Politics in History

Politics in History

Throughout the history of man, there have been a few significant forms of political leadership. From the earliest stages of man, a simple rule stood for thousands and thousands of years. That rule was simply “survival of the fittest”. As time passed and man evolved, the idea of living in a tribe with other people and specialization of tasks took hold. From this came the idea of political leadership of a community.

The earliest communities were certainly ruled by the strongest member of the tribe. If someone wanted to challenge the tribal leader, it was most certainly a physical, rather than a mental challenger. The motto of “survival of the fittest” also meant that the fittest would be the leader of the tribe. It was probably very rare that a member of the tribe that wasn’t the strongest to be the leader.

Succession of leadership would generally take the form of a male-side dynasty. The eldest son of the leader would generally assume control from his father at some point, but would also be susceptible to challenges from other members of the tribe. This method of challenging the leadership dynasty is not a part of empires as early as the Egyptians.

Continuing with the evolution of man, as the communities grew larger and larger the need for political interaction with other communities became more and more important. Without the proper political leadership, the tribes would be in a constant state of war. If the tribe was substantially stronger than all other tribes, there would be no need for politics, but the smaller tribes benefited greatly from politics.

As tribes and communities grew still larger, empires were formed. The earliest empires had a central leader, who, presumably at one time were the strongest and most fit of the community, and delegated the political ventures of the tribe. For the most part, if a ruler had been the second or third of the same family, he generally took care of all “foreign and domestic” relations the group had. Being the second or third generation afford the opportunity for education of the leadership role. This education allowed for better political strategies and maneuvers.

One of the earliest political actions between two empires would be the treaty between the Assyrians and the Egyptians. When Ramses II deciding to attempt the expand his empire further west, he ran into the Assyrians.