Transcending ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries, early
empires shaped thousands of years of world history. Yet despite the
global prominence of empire, individual cases are often studied in
isolation. This series seeks to change the terms of the debate by
promoting cross-cultural, comparative, and transdisciplinary
perspectives on imperial state formation prior to the European
colonial expansion.Two thousand years ago, up to one-half of the human
species was contained within two political systems, the Roman empire
in western Eurasia (centered on the Mediterranean Sea) and the Han
empire in eastern Eurasia (centered on the great North China Plain).
Both empires were broadly comparable in terms of size and population,
and even largely coextensive in chronological terms (221 BCE to 220 CE
for the Qin/Han empire, c. 200 BCE to 395 CE for the unified Roman
empire). At the most basic level of resolution, the circumstances of
their creation are not very different. In the East, the Shang and
Western Zhou periods created a shared cultural framework for the
Warring States, with the gradual consolidation of numerous small
polities into a handful of large kingdoms which were finally united by
the westernmost marcher state of Qin. In the Mediterranean, we can
observe comparable political fragmentation and gradual expansion of a
unifying civilization, Greek in this case, followed by the gradual
formation of a handful of major warring states (the Hellenistic
kingdoms in the east, Rome-Italy, Syracuse and Carthage in the west),
and likewise eventual unification by the westernmost marcher state,
the Roman-led Italian confederation. Subsequent destabilization
occurred again in strikingly similar ways: both empires came to be
divided into two halves, one that contained the original core but was
more exposed to the main barbarian periphery (the west in the Roman
case, the north in China), and a traditionalist half in the east
(Rome) and south (China).These processes of initial convergence and
subsequent divergence in Eurasian state formation have never been the
object of systematic comparative analysis. This volume, which brings
together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early
China, makes a first step in this direction, by presenting a series of
comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation
in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of
initial developmental convergence. It includes a general introduction
that makes the case for a comparative approach; a broad sketch of the
character of state formation in western and eastern Eurasia during the
final millennium of antiquity; and six thematically connected case
studies of particularly salient aspects of this process.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780199887521
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter