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medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 2/2015

medieval worlds ‒ comparative and interdisciplinary studies, No. 2/2015
Empires: Elements of Cohesion and Signs of Decay
Nummer:
2
Jahrgang:
2015
1. Auflage, 2015
MEDIEVAL WORLDS provides a new forum for interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. Specifically it encourages and links comparative research between different regions and fields and promotes methodological innovation in transdisciplinary studies. Focusing on the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500 CE, but can be extended whenever thematically fruitful or appropriate), MEDIEVAL WORLDS takes a global approach to studying history in a comparative setting. MEDIEVAL WORLDS is open to regular submissions on comparative topics, but also offers the possibility to propose or advertise subjects that lend themselves to comparison. With a view to connecting people working on related topics in different academic environments, we publish calls for matching articles and for contributions on particular issues. Table of Contents - Walter Pohl: Editor’s Introduction: Empires – Elements of Cohesion and Signs of Decay - Mayke de Jong: The Empire that was always Decaying: The Carolingians (800-888) - Simon MacLean: Cross-Channel Marriage and Royal Succession in the Age of Charles the Simple and Athelstan (c. 916-936) - Andrew J. Newman: ›Great Men‹, ›Decline‹ and Empire: Safavid Studies and a Way Forward? - Jeroen Duindam: Dynasties - Susan Reynolds: Nations, Tribes, Peoples, and States - Glenn Bowman: Lieux Saints Partagés: An Analytical Review - Johannes Preiser-Kapeller: Calculating the Middle Ages? The Project »Complexities and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and Near East« (COMMED)
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Editor’s Introduction: Empires – Elements of Cohesion and Signs of Decay
Seite 2 - 5
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The Empire that was always Decaying: The Carolingians (800-888)
This paper examines the potency of the concept of ›empire‹ in Carolingian history, arguing against the still recent trend in medieval studies of seeing the Carolingian empire as having been in a constant state of decay. An initial historiographical overview of medievalist’s perceptions of ›empire‹ over the past century is followed by a discussion of how Carolingian authors themselves constructed, perceived and were influenced by notions of ›empire‹. Biblical scholars like Hraban Maur initiated an authoritative discourse on imperium, which in turn, after the 840s, heavily influenced later authors, perhaps most interestingly Paschasius Radbertus in his Epitaphium Arsenii. While the writings of these authors who looked back at Louis’s reign have often been interpreted as revealing a decline of imperial ideals, they must rather be seen as testifying to a long-lasting concern for a universal Carolingian empire.
Schlagworte: Staatlichkeit., Louis the Pious, imperium, historiography, Carolingian empire
Mayke De Jong
Seite 6 - 25
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Cross-Channel Marriage and Royal Succession in the Age of Charles the Simple and Athelstan (c. 916-936)
This article discusses the marriages of four Anglo-Saxon princesses to Continental kings and princes between the years 917 and 930. These are often interpreted as acts of diplomacy, sealing alliances across the Channel and indicating the dominant position of King Athelstan in early tenth-century Europe. I reinterpret the motivations of the princes by reading the marriages as acts of symbolic communication driven by the uncertainty over the West Frankish royal succession in the 920s and framed by a competition to access a version of Carolingian dynastic legitimacy. This in turn allows us to reflect on the decay of the Carolingian Empire after 888. Because Carolingian-ness was no longer a hegemonic political discourse, I argue that these events belong emphatically to a post-imperial political landscape.
Schlagworte: Flodoard of Rheims, political history, succession, Ottonians, Charles the Simple, Athelstan, Edward the Elder, Anglo-Saxon England, marriage, Carolingian empire
Seite 26 - 44
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›Great Men‹, ›Decline‹ and Empire: Safavid Studies and a Way Forward?
This paper first suggests that the paradigms utilised in the study of the Safavid period in Iran (1501-1722) in the West prior to the 1979-80 Iranian Revolution have since been given a new lease on life by scholars in the field, perhaps coincidentally with the distinctly ›Islamic‹ turn quickly taken by that revolution. Now, as prior to the Revolution, ›great men‹ and ›decline‹ are the organising principle(s) of discussions in Safavid studies. These paradigms dominate the field today, even as both the number of scholars active in the study of the period and the number of the field’s sub disciplines have markedly increased in the years since the Revolution. It will then be argued that the more recent recourse to ›empire‹ as an organising principle for discussing the period has, in fact, only reinforced recourse to the above paradigms. As a result the field’s discourse generally heightens a sense of overall Safavid ›exceptionalism‹, as if the period represented a major break with the dynamics of the periods in Iranian history that both preceded and followed. A more dynamic understanding of empire, however, and finally, suggests that the period less marked a radical break either with Iran’s pre-1501 history or with its more recent past and even the present than is conventionally suggested.
