HIST 101: World Civilizations to 500 CE – Assignment 2: Analytical Essay on Imperial Collapse

Write a 1,000-to-1,200-word analytical essay in which you argue for the primary causes of imperial collapse in one or two civilisations studied in Weeks 5–8 of the course, drawing on at least three credible secondary sources cited in APA 7th Edition format.

Assessment context

Assignment 2 is the second written assessment in HIST 101 and carries 25% of your final grade. It follows directly from the comparative work you did in Assignment 1, where you examined how two ancient civilisations organised political power and expressed civic values. Now the analytical lens shifts forward in time: rather than describing how empires functioned at their height, you are asked to explain why they ended. This is a harder intellectual task. Causation in history is contested, multi-layered, and rarely reducible to a single factor, and your essay needs to reflect that.

The course material for this unit draws on the Roman Empire (Western collapse, 476 CE), the Han Dynasty (collapse, 220 CE), the Mauryan Empire (decline after 232 BCE), and the Hellenistic kingdoms (absorbed into Rome by 30 BCE). You may focus on one of these cases or compare two, but every claim you make must be supported by evidence from credible secondary sources. Essays that rely solely on the course textbook will not reach the upper marking bands.

Assignment 2 is worth more than Assignment 1 because it demands a more fully developed argument. A thesis alone is insufficient; you need to weigh competing causes against one another and arrive at a reasoned, defended position on which factor or combination of factors best explains the collapse you are analysing.

Learning outcomes

• Construct and sustain a causal historical argument across a 1,000-to-1,200-word analytical essay.
• Evaluate and prioritise competing explanations for imperial collapse, drawing on political, economic, social, and environmental factors as relevant.
• Demonstrate critical engagement with at least three secondary sources, distinguishing between descriptive evidence and interpretive argument.
• Apply APA 7th Edition citation conventions accurately in both in-text references and the reference list.
• Write at a college academic standard, with clear paragraph structure, precise word choice, and a logically sequenced argument.

Task instructions

Select one of the following prompts and write a 1,000-to-1,200-word analytical essay in response. Your choice of prompt must align with the civilisations covered in the assigned readings for Weeks 5–8.

• Prompt A: To what extent were internal political and economic factors, rather than external military pressure, responsible for the collapse of the Western Roman Empire?
• Prompt B: Compare the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the Western Roman Empire. Were their decline patterns more similar than different, and what does that suggest about the structural vulnerabilities of large ancient empires?
• Prompt C: Evaluate the claim that no single cause can adequately explain the end of an ancient empire, using at least one civilisation from the course to support your argument.

Whichever prompt you choose, your essay must include:

1. An introduction that identifies your chosen civilisation or civilisations, states a clear causal thesis, and signals the main lines of evidence you will use.
2. Body paragraphs organised by cause or by interpretive position, not by a chronological narrative of events. Each body paragraph should open with a clear topic sentence, develop one main point, and cite at least one secondary source.
3. At least one paragraph that acknowledges and addresses a competing explanation or a counterargument to your thesis. Engage with it directly rather than dismissing it.
4. A conclusion that restates your thesis in light of the evidence, reflects briefly on the historical significance of the collapse you have analysed, and does not introduce new factual claims.
5. A reference list citing at least three secondary sources (peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly books, or credible institutional sources) in APA 7th Edition format. The course textbook may be cited but does not count toward the three-source minimum.

Word count: 1,000–1,200 words (excluding the reference list and title block). Submit as a Word document (.docx) or PDF via the course LMS portal by 11:59 PM on the due date in your course calendar. The late penalty is 10% per 24-hour period; extensions must be requested at least 48 hours before the due date.

Marking criteria

1. Thesis and causal argument (30 points): A clear, arguable causal thesis is stated in the introduction and consistently developed across the body of the essay. The argument prioritises and weighs causes rather than simply listing them. A counterargument or competing explanation is addressed directly.
2. Historical accuracy and analytical depth (25 points): Factual claims are accurate and specific. The essay moves beyond textbook-level summary to demonstrate genuine analytical engagement with causes, weighing their relative significance. Vague generalisations such as “Rome fell because of many problems” will not satisfy this criterion.
3. Use of evidence and sources (25 points): At least three credible secondary sources are integrated into the argument and cited in APA 7th Edition format. Sources are used as evidence for claims, not as substitutes for argument. The reference list is complete and correctly formatted.
4. Essay structure and organisation (10 points): The essay is organised analytically, with a clear introduction, logically sequenced body paragraphs, and a conclusion that reflects on the argument rather than repeating it. Transitions between paragraphs are purposeful.
5. Writing quality and citation accuracy (10 points): The essay is written in clear, grammatically correct academic prose. In-text citations follow APA 7th Edition conventions. The reference list is formatted correctly and matches all in-text citations.

