Showing papers on "Empire published in 1982"

Personal Patronage under the Early Empire

Abstract: List of tables Preface Abbreviations Introduction 1. The language and ideology of patronage 2. The emperor and his court 3. Seniority and merit: alternatives to patronage? 4. The Roman imperial aristocracy 5. Patronage and provincials: the case of North Africa Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Emperors, Frontiers and Foreign Relations, 31 b.c. to a.d. 378*

Abstract: Severus…. was in the habit of saying that he had gained a large additional territory and made it a bulwark for Syria. But the facts themselves show that it is a source of continual wars for us, and of great expenses. For it provides very little revenue and involves very great expenditure; and having extended our frontiers to the neighbours of the Medes and Parthians, we are constantly so to speak at war in their defence.’ So writes Cassius Dio about the extension of the Eastern frontier in the 190s and the creation of the provinces of Mesopotamia and Osrhoene. The significance of the passage however, extends beyond the question of the Eastern frontier itself at that moment. Written by an ex-consul, and former assessor of Severus, it reveals two types of justification for conquest uttered by the Emperor himself - one straightforwardly imperialistic, the other strategic; and a critique of this from two points of view, the balance of income and expenditure, and the wider strategic commitments incurred. Whether Dio had formulated such views already in Severus’ reign we cannot know; this section of his History will have been written at the earliest towards 220, and probably later. If he had, we have no reason to think that he expressed them to Severus. If he did, it can only have been after the event, for his own narrative at this point makes clear that the new province of Mesopotamia was entrusted to an eques, and an ‘honour’ (the status of colonia) given to Nisibis, either after the campaign of 195, or (less probably) after that of 198, in neither of which Dio himself took part. None the less, the fact that the passage retails both the authentic views of an Emperor and a critique of them by a consularis may encourage us to ask some general questions: how, by whom and within what conceptual frameworks were the foreign and frontier ‘policies’ of the Empire formulated?

Christians in the Sasanian empire: a case of divided loyalties

Abstract: In that much discussed panegyric, the Life of Constantine, Eusebius tells how the emperor, having heard that there were ‘many churches of God in Persia and that large numbers were gathered into the fold of Christ, resolved to extend his concern for the general welfare to that country also, as one whose aim it was to care for all alike in every nation.’ He goes on to give what purports to be a letter from Constantine to the Sasanid shah, Shapur II; in this, not only does the emperor neatly explain away his predecessor Valerian’s humiliating capture by the Persians in 260 as divine punishment for his persecution of Christians but he presumes to draw a lesson from this for Shapur as well: by protecting his own Christian population Shapur will experience the beneficence of Constantine’s Deity.

Cinderellas of the Empire: Towards a history of Kiribati and Tuvalu

Abstract: BARRIE MACDONALD knows his subject thoroughly, although the title of his book suggests that he is not quite so well up on fairy tales. For the 'real' Cinderella of Perrault's story, on becoming free of her ugly and domineering sisters, obtained a position of wealth and power. In contrast, Macdonald's 'Cinderellas', the components of the former Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, did not acquire great affluence or eminence when they shuffled off the coil of British rule in the late 1970s. The only Pacific territory to have so bettered itself at independence has been Nauru, which thereby obtained full control over the extraction and marketing of its phosphate deposits. Kiribati (with the exhaustion of phosphate on Banaba in 1979) and Tuvalu have no such resources to exploit; and so have remained peasants, so to speak, rather than becoming princesses. Nevertheless, and in fairness to Macdonald, it should be admitted that the attainment of independence is an ennobling experience in that it procures for a people international recognition of their full human worth. Such recognition is not compatible with colonial status, although for colonized people it may well be a merely formal and legal affirmation of a truth they had never doubted, even when they lacked the means fully to express it. That this was so for the people of Kiribati and Tuvalu is a theme that runs through Macdonald's survey of the last two hundred years of their history. With a wealth of detail he describes the successive waves of foreign intruders into the two groups — explorers, traders, missionaries, administrators, soldiers (World War II); and the selective, adaptive, defensive responses of the islanders, who have managed to retain many of their traditional values and institutions. Despite the changes, there remains (concludes Macdonald) 'something immutable about the individual's ties to his kin and to his land, and a supreme identification with the island on which both are to be found' . Independence was but an outward sign of an inward self-sufficiency.

The Empire of the Mother: American Writing About Domesticity, 1830-1860

Abstract: Contents Introduction: In Domestic Captivity: A Decade in the Historiography of Women Chapter I: From Patriarchal Household to Feminine Domesticity Chapter II: Tying the Maternal Knot: 1830-1850 Chapter III: Beyond and Against Domesticity: Reform Associations and Communal Societies in the 1830s and '40s Chapter IV: Imperial Isolation: Domestic Advice Literature of the 1850s Chapter V: The Tears and Trials of Domesticity: Women's Fiction in the 1850s Conclusion: Dismantling the Empire of the Mother References Index

Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia

Abstract: This book is the first general history of Russian "businessmen" from Peter the Great to the Revolution of 1917. It is also a challenging new interpretation of the nature of social change in tsarist Russia. Alfred Rieber seeks to explain how Russia developed a capitalist economy and launched a major industrialization without giving rise to a mature bourgeoisie. His analysis concentrates on the deep-seated social divisions that prevented the political unity of the Russian middle classes even when their vital interests were threatened by powerful bureaucrats and a workers' revolution. He concludes that the fate of the Russian merchants and industrialists was part of a larger social fragmentation in Russia on the eve of World War I. Rieber argues that the merchantry was throughout its history the most unstable and politically passive group in Russian society. Periodically swamped by an influx of peasants, the merchants were never able to free themselves from state tutelage or their own traditional values. Surrounded by ethnic rivals, the Great Russian merchantry adopted the mentality of a besieged camp. The real innovators in Russia's industrialization were social deviants--Old Believer peasants, declasse nobles, and non-Russian peoples on the periphery of the empire. But even these "entrepreneurial groups" failed to provide the leadership for a strong middle class because they were deeply marked by competing regional and ethnic attachments. In Rieber's analysis the Russian bureaucracy shares much of the blame for the absence of a cohesive class structure in Russia. It feared and opposed the emergence of a bourgeoisie, and it was deeply split over the question of industrialization. Rieber concludes that the bureaucracy helped to maintain the legal distinctions within Russian society that contributed to its fragmentation. This work touches on almost every aspect of imperial Russian society--its political and legal institutions, social movements, intellectual currents, and economic development. Rieber has drawn on a wide range of sources including Soviet archives, merchant memoirs, contemporary journals, pamphlets and newspapers, and the proceedings and reports of many specialized societies and organizations. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment

Abstract: In 1777 Edmund Burke remarked that for his contemporaries "the Great Map of Mankind is unrolled at once." The period from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century had seen a massive increase in Britain's knowledge of the non-European peoples of the wider world, and this was reflected in the proliferation of travel accounts of every kind. This is a history of British perceptions of the exotic peoples and lands of Asia, North America, West Africa, and the Pacific who became well-known during that great age of exploration. It shows how the contours of intellectual and cultural history changed as news poured in. Philosophers contemplated man in a state of nature; the study of religion was broadened as Hinduism, the naturalistic religions of North America, and Chinese rites and ceremonies were revealed. Racial issues like slavery and negritude, questions about advanced versus backward nations, the great Chain of Being argument, and the Unchanging East theory became concerns of educated persons. Along with the impact of explorations on men's ideas, the use of "sciences" like anthropology, ethnology, archeology, and philology came into vogue. And not incidentally, interest in empire grew, missionary zeal was strengthened, and tolerance and intolerance toward strangers struggled for dominance. It could be argued that by the end of this age of "enlightenment," investigation of the inhabitants of these distant lands had reinforced those assumptions of superiority that were an essential feature of British global expansion. To that extent this book is concerned with the intellectual foundations of the second British empire, for it seeks to show how many of the attitudes present in Britain's dealings with the world in her imperial heyday were formulated during the eighteenth century.

