Rome's Fall and After

Rome's Fall and After PDF Author: Walter Goffart
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852850012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This collection of articles displays Walter Goffart's ability both to illuminate the great events that reshaped Europe after the fall of Rome and to uncover new and significant details in texts ranging from tax records to tribal genealogies. Professor Goffart is especially concerned with the role of 'barbarian' neighbours who, he argues, weighed far less on the destiny of the Roman West than did Constantinople.

Rome's Fall and After

Rome's Fall and After PDF Author: Walter Goffart
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852850012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This collection of articles displays Walter Goffart's ability both to illuminate the great events that reshaped Europe after the fall of Rome and to uncover new and significant details in texts ranging from tax records to tribal genealogies. Professor Goffart is especially concerned with the role of 'barbarian' neighbours who, he argues, weighed far less on the destiny of the Roman West than did Constantinople.

The Invention of Humanity

The Invention of Humanity PDF Author: Siep Stuurman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674977513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
For much of history, strangers were routinely classified as barbarians and inferiors, seldom as fellow human beings. The notion of a common humanity was counterintuitive and thus had to be invented. Siep Stuurman traces evolving ideas of human equality and difference across continents and civilizations from ancient times to the present. Despite humans’ deeply ingrained bias against strangers, migration and cultural blending have shaped human experience from the earliest times. As travelers crossed frontiers and came into contact with unfamiliar peoples and customs, frontier experiences generated not only hostility but also empathy and understanding. Empires sought to civilize their “barbarians,” but in all historical eras critics of empire were able to imagine how the subjected peoples made short shrift of imperial arrogance. Drawing on the views of a global mix of thinkers—Homer, Confucius, Herodotus, the medieval Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, the Haitian writer Antenor Firmin, the Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal, and more—The Invention of Humanity surveys the great civilizational frontiers of history, from the interaction of nomadic and sedentary societies in ancient Eurasia and Africa, to Europeans’ first encounters with the indigenous peoples of the New World, to the Enlightenment invention of universal “modern equality.” Against a backdrop of two millennia of thinking about common humanity and equality, Stuurman concludes with a discussion of present-day debates about human rights and the “clash of civilizations.”

The Art of Not Being Governed

The Art of Not Being Governed PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156529
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

The Merovingian Kingdoms 450 - 751

The Merovingian Kingdoms 450 - 751 PDF Author: Ian Wood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317871162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
A comprehensive survey which begins with the rise of the Franks, then examines the Merovingians.

The Magma of War

The Magma of War PDF Author: Edgar Illas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040048854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
War, from the conflicts in the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine to Mexican narco-violence, from neocolonial land grabs in the Global South to racial, border, health, and climate crises all over the planet, defines the most extreme and contradictory expression of the global world. In this fascinating exploration on the history of the thinking of conflict, Edgar Illas departs from military and sociological analyses to propose a theoretical exploration of war as the ontological force that produces political orders. Magma is used as a geological metaphor to theorize the mixtures of politics and war that organize, and disorganize, global society. Divided into two parts, Illas’ study begins by surveying some of the most important thinkers of war, moving from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. Each thinker provides a different inflection in the historical evolution of the being of war. The second part turns to a theorization of the twenty-first century to claim that conflictive relations between capital, state power, political movements, and social life in globalization culminate and at the same time reiterate the paradoxes of war as an ontological event. The Magma of War is an energizing contribution to the task of rethinking politics in relation to war and an invaluable resource to all those conscious of the unstable forms of contemporary social and political life.

Keeping the Barbarians at Bay

Keeping the Barbarians at Bay PDF Author: David Wilkinson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781908493842
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Kenneth Allsop was a writer, journalist and broadcaster who in the 1960s and early 90s became one of Britain's first television celebrities. This book focuses on the last few years of his short life, when he escaped London to live in a 17th-century watermill in the secret, crumpled landscape of West Dorset. The book describes how the threat of oil and gas exploration in this protected area of outstanding natural beauty forced him to become an environmental activist, and his grassroots campaigning led him to the BBC's first environmentalist TV series, Down to Earth, and to a radical 'green' column in the Sunday Times.

The World's Great Wonders

The World's Great Wonders PDF Author: Lonely Planet
Publisher: Lonely Planet
ISBN: 1743605919
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher* Go beyond the visual spectacle of the world's 50 greatest wonders, and discover what makes them such amazing places. With stunning images