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Showing papers on "Empire published in 1976"


Book
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: Professor McNeill, through an accumulation of evidence, demonstrates the central role of pestilence in human affairs and the extent to which it has changed the course of history.
Abstract: This book describes the dramatic impact of infectious diseases on the rise and fall of civilisations. Plague demoralized the Athenian army during the Peloponnesian war, and ravaged the Roman Empire. In the 16th century smallpox was the decisive agent that allowed Cortez with only 600 men to conquer the Aztec empire, whose subjects numbered millions. As recently as 1918-19 an epidemic of influenza claimed twenty-one million victims, and seemed to threaten civilization itself. Diseases such as syphilis, cholera, smallpox and malariahave been devastating to humanity for centuries. Now professor McNeill, through an accumulation of evidence, demonstrates the central role of pestilence in human affairs and the extent to which it has changed the course of history.

1,263 citations


Book
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1808 as mentioned in this paper is the first book of the two-volume History of Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, which describes how the Ottoman Turks, a small band of nomadic soldiers, managed to expand their dominions from a small principality in northwestern Anatolia on the borders of the Byzantine Empire into one of the great empires of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Europe and Asia, extending from northern Hungary to southern Arabia and from the Crimea across North Africa almost to the Atlantic Ocean
Abstract: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 is the first book of the two-volume History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. It describes how the Ottoman Turks, a small band of nomadic soldiers, managed to expand their dominions from a small principality in northwestern Anatolia on the borders of the Byzantine Empire into one of the great empires of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe and Asia, extending from northern Hungary to southern Arabia and from the Crimea across North Africa almost to the Atlantic Ocean. The volume sweeps away the accumulated prejudices of centuries and describes the empire of the sultans as a living, changing society, dominated by the small multinational Ottoman ruling class led by the sultan, but with a scope of government so narrow that the subjects, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, were left to carry on their own lives, religions, and traditions with little outside interference.

382 citations


Book
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations as mentioned in this paper is Weber's neglected masterpiece, which first appeared in German in 1897 and was reissued in 1909 and represents a fascinating and rigorous exercise to bring the newly forged concepts of sociology to bear on civilizations as diverse as Mesopotamia and Egypt, Hebrew society in Israel, the city-states of classical Greece, the Hellenistic empire and finally, republican and imperial Rome.
Abstract: Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations - Weber's neglected masterpiece, which first appeared in German in 1897 and was reissued in 1909 - represents a fascinating and rigorous exercise to bring the newly forged concepts of sociology to bear on civilizations as diverse as Mesopotamia and Egypt, Hebrew society in Israel, the city-states of classical Greece, the Hellenistic empire and, finally, republican and imperial Rome. Blending, throughout the work, description of socio-economic structures with investigation into mechanisms and causes of the rise and decline of social systems, the volume ends with a magisterial explanatory essay on the underlying reasons for the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire and, with it, of the close of Antiquity itself.

219 citations


Book ChapterDOI
01 Oct 1976
TL;DR: The rise of the Ottoman dynasty to rule much of Europe and Asia is one of the most remarkable stories in history as mentioned in this paper, and the Ottomans were able to establish an empire that encompassed not only the former Byzantine lands of Southeastern Europe and Anatolia but also Hungary and the Arab world.
Abstract: The rise of the Ottoman dynasty to rule much of Europe and Asia is one of the most remarkable stories in history. In the thirteenth century the Ottomans ruled only one of a number of Turkoman principalities that ringed the decadent Byzantine state in western Anatolia. Within two centuries they had established an empire that encompassed not only the former Byzantine lands of Southeastern Europe and Anatolia but also Hungary and the Arab world, and that empire was to endure into modern times. Who were the Ottomans? Where did they come from? How did they establish their rule? And what was the result for both them and the people whom they came to dominate?

189 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the Roman Empire, the roads of the empire had been designed and built to suit the state's needs, above all those of its armies, and one would reasonably expect the government to have devoted as much care and attention to the means by which goods and personnel were transported along them as it had to building them in the first place as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: To appreciate the importance which the Romans attached to transport and communications we need surely look no further than the roads which they built. To the modern observer this gigantic network of highways, which was not to be equalled or surpassed before the present century, is one of the most telling symbols of the control which Rome exercised throughout her empire, and of the organization which was imposed on it. The traffic which they carried has attracted less attention, but is clearly no less worthy of consideration. The roads of the empire had been designed and built to suit the state's needs, above all those of its armies, and one would reasonably expect the government to have devoted as much care and attention to the means by which goods and personnel were transported along them as it had to building them in the first place. Even if the sources were silent, and they are not, we could readily assume that post horses and carriages, pack and draft animals, and all the other paraphernalia of a state transport system would be needed at all times both for the use of civilian and military officials, and for the carriage of supplies and provisions. Under the empire the burden of providing this transport fell largely on the subject communities of Italy and the provinces, and the complaints of these communities against the unauthorized seizure of men, animals, waggons, hospitality in billets and other facilities for state transport form a recurrent theme in Roman history. Although authors of the republican period frequently refer to such requisitions, our information for the system by which this transport was provided and organized comes largely from a long series of imperial documents, beginning in the reign of Tiberius and culminating in a group of rescripts from the emperors of the fourth and early fifth centuries collected in book vm of the Theodosian Code.