The Neo-Hittite states in Syria and Anatolia

Abstract: After c. 700, occasional references are found in classical authors to notable events in Anatolia and Syria. Since the chronological framework of the history of the Syro-Hittite states is dependent on that of the Assyrian kings and the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, the periods into which it conveniently divides are dictated by the reigns and activities of those monarchs. This is considered in the following phases: the early period, which includes the fall of the Hittite Empire-accession of Ashurnasirpal II; Reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III; Successors of Shalmaneser III; Reigns of Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser V and Sargon II; Reigns of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal; and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which is the fall of Assyria to Cyrus' conquest of Lydia. The necessity of dovetailing the native and external sources renders it expedient to consider first the outline history and chronology within each chronological division, and then to attempt to synchronize the indigenous evidence with it.

Propaganda and the Imperial Coinage

Abstract: During the first half of this century the view came to be widely held by numismatists, and by many Roman historians too, that the types chosen for the Roman imperial coinage were to be interpreted as a means of influencing public opinion, of reconciling his subjects to the rule of the Princeps, and of explaining imperial policy to them; in short, as propaganda. Thus for C.H.V. Sutherland coins are, in essence, ‘organs of information’, while in the words of M. Grant, ‘Roman coinage . . . served a propagandist purpose far greater than has any other national coinage before or since . . . This was the means which the Roman government . . . used to insinuate into every home in the empire each changing nuance of imperial achievement and policy’.

The politics of aristocratic empires

Abstract: The Politics of Aristocratic Empires is a study of a political order that prevailed throughout much of the world for many centuries without any major social conflict or change and with hardly any government in the modern sense. Although previously ignored by political science, powerful remnants of this old order still persist in modern politics. The historical literature on aristocratic empires typically is descriptive and treats each empire as unique. By contrast, this work adopts an analytical, explanatory, and comparative approach and clearly distinguishes aristocratic empires from both primitive and more modern, commercialized societies. It develops generalizations that are supported and richly illustrated by data from many empires and demonstrates that a pattern of politics prevailed across time, space, and cultures from ancient Egypt five millennia ago to Saudi Arabia five decades ago, from China and Japan to Europe, from the Incas and the Aztecs to the Tutsi. Kautsky argues that aristocrats, because they live off the labor of peasants, must perform the primary governmental functions of taxation and warfare. Their performance is linked to particular values and beliefs, and both functions and ideologies in turn condition the stakes, the forms, and the arenas of intra-aristocratic conflict--the politics of the aristocracy. The author also analyzes the roles of the peasantry and the townspeople in aristocratic politics and shows that peasant revolts on any large scale occur only after commercial modernization. He concludes with chapters on the modernization of aristocratic empires and on the importance in modern politics of institutional and ideological remnants of the old aristocratic order.

Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition

Abstract: David Carrasco draws from the perspectives of the history of religions, anthropology, and urban ecology to explore the nature of the complex symbolic form of Quetzalcoatl in the organization, legitimation, and subversion of a large segment of the Mexican urban tradition. His new Preface addresses this tradition in the light of the Columbian quincentennial. "This book, rich in ideas, constituting a novel approach . . . represents a stimulating and provocative contribution to Mesoamerican studies. . . . Recommended to all serious students of the New World's most advanced indigenous civilization." H. B. Nicholson, "Man""

Roman-Barbarian Marriages in the Late Empire

Abstract: In 1964 Rosario Soraci published a study of conubia between Romans and Germans from the fourth to the sixth century A.D.1 Although the title of the work might suggest that its concern was to be with such marriages throughout the period, in fact its aim was much more restricted. Beginning with a law issued by Valentinian I in 370 or 373 to the magister equitum Theodosius (C.Th. 3.14.1), which banned on pain of death all marriages between Roman provincials and barbarae or gentiles, Soraci, after assessing the context and intent of the law, proceeded to discuss its influence upon the practices of the Germanic kingdoms which succeeded the Roman Empire in the West. The text of the law reads:

A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896

Abstract: In the period 1894–96, when the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, tens of thousands of Armenians were massacred. Nineteen years later, when the empire was weakened by disintegration and war, some one million persons—half of the Armenian population—were killed with the active participation of the Committee of Union and Progress, the ruling party of the day. The massacres and the genocide—for that is what the second act of violence has come to be called—must rank among the most terrible catastrophes of our era. Two questions come to mind: why did these things happen, and what is there to be learned from the Armenian case? We shall attempt to answer these two questions, keeping in mind that for historical events of such complexity and magnitude there are no final answers, merely more or less credible, more or less convincing, formulations. And given the obvious limitations, this article will focus on the massacres alone.

