of its time. Napoleon’s reign is also dis­cussed, in addi­tion to the Arc de Tri­om­phe and the Eif­fel Tower.

In “The Byzan­tines,” Con­stan­tine inher­ited a share of the Roman Empire and decided to build Con­stan­tino­ple as the empire’s new cap­i­tal. A major prob­lem with large cities and large pop­u­la­tions is main­tain­ing a steady water sup­ply, and this was solv­ing with the build­ing of the largest aque­duct sys­tem (400 miles) in the world, as well as a series of sub­ter­ranean water tanks under­neath the city. Two mar­velous projects were built dur­ing Justinian’s sov­er­eignty: the Hip­po­drome, which used every con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing tech­nique and took years to build; and the Church of Holy Wis­dom (Hagia Sophia), which rep­re­sented the largest dome every constructed.

In “Da Vinci’s World,” Flo­rence, Italy is high­lighted as it expe­ri­ences the Renais­sance after the hor­rific Black Death dec­i­mates Europe. Flo­rence was esti­mated to have lost 50–60% of its pop­u­la­tion, and many of the afflu­ent sur­vivors believed it was their duty to use their own money to fund projects that would ben­e­fit the pub­lic like the Duomo, the largest masonry dome in the world. Unfor­tu­nately, numer­ous projects lay unbuilt and unimag­ined when many of the archi­tects and engi­neers were called to design city defenses instead of cathedrals.

The series’ obvi­ous omis­sion is the Roman Empire, but given the amount of doc­u­men­ta­tion and mate­r­ial already avail­able on Rome it’s under­stand­able that it would be left out. Rome is men­tioned often, though, con­sid­er­ing it was so influ­en­tial in his­tor­i­cal events.

After watch­ing Engi­neer­ing An Empire, you come away with an under­stand­ing of a few inter­est­ing things that all empires must acquire in order to achieve super­power sta­tus: mas­tery of hydrol­ogy, mas­tery of min­ing, and loy­alty and/or sub­ju­ga­tion of the peo­ple. The lat­ter is a must because huge projects couldn’t be built with­out a large labor force, but under­es­ti­mat­ing the resolve of the peasant/average cit­i­zen has also led to the over­throw­ing of many gov­ern­ments and to brief coun­try­wide regressions.

The set’s only extra is a behind-the-scenes fea­turette of Weller at on-site loca­tions of a few of the high­lighted mar­vels, with many com­ing from the crew’s time in Turkey. He inter­views local schol­ars to gain more pro­fes­sional insight, some of which weren’t included in the final cut. In one scene, Weller pro­vides a casual take on the Great Wall of China while stand­ing on it. He’s jok­ing about his cheap pro­ducer while debunk­ing the myth of being able to see the Wall from space.

You’ll also hear the line “the world has ever known (or seen)” more times than you’d like to, but there isn’t any doubt that these mar­vels and projects could only have been built by the enor­mous cre­ativ­ity and lim­it­less imag­i­na­tion of a select group of dream­ers, as well as the deter­mi­na­tion and pure willpower of mil­lions of workers.

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