182 citations






Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1976

68 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a state of rude nature, wrote Edmund Burke, "There is no such thing as a people" as mentioned in this paper, and "the idea of a people is a legal fiction made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement".
Abstract: “In a state of rude nature”, wrote Edmund Burke, “there is no such thing as a people… The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial; and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast”. Whether the Iranians in the early Islamic period — that is, the period from the seventh to the twelfth century — were in Burke's sense a “people” is a question that the cautious scholar would be eager to disregard and loath to handle. After all, those specialists on early Islamic Iran who have, directly or indirectly, expressed opinions on this subject have all too often projected events from the life of their own nation and times back to these earlier centuries. In no case is this projection more obvious than in the many essays written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which see this question only as a question of “national liberation”: did the Iranians hate the Arabs, and did they hope to regain their empire by destroying, or profoundly reshaping, the empire of the Muslim caliphs?

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a hypothesis is proposed: climatic changes were factors underlying the rise and establishment of two prehistoric pan-Andean highland states, the Huari-Tiahuanaco empire about A.D. 600 and the later Inca empire about 1400.
Abstract: Since the end of the Pleistocene, the Santa Elena Peninsula in south‐west coastal Ecuador has undergone a series of climatic fluctuations that are the local manifestation of an Andean pattern of climatic change. The local archaeological record shows that in A.D. 600, and again in A.D. 1400, this region was struck by drought of such severity that the area was abandoned by its inhabitants. A number of specific details of this Ecuadorean sequence of marked climatic and sociocultural vicissitudes correlate with a contemporary archaeological sequence from the south coast of Peru. A hypothesis is proposed: climatic changes were factors underlying the rise and establishment of two prehistoric pan‐Andean highland states, the Huari‐Tiahuanaco empire about A.D. 600, and the later Inca empire about A.D. 1400.

Book
01 Jan 1976

Book
03 Aug 1976
TL;DR: Koestler as discussed by the authors traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry.
Abstract: This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry… The Khazars' sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. In the second part of this book, " The Heritage, " Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term " anti-Semitism " would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based " on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated. "

01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the Reconstruction of the systeme d'echange economique azteque and ses trois diverses spheres: tribut, commerce exterieur, marche.
Abstract: Res. these par l'A., Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1975. Reconstruction du systeme d'echange economique azteque et de ses trois diverses spheres: tribut, commerce exterieur, marche. Revue des documents ethnohistoriques de base. Revue des concepts de la structure sociale azteque. Donnees nouvelles sur l'economie. Les guildes de marchands. Structure politique imperiale, systeme de stratification sociale et flux des biens economiques.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The lack of reliable standard histories of the Indian Ocean world has been identified as one of the most persistent problems confronting historians of East Africa as discussed by the authors, especially in the case of the Portuguese seaborne empire.
Abstract: One of the more persistent problems confronting historians of East Africa remains the lack of reliable standard histories of the Indian Ocean world. Topics which are especially affected by this lacuna in the historical literature are the problem of Indonesian contacts, the history of Islam on the coast, and the economic history of both the coast and the interior. Only in the case of the Portuguese seaborne empire do we possess a series of studies which places East Africa squarely in the context of the Indian Ocean system.1 In this respect Indian Ocean studies lag far behind those of the Atlantic Ocean.2 Although we are aware of close commercial links existing between East Africa and India throughout the better part of the present millennium, we know little

Book ChapterDOI
01 May 1976
TL;DR: The extent of ager publicus was originally immense, since Rome's practice was to expropriate the land of conquered peoples, at any rate in name as discussed by the authors, but evidence for it is abundant enough to justify fuller consideration.
Abstract: If a map survived of part of the Roman world, say Italy in A.D. 100, showing the ownership and juridical status of land, it would reveal a number of different types. We should see for example some state land, some imperial land, and some city land, as well as a host of privately owned properties of varying size. This essay will attempt to assess the relative importance of the various types very briefly, before considering differences of size among private estates. The surviving evidence for private landownership is so distributed as to give a strong Egyptian bias to any exhaustive treatment of the empire as a whole. A selective discussion like the present one can at least attempt to avoid this imbalance. Land generally fell into one of six categories (if both the nuances of legal title and the more complex situation in Egypt are ignored). There is no obvious hierarchy among these categories, but private land has deliberately been left until last here, because evidence for it is abundant enough to justify fuller consideration. AGER PUBLICUS The first type is ager publicus , land belonging to the populus Romanus , the Roman state. Such land, if cultivated, was generally in the hands of private tenants of the state. The extent of ager publicus was originally immense, since Rome's practice was to expropriate the land of conquered peoples, at any rate in name.

