Transregional and Regional Elites


Book Description

To integrate the regions of the early Islamic Empire from Central Asia to North Africa, transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential. This volume is an important contribution to the conceptualization of the largest empire of Late Antiquity. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of 'elites' in an early Islamic context, the papers focus on elite structures and networks within selected regions of the Empire (Transoxiana, Khurāsān, Armenia, Fārs, Iraq, al-Jazīra, Syria, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya). They analyze elite groups across social, religious, geographical, and professional boundaries. Some papers take up contemporary terminology and its application within the sources. While previous studies used Iraq as the paradigm for the entire empire, this volume looks at diverse regions instead. While each region seems to be different based on its heterogeneous surviving sources, its physical geography, and its indigenous population and elites, the comparative approach highlights certain common patterns of governance and interaction across the Empire in its first three centuries.




Transregional and Regional Elites – Connecting the Early Islamic Empire


Book Description

Transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential for the integration of diverse regions into the early Islamic Empire, from Central Asia to North Africa. This volume is an important contribution to the conceptualization of the largest empire of Late Antiquity. While previous studies used Iraq as the paradigm for the entire empire, this volume looks at diverse regions instead. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of ‘elites’ in an early Islamic context, the papers focus on elite structures and networks within selected regions of the Empire (Transoxiana, Khurāsān, Armenia, Fārs, Iraq, al-Jazīra, Syria, Egypt, and Ifrīqiya). The papers analyze elite groups across social, religious, geographical, and professional boundaries. Although each region appears unique at first glance, based on their heterogeneous surviving sources, its physical geography, and its indigenous population and elites, the studies show that they shared certain patterns of governance and interaction, and that this was an important factor for the success of the largest empire of Late Antiquity.




Transregional and Regional Elites – Connecting the Early Islamic Empire


Book Description

Die Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Orients erscheinen als Supplement der Zeitschrift Der Islam, gegründet 1910 von Carl Heinrich Becker, einem der Väter der modernen Islamwissenschaft. Ganz im Sinne Beckers ist das Ziel der Studien die Erforschung der vergangenen Gesellschaften des Vorderen Orients, ihrer Glaubenssysteme und der zugrundeliegenden sozialen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse, von der Iberischen Halbinsel bis nach Zentralasien, von den ukrainischen Steppen zum Hochland des Jemen. Über die grundlegende philologische Arbeit an der literarischen Überlieferung hinaus nutzen die Studien die archivalischen, sowie materiellen und archäologischen Überlieferungen als Quelle für die gesamte Bandbreite der historisch arbeitenden Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften.




Transregional and Transnational Families in Europe and Beyond


Book Description

Introduction : rethinking European kinship : transregional and transnational families / David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher -- The historical emergence and massification of international families in Europe and its diaspora / Jose C. Moya -- The medieval and early modern experience -- Mamluk and Ottoman political households : an alternative model of "kinship" and 'family' / Gabriel Piterberg -- From local signori to European high nobility : the Gonzaga family networks in the fifteenth century / Christina Antenhofer -- Property regimes and migration of patrician families in western Europe around 1500 / Simon Teuscher -- Trans-dynasticism at the dawn of the modern era : kinship dynamics among ruling families / Michaela Hohkamp -- Marriage, commercial capital, and business agency : transregional Sephardic (and Armenian) families in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mediterranean / Francesca Trivellato -- Those in between : princely families on the margins of the great powers : the Franco-German frontier, 1477-1830 / Jonathan Spangler -- Spiritual kinship : the Moravians as an international fellowship of brothers and sisters (1730s-1830s) / Gisele Mettele -- Modernity -- Families of empires and nations : Phanariot Hanedans from the Ottoman Empire to the world around it (1669-1856) / Christine Philliou -- Into the world : kinship and nation-building in France, 1750-1885 / Christopher H. Johnson -- German international families in the nineteenth century : the Siemens -- Family as a thought experiment / David Warren Sabean -- The culture of Caribbean migration to Britain in the 1950s / Mary -- Chamberlain -- Exile, familial ideology, and gender roles in Palestinian camps in Jordan since 1948 / Stephanie Latte Abdallah -- Mirror image of family relations : social links between patel migrants in Britain and India / Mario Rutten and Pravin J. Patel.




Interactions


Book Description

The essays presented here reflect recent widespread interest in reconsidering the political, geographical, and cultural boundaries conventionally observed by area specialists and others. They intentionally range widely through time and space, dealing with diverse issues and contexts, but each highlights the very general theme of cross-cultural interaction. Although they draw heavily on area studies, the contributors seek to put previously separate bodies of scholarship in dialogue with one another by exploring those interactions that have historically linked world regions. Four general themes are especially prominent in this volume, and the essays develop sophisticated positions on each. On the issue of agency and structure, they offer useful guidance toward recognizing the importance of both human agency and historical structures in historical processes. On the theme of states and their roles in cross-cultural interactions, they acknowledge that states do not entirely control their own destinies but nevertheless deeply influence the development of these exchanges, sometimes decisively so. Regarding the theme of the global and the local, they emphasize the reciprocal influence of global dynamics and local circumstances and agree that analyses must take both into account to be successful. Finally, all of the essays allow that the theme of cross-cultural interaction is crucial to understanding the world and its development through time. Contributors:C. A. Bayly; Sven Beckert; Jerry H. Bentley; Renate Bridenthal; Charles Bright; Michael Geyer; Alan L. Karras; Adam McKeown; Colin Palmer; Stephen H. Rapp, Jr.; Caroline Reeves; John O. Voll; Kären Wigen; Anand A. Yang.




Transregional Europe


Book Description

Transregional Europe integrates work in human geography and planning with related scholarship in history and the other social sciences, covering public perceptions of European macro-regions and EU macro-regional planning.




Raimo Väyrynen: A Pioneer in International Relations, Scholarship and Policy-Making


Book Description

This book provides a broad overview of Professor Raimo Väyrynen’s academic work, his role in international research organizations, and his contributions to policy debates. It offers an interesting review of important political issues during the time span of half a century, from disarmament in Europe to the changing relationship between state sovereignty and transnational forces. Väyrynen has dealt with the changing agenda of peace and international relations, security and the arms race, and the world economy. This book provides comprehensive analyses of the regional and systemic structure of international relations, with the emphasis on conflicts and warfare between nations. It argues that while states, even smaller ones, still matter, transnational issues are increasingly important. Taking a historical perspective, the articles suggest that large-scale violence and arms races have been recurrent and cyclical phenomena in international relations. These events reflect the deep-seated inequalities in the political and economic systems which, moreover, vary considerably between regions. The publication is important reading for any researcher as well as students, policy-makers and the science-oriented public at large. • Traces the changing agenda of international relations from disarmament and the world economy to the changing relationship between state sovereignty and transnational forces. • Provides analyses of the regional and systemic structure in international relations, with the emphasis on conflicts and warfare. • Argues that large-scale violence and the arms race have been recurrent and cyclical phenomena in international relations. • Reviews important political issues from peace and conflict in Europe to the changing power relationship in the world.




Cosmopolitanism and Empire


Book Description

The empires of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean invented cosmopolitan politics. In the first millennia BCE and CE, a succession of territorially extensive states incorporated populations of unprecedented cultural diversity. Cosmopolitanism and Empire traces the development of cultural techniques through which empires managed difference in order to establish effective, enduring regimes of domination. It focuses on the relations of imperial elites with culturally distinct local elites, offering a comparative perspective on the varying depth and modalities of elite integration in five empires of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. If cosmopolitanism has normally been studied apart from the imperial context, the essays gathered here show that theories and practices that enabled ruling elites to transcend cultural particularities were indispensable for the establishment and maintenance of trans-regional and trans-cultural political orders. As the first cosmopolitans, imperial elites regarded ruling over culturally disparate populations as their vocation, and their capacity to establish normative frameworks across cultural boundaries played a vital role in the consolidation of their power. Together with an introductory chapter which offers a theory and history of the relationship between empire and cosmopolitanism, the volume includes case studies of Assyrian, Seleukid, Ptolemaic, Roman, and Iranian empires that analyze encounters between ruling classes and their subordinates in the domains of language and literature, religion, and the social imaginary. The contributions combine to illustrate the dilemmas of difference that imperial elites confronted as well as their strategies for resolving the cultural contradictions that their regimes precipitated.




Family Power


Book Description

Explains why successful states and empires have developed by fostering collaboration between families and dynasties, and the state.




The Routledge History of the Renaissance


Book Description

Drawing together the latest research in the field, The Routledge History of the Renaissance treats the Renaissance not as a static concept, but as one of ongoing change within an international framework. It takes as its unifying theme the idea of exchange and interchange through the movement of goods, ideas, disease and people, across social, religious, political and physical boundaries. Covering a broad range of temporal periods and geographic regions, the chapters discuss topics such as the material cultures of Renaissance societies; the increased popularity of shopping as a pastime in fourteenth-century Italy; military entrepreneurs and their networks across Europe; the emergence and development of the Ottoman empire from the early fourteenth to the late sixteenth century; and women and humanism in Renaissance Europe. The volume is interdisciplinary in nature, combining historical methodology with techniques from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology and literary criticism. It allows for juxtapositions of approaches that are usually segregated into traditional subfields, such as intellectual, political, gender, military and economic history. Capturing dynamic new approaches to the study of this fascinating period and illustrated throughout with images, figures and tables, this comprehensive volume is a valuable resource for all students and scholars of the Renaissance.