Proposition: knowledge is power. How did systematic ways of registering, storing, recovering, and transmitting information contribute to the ways that empires in at least two of the regions that we have studied in the second half of the course organized themselves and practiced their rule? What kinds of information were thought important to record and control, and in what formats were they kept? What kinds of information or claims were displayed publicly and what concepts or kinds of thought could be considered dangerous or otherwise undesirable to represent?