Schlagworte: Iranian Revolution, Theory, great man, Middle East, decline, Shi`ism, empire, Safavids, Islam, Iran
Seite 45 - 58
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Dynasties
Dynasties are prominently present in world history. King lists, with individual reign names and dynastic era names, were a common form of time reckoning – a habit that persists in modern Japan. Rule across the globe most often took shape around a single person, attended by a household providing personal and administrative services, in a location that stood out from its environment. The term ›dynasty‹ did not originally relate to government by a single person or family. Greek dynasteia denotes lordship or sovereignty in general. In his Politics, Aristotle uses dynasteia, usually translated as ›rule of the powerful‹, when he refers to oligarchies dominated by a handful of families tending towards hereditary power. Did dynasty pertain to one ›form of government‹, or should we understand it as a more pervasive social practice? This paper reconsiders the idea of dynasty by examining it in a global perspective. Different forms of kinship generate different types of dynasties. Moreover, dynasty was never based only on kinship rules and the hazards of reproduction: succession took many forms and the same holds true for the cultural representations of dynastic power. Which variants of dynasty can be found across the globe, and how were clans of royals constructed? How important was pedigree for the authority of these dynasties?
Schlagworte: kingmaking, kinship, succession, dynasties
Seite 59 - 78
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Nations, Tribes, Peoples, and States
In recent years, there has been considerable debate on whether the term ›nation‹ can be applied to kingdoms or states of the Latin West. Nationalist movements are indeed a modern phenomenon, and medieval kingdoms and polities differed from modern states in many organisational and administrative respects. But, as argued here, the medieval kingdoms were independent states and shared key features of what are now called nation-states, creating allegiances notionally defined by custom, law, and descent. Thus, this contribution addresses the words and concepts that framed these allegiances, and their changes over time.
Schlagworte: medieval Europe, political organisation, tribes, states, nations
Seite 79 - 88
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Lieux Saints Partagés: An Analytical Review
Over the past decade a series of workshops, conferences and publications have examined, from various perspectives, the practices of inter-communal interactions around what are generally termed ›shared‹ holy places. Many of these have focussed on regions which had previously been under imperial rule, and one active field of study has investigated shrine sharing in the Mediterranean Basin, particularly in its southern and eastern parts. The present contribution takes a recent exhibition as a starting point to discuss, from an anthropological perspective, how intercommunal interaction could unfold in the Ottoman Empire, and how the decline of imperial rule and post-imperial developments led to its eventual erosion.
Schlagworte: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Ottoman Empire, religious identity politics, shared sacred places
Seite 89 - 99
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Calculating the Middle Ages? The Project »Complexities and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and Near East« (COMMED)
The project »Complexities and networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and Near East« (COMMED) at the Division for Byzantine Research of the Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences focuses on the adaptation and development of concepts and tools of network theory and complexity sciences for the analysis of societies, polities and regions in the medieval world in a comparative perspective. Key elements of its methodological and technological toolkit are applied, for instance, in the new project »Mapping medieval conflicts: a digital approach towards political dynamics in the pre-modern period « (MEDCON), which analyses political networks and conflict among power elites across medieval Europe with five case studies from the 12th to 15th century. For one of these case studies on 14th century Byzantium, the explanatory value of this approach is presented in greater detail. The presented results are integrated in a wider comparison of five late medieval polities across Afro-Eurasia (Byzantium, China, England, Hungary and Mamluk Egypt) against the background of the »Late Medieval Crisis« and its political and environmental turmoil. Finally, further perspectives of COMMED are outlined.
Schlagworte: social theory, climate history, environmental studies, Mediterranean studies, Byzantine history, global history, comparative history, quantitative methods, network analysis, complexity theory
Seite 100 - 127
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Ausgabe:
978-3-7001-7916-0, E-Journal, digital, 03.12.2015
Auflage:
1. Auflage
Seitenzahl:
127 Seiten
Sprache:
Englisch

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