Example student response

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE resulted from a convergence of structural vulnerabilities that had been accumulating across at least two centuries, not from a sudden military catastrophe. Political instability was among the most damaging of these internal pressures: between 235 and 284 CE, more than twenty individuals claimed the imperial throne, and the resulting cycle of civil wars diverted military resources from frontier defence and disrupted the fiscal systems that kept the army funded. Economic deterioration followed closely, as currency debasement, rising taxation, and the contraction of long-distance trade progressively hollowed out the revenue base that had sustained Roman infrastructure. External pressure from Germanic groups along the Rhine and Danube frontiers compounded these internal weaknesses but did not produce them; as Kyle Harper’s research on The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire demonstrates, pandemic disease during the Antonine and Cyprian plagues may have reduced the empire’s population by millions, weakening both the agricultural labour force and military recruitment capacity well before the migrations of the fifth century. The Han Dynasty’s trajectory offers a useful parallel: landowner accumulation of tax-exempt estates reduced state revenue just as frontier costs rose, generating a peasant tax burden that eventually fuelled the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 CE. Neither empire collapsed because its enemies were invincible; both collapsed in part because their internal structures had become too fragile to absorb the pressures that large territorial states routinely face.

Recent scholarship has moved the conversation about imperial collapse well beyond the older debates between “internal decay” and “external invasion” narratives. A 2025 study published in Nature Communications estimated income inequality across the Roman and Han empires using provincial-level economic data and found that the Han Empire was measurably more unequal and extractive than Rome, with the top one percent of Han earners capturing roughly 26 percent of total income compared to 19 percent in Rome. The authors argue that higher inequality increased the structural potential for political instability in both cases, suggesting that economic stratification belongs in any serious causal account of collapse alongside military and political factors. Walter Scheidel’s comparative work at Stanford, collected in Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (2009), remains a foundational reference for this kind of cross-civilisational analysis, establishing the methodological case for treating Roman and Han decline as structurally comparable rather than historically isolated events. Students writing on Prompt B in particular should engage with both of these sources, as they provide the quantitative and interpretive scaffolding needed to move beyond narrative description into genuine causal analysis.

References

• Alfani, G., Gómez-Vidal, A., & van Lottum, J. (2025). A comparison of income inequality in the Roman and Chinese Han empires. Nature Communications, 16, Article 3118. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58581-0
• Harper, K. (2017). The fate of Rome: Climate, disease, and the end of an empire. Princeton University Press.
• Heather, P. (2006). The fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome and the barbarians. Oxford University Press.
• Scheidel, W. (Ed.). (2009). Rome and China: Comparative perspectives on ancient world empires. Oxford University Press.
• Middleton, G. D. (2024). Collapse studies in archaeology from 2012 to 2023. Journal of Archaeological Research, 32(4), 601–659. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-024-09196-4
• Write a 1,000-to-1,200-word analytical essay arguing for the primary causes of imperial collapse in Rome or Han China, using at least three credible secondary sources in APA 7th Edition format.
• Write a 3-to-4-page analytical essay for HIST 101 examining why the Western Roman Empire or Han Dynasty collapsed, weighing internal, external, economic, and environmental factors.
• Argue the primary causes of ancient imperial collapse — choose Rome, Han China, or both — in a thesis-driven college history essay.

 Assignment 3 — Historiographical Essay

Course: HIST 101: World Civilizations to 500 CE | Assessment type: Historiographical essay | Word count: 1,200–1,500 words | Weight: 30% of final grade

Assignment 3 raises the analytical demand of the course sequence by asking you to examine not just what historians argue about an ancient civilisation or event, but how and why their arguments have changed over time. You will select a historical debate covered in the course — such as the causes of Roman decline, the nature of Athenian democracy, or the significance of Alexander’s conquests — and write a 1,200-to-1,500-word historiographical essay that traces at least two distinct scholarly interpretations of the topic, explains what evidence and assumptions underpin each interpretation, and assesses which approach you find more convincing and why. The essay must engage with at least four secondary sources published across a range of decades, demonstrating awareness that historical interpretation is shaped by the intellectual context in which it is produced. Submit as a Word document (.docx) or PDF via the course LMS; no peer interaction is required for this assessment, but students are encouraged to attend the optional writing workshop in Week 11 before submission.