In the vanguard of reform: Russia's enlightened bureaucrats, 1825-1861

Abstract: The first decade of Alexander II's reign is known in Russian history as the Era of the Great Reforms, a time recognized as the major period of social, economic, and institutional transformation between the reign of Peter the Great and the Revolution of 1905. Coming directly after the notoriously repressive last decade of the Nicholas era, the appearance of such dramatic reform has led scholars to seek its causes in dramatic events. Surely some great, even cataclysmic, force must have driven Alexander II and his advisers to initiate what appears to be such an astonishing change in policy. In their search for the origins of these Great Reforms, historians generally have focused upon two phenomena. The first of these was Russia's defeat in the Crimean War by a relatively small, ineptly commanded Allied expeditionary force. The second was the serf revolts, which increased dramatically in the 1850s. From these events, most historians have concluded that the economic failings of serfdom, the problem of preserving domestic peace, and the need to restore Russia's tarnished military prestige were the major forces that convinced Alexander II's government to embark upon a new reformist path. As Lincoln's examination of the long-unstudied Russian archival evidence shows, there are good reasons to question whether such crises of policy and failings of Russia's servile economy impelled Alexander II and his advisers along a previously uncharted reformist path after the Crimean War. Further, in light of the Russian bureaucracy's slowness in drafting much less complex administrative reforms during the previous century, Lincoln argues that the Great Reform legislation simply was too complex and required too much sophisticated knowledge about the Empire's economic, administratvive, and judicial affairs to have been formulated in the brief half-decade after the war's end.

The organic crisis of British capitalism and race: the experience of the seventies

Abstract: Chapter 1 of the "Empire Strikes Back" examines the place of "race" and racism in the political transformation of Britain at the end of the 1970s, and argues that Britain has entered a long-term political and economic crisis which has brought new urgency to the politics of race and nation. The authors argue that the British state is very far from its popular image as a liberal democracy, and all our notions of culture, nation and class are based on deeply racist structures.

The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province

Abstract: The Description for this book, The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province, will be forthcoming.

Fiscal Crisis and the Decline of Spain (Castile)

Abstract: Earl J. Hamilton's multiple theses on the price revolution, the decline of Spain, and the birth of capitalism have all placed American silver (and gold) at the forefront. This essay supports Hamilton's emphasis on the impact of New World treasure on the decline of Castile, but from a different angle. Mining profits rather than the quantity of imports supported the empire. When the profits dwindled, as was inevitable, international superiority was begrudgingly surrendered to the emerging powers of the north.

The Academic Career of Ausonius

Abstract: A USONIUS' LIFE spanned most of the fourth century. Educated at Bordeaux and Toulouse, and perhaps Auch, he taught in his native Bordeaux from the mid 330s to the mid 360s, when he was summoned to court to tutor Gratian. He was honoured with the title comes, the office of quaestor sacri palatii and praetorian prefect, and finally the consulship. These main facts are clearly attested and undisputed. But Ausonius' earlier career is more obscure, and, overshadowed by his later successes, it has received little attention. The present study will therefore concentrate upon the period before his summons to court; the aim is to increase knowledge not only about Ausonius but about professorial careers in general and schooling in the later Empire. Ausonius studied grammatice at Bordeaux (Prof. 8.9-12, 10.11-13;1 see below 340, 341) and began his study of rhetoric there (Prof. 3.1; see below, 337). He records too a debt to his uncle Arborius for his formation (Par. 3.7-10):