Book
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: Trafalgar Square as discussed by the authors describes how the Square and its memorials to military and naval heroes were conceived, quarrelled over and finally, after many years of building and delays, completed.
Abstract: Trafalgar Square tells the story of the creation and use of one of London's most famous landmarks, from its beginnings in the 1840s up until the present day. Drawing on detailed archival research, it describes how the Square and its memorials to military and naval heroes - including of course Nelson - were conceived, quarrelled over and finally, after many years of building and delays, completed. In 1848, while the Square was still in the making, demonstrations there were prohibited, and ever since that time the story of the Square has been marked by celebration, rallies, public agitation and the perennial fight for free speech.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The traditional approach is to view the political systems of industrially developed Western countries as a model of, or sometimes even as a synonym for, a politically developed polity as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Political modernization is a difficult concept to grapple with1. The traditional approach is to view the political systems of industrially developed Western countries as a model of, or sometimes even as a synonym for, a politically developed polity.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the "feudalization" of the bourgeoisie was only part of a more general effort to restore pre-industrial norms and institutions in order to stabilize the Empire.
Abstract: Many students of the German Empire have already dealt with a specific form of social change described as the "feudalization" or "refeudalization" of the bourgeoisie. The phenomenon they were referring to is the social adjustmen of the upper strata of the German middle class to the traditioiIal power elite. Various developments have been analyzed in this context, such as the militarization of parts of the educated middle class, epitomized in the well-known figure of the Prussian reserve officer, and the reception of an originally aristocratic code of honor by the same group: the proliferation of titles as a substitute for nobility; and the imitation of a seigneurial way of life by bourgeois entrepreneurs and the separation of high civil servants and judges from the rest of society. Most historians and sociologists agree that this "feudalization" of the upper middle class was a major reason for both the stability of authoritarian Imperial Germany and the structural weakness of Weimar democracy.' I would like to argue that the "feudalization" of the bourgeoisie was only part of a more general effort to restore preindustrial norms and institutions in order to stabilize the Empire. One of the largest groups which underwent this process was the gewerblicher Mittelstand (the Mittelstand in the narrow sense of the word: the small-scale entrepreneurs in handicrafts, commerce, and transportation). In the 1920s it still comprised 8.1 million people (employers and their families), or 13 percent of the total population, and it was,

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the case of the Glorious Revolution as discussed by the authors, it was argued that the British Parliament had no authority over the colonies and therefore could not have recognized the revolutionary nature of the claim even if it had been assented to, and abided by, from that day to this.
Abstract: Let us suppose that in 1776 agreement had been reached between Britain and America on the proposition that the British Parliament had no authority over the colonies. Would twentieth-century scholarship see this as then-revolutionary doctrine? Would we say of it, as Maitland has of the Glorious Revolution, \"[W]e must treat the Revolution as a revolution.... We cannot work it into our constitutional law\"? 2 Let us suppose, further, that twentieth-century scholarship is virtually unanimous in holding that the Americans, who made that claim but failed to gain assent to it, were \"wrong on the law.\" Does that answer our first question? Were they so wrong, or so clearly wrong, that we should today have recognized the revolutionary nature of the claim even if it had been assented to, and abided by, from that day to this? If we suggest that in those circumstances we could and would work the doctrine of colonial immunity from parliamentary authority into \"our\" constitutional law, are we simply refusing to call a Revolution a revolution? Periodically the historical imagination is captured by this problem (though not always stated in precisely these terms) and a flurry of scholarly activity ensues. Tendentious assumptions speed to and fro; there is no umpire and the game goes on until called on account


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The first steps in the creation of the modern French Empire under the July Monarchy and Napoleon III followed no grand design or strategic obsession as discussed by the authors, and French colonial expansion was governed by a series of fits and starts of whose significance successive governments were usually unaware.
Abstract: British colonial expansion, it has been argued, was governed during the nineteenth century by the workings of the official mind. French colonial expansion was not. The official mind of French imperialism was slow to develop and at best half-formed. The first steps in the creation of the modern French Empire under the July Monarchy and Napoleon III followed no grand design or strategic obsession. Empire-building in Africa, Indo-China and the South Pacific proceeded instead by a series of fits and starts of whose significance successive governments were usually unaware. When the Third Republic embarked on colonial expansion in the 1880s, its policies proved almost as incoherent as those of precedessors. Intervention in Tunisia was swiftly followed by refusal to intervene in Egypt; a forward policy in Indo-China was first accepted, then violently rejected; in West Africa Army officers carved out a private empire on their own initiative. After 1880, however, French expansion at last acquired a clear sense of direction. French imperialism, in its final phase from 1890 to 1920, consciously pursued and substantially achieved a series of imperial grand designs; the unification of France's African Empire in the 1890s; the completion of French North Africa by the Moroccan protectorate in the early twentieth century; the acquisition of a Middle Eastern Empire and German West Africa during the First World War. These grand designs, however, were the product not of the official but of the unofficial mind of French imperialism. That unofficial mind forms the subject of this paper.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The achievement of Thrasybulus on his last voyage has been variously estimated by Busolt, who saw no more than a series of strong-arm acts that added up to very little as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The achievement of Thrasybulus on his last voyage has been variously estimated. Busolt saw no more than a series of strong-arm acts that added up to very little. Beloch spoke of the Second Athenian Empire. For others there were mere renewals of friendship. This note has as its starting-point that Thrasybulus sought to restore the fifth-century empire. If one looks merely at the list of places explicitly mentioned, the sum is not large. Thasos and its peraea , Samothrace and possibly its peraea , Byzantium, Chalcedon, Abydos possibly, Mytilene, Methymna, Eresus, Antissa, Chios, Halicarnassus, Aspendus. But Xenophon implies a great deal more.

Journal ArticleDOI
John Lamphear1
TL;DR: The Turkana of northwestern Kenya actively resisted the occupation of their country by the Imperial forces of British East Africa and Uganda during the second and third decades of the twentieth century as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: After a considerable period of conflict with nineteenth-century traders, hunters and ‘explorers’, the Turkana of northwestern Kenya actively resisted the occupation of their country by the Imperial forces of British East Africa and Uganda during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. At first, this primary resistance was largely in the hands of war-leaders, notably Ebei, the most important military leader of the southern sections. Bitterness engendered by Hut Taxes and other unpopular British policies led to the brief ascendancy of Koletiang, an influential southern diviner, until he was imprisoned in 1911. Again the resistance leadership fell to the military until especially brutal ‘punitive actions’ in 1915 had the effect of consolidating resistance in the north. At this point, Lowalel, another powerful diviner, became the spiritual patron of the war-leaders and their followers, reaffirming the close co-operation which traditionally had existed between religious and military leaders in Turkana society. So charismatic and innovative was Lowalel's leadership that he amassed armies several thousand strong and was joined by other peoples including the Merille and Dongiro, as well as by the forces of the Ethiopian Empire, in resisting the extension of British colonial rule.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the 1530s, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell carried out fundamental changes in the Tudor state as discussed by the authors, including the erection of the commonwealth into a sovereign empire, the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and important alterations to the nature and structure of the English church.
Abstract: In the 1530s, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell carried out fundamental changes in the Tudor state. These changes amounted to a revolution in which three elements may be distinguished: the erection of the commonwealth into a sovereign empire, the king's divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and important alterations to the nature and structure of the English church. Because of the fundamental nature of the issues involved and the threat to the established order, the revolution very soon provoked widespread discontent among all sections of society. Nevertheless, opposition was spasmodic and uncoordinated, with each group of conspirators relying on another to rise, and all looking to the emperor, Charles V, to rectify the evils which, it was thought, the king's policies had brought about. Lack of effective leadership and failure to agree about what constituted the major grievances enabled the government to deal with the dissidents one by one. Cromwell was allowed to use parliament to ratify the government's programme and to manipulate public opinion. By constant vigilance and an intelligent use of the constraints placed on the populace by the penal clauses in the statutes, he secured the observance of the more unpopular measures. In spite of the overall success of this policy, the difficulties were many, and the final outcome always in doubt. Its enforcement was thus ‘a political task of some magnitude’ for the government. Probably the most determined challenge to the revolution was presented in Ireland, where rebellion broke out in June 1534.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The decline of the Mughal empire is usually considered to begin late in the reign of the emperor Aurangzib (1658-1707). The favorite explanations consist of circles, or even spirals, usually vicious in nature as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The decline of the Mughal empire is usually considered to begin late in the reign of the emperor Aurangzib (1658–1707). The favorite explanations consist of circles, or even spirals, usually vicious in nature. One important interpretation sees the decline as originating from an increased taxation burden on the peasantry, who revolted in several areas, ultimately with such success that the empire was weakened. More money was needed to crush more revolts, so there was more oppressive taxation and so more revolts. This is less than convincing, for peasant revolts—whether or not led by zamindars locally important land-holders)—were more or less a constant in Mughal India. They were particularly prevalent in Gujarat and Bengal, but Hindustan was far from exempt. What we really need here is an attempt at a quantitative assessment of the number of revolts, and of participants in them, during the whole seventeenth century.