The Limits of Empire in Ancient Afghanistan
Author: Richard E. Payne
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9783447390279
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The Limits of Empire in Ancient Afghanistan
Author: Richard E. Payne
Publisher: Harrassowitz
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9783447114530
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe territory of modern Afghanistan provided a center - and sometimes the center - for a succession of empires, from the Achaemenid Persians in the 6th century BCE until the Sasanian Iranians in the 7th century CE. And yet these regions most frequently appear as comprising a "crossroads" in accounts of their premodern history. This volume explores how successive imperial regimes established enduring forms of domination spanning the highlands of the Hindu Kush, essentially ungovernable territories in the absence of the technologies of the modern state. The modern term "Afghanistan" likely has its origins in an ancient word for highland regions and peoples resistant to outside rule. The volume's contributors approach the challenge of explaining the success of imperial projects within a highland political ecology from a variety of disciplinary perspectives with their respective evidentiary corpora, notably history, anthropology, archaeology, numismatics, and philology. The Limits of Empire models the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration necessary to produce persuasive accounts of an ancient Afghanistan whose surviving material and literary evidence remains comparatively limited. It shows how Afghan-centered imperial projects co-opted local elites, communicated in the idioms of local cultures, and created administrative archipelagoes rather than continuous territories. Above all, the volume makes plain the interest and utility in placing Afghanistan at the center, rather than the periphery, of the history of ancient empires in West Asia.
The End of Empires
Author: Michael Gehler
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2022-11-21
Total Pages: 737
ISBN-13: 3658368764
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe articles of this comprehensive edited volume offer a multidisciplinary, global and comparative approach to the history of empires. They analyze their ends over a long spectrum of humankind’s history, ranging from Ancient History through Modern Times. As the main guiding question, every author of this volume scrutinizes the reasons for the decline, the erosion, and the implosion of individual empires. All contributions locate and highlight different factors that triggered or at least supported the ending or the implosion of empires. This overall question makes all the contributions to this volume comparable and allows to detect similarities, differences as well as inconsistencies of historical processes.
Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies
Author: Sitta von Reden
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2021-12-20
Total Pages: 1131
ISBN-13: 3110604930
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe second volume of the Handbook describes different extractive economies in the world regions that have been outlined in the first volume. A wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools, which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed, in some cases permanently, in imperial frontier zones. Complementary to the multipolar concentrations of consumption are the fiscal-tributary structures of the empires vis-à-vis other institutions that had the capacity to extract, mobilize, and concentrate resources and wealth. Larger volumes of state-issued coinage in various metals show the new role of coinage in taxation, local economic activities, and social practices, even where textual evidence is absent. Given the overwhelming importance of agriculture, the volume also analyses forms of agrarian development, especially around cities and in imperial frontier zones. Special consideration is given to road- and water-management systems for which there is now sufficient archaeological and documentary evidence to enable cross-disciplinary comparative research.
Empires to be remembered
Author: Michael Gehler
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2022-03-10
Total Pages: 571
ISBN-13: 3658340037
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy applying a comparative approach the volume focuses on a select group of „empires“ which are generally not in the focus of empires studies. They are studied in detail and analyzed due to a strict concept that takes into account real history and reception history as well. Reception history becomes more and more an important element in empire studies although this topic is still often more or less underdeveloped. The volume singles out a series of such “forgotten empires”. It aims to provide a methodologically clearly structured as well as a uniform and consistent approach. It develops a general set of questions that help to compare and distinguish these entities. This way the volume intends to examine and to illuminate empires that are generally ignored by modern scholarship.
Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies
Author: Sitta von Reden
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2023-10-24
Total Pages: 950
ISBN-13: 3110604973
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies offers in three volumes the first comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region to elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires. Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange analyzes frontier zones as particular landscapes of encounter, economic development, and transimperial network formation. The chapters offer problematizing approaches to frontier zone processes as part of and in between empires, with the goal of better understanding how and why goods and resources moved across the Afro-Eurasian region. Key frontiers in mountains and steppes, along coasts, rivers, and deserts are investigated in depth, demonstrating how local landscapes, politics, and pathways explain network practices and participation in long-distance trade. The chapters seek to retrieve local knowledge ignored in popular Silk Road models and to show the potential of frontier-zone research for understanding the Afro-Eurasian region as a connected space.
A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Author: Bruno Jacobs
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2021-07-23
Total Pages: 1744
ISBN-13: 1119071658
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA COMPANION TO THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE A comprehensive review of the political, cultural, social, economic and religious history of the Achaemenid Empirem Often called the first world empire, the Achaemenid Empire is rooted in older Near Eastern traditions. A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire offers a perspective in which the history of the empire is embedded in the preceding and subsequent epochs. In this way, the traditions that shaped the Achaemenid Empire become as visible as the powerful impact it had on further historical development. But the work does not only break new ground in this respect, but also in the fact that, in addition to written testimonies of all kinds, it also considers material tradition as an equal factor in historical reconstruction. This comprehensive two-volume set features contributions by internationally-recognized experts that offer balanced coverage of the whole of the empire from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia. Comprehensive in scope, the Companion provides readers with a panoramic view of the diversity, richness, and complexity of the Achaemenid Empire, dealing with all the many aspects of history, event history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion, illustrating the multifaceted nature of the first true empire. A unique historical account presented in its multiregional dimensions, this important resource deals with many aspects of history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion it deals with topics that have only recently attracted interest such as court life, leisure activities, gender roles, and more examines a variety of available sources to consider those predecessors who influenced Achaemenid structure, ideology, and self-expression contains the study of Nachleben and the history of perception up to the present day offers a spectrum of opinions in disputed fields of research, such as the interpretation of the imagery of Achaemenid art, or questions of religion includes extensive bibliographies in each chapter for use as starting points for further research devotes special interest to the east of the empire, which is often neglected in comparison to the western territories Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire is an indispensable work for students, instructors, and scholars of Persian and ancient world history, particularly the First Persian Empire.
An Encyclopaedia in Spatio-Temporal Dimensions
Author: Patit Paban Mishra
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2024-10-20
Total Pages: 587
ISBN-13: 1036413675
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe encyclopaedia highlights the South Asian country of India with its varied ramifications. As a rich country with all its diversity, it has played a significant role in world affairs for more than two thousand years. India is the most populous country in the world, and its economy is growing rapidly. It is marching ahead in science and technology. In the hundredth anniversary of its independence in 2047, it aspires to become a developed nation. One should be aware of this country in this globalized world. It is not only fascinating but also knowledge-enhancing. The encyclopaedia holds importance due to several reasons: information on a vast range of subjects, scientific methodology, accuracy, and reliability. It could be used as a starting point for further research. The book will be useful for general readers, serious researchers, graduate students, and academics.
The Scythian Empire
Author: Christopher I. Beckwith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2024-06-04
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 0691240558
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA rich, discovery-filled history that tells how a forgotten empire transformed the ancient world In the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE, Scythian warriors conquered and unified most of the vast Eurasian continent, creating an innovative empire that would give birth to the age of philosophy and the Classical age across the ancient world—in the West, the Near East, India, and China. Mobile horse herders who lived with their cats in wheeled felt tents, the Scythians made stunning contributions to world civilization—from capital cities and strikingly elegant dress to political organization and the world-changing ideas of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Laotzu—Scythians all. In The Scythian Empire, Christopher I. Beckwith presents a major new history of a fascinating but often forgotten empire that changed the course of history. At its height, the Scythian Empire stretched west from Mongolia and ancient northeast China to northwest Iran and the Danube River, and in Central Asia reached as far south as the Arabian Sea. The Scythians also ruled Media and Chao, crucial frontier states of ancient Iran and China. By ruling over and marrying the local peoples, the Scythians created new cultures that were creole Scythian in their speech, dress, weaponry, and feudal socio-political structure. As they spread their language, ideas, and culture across the ancient world, the Scythians laid the foundations for the very first Persian, Indian, and Chinese empires. Filled with fresh discoveries, The Scythian Empire presents a remarkable new vision of a little-known but incredibly important empire and its peoples.
From Cyrus to Seleukos
Author: Pierre Briant
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2021-02-01
Total Pages: 351
ISBN-13: 9004460659
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe present volume is a collection of articles published in English by Professor Pierre Briant of the Collège de France, in various forms over the past three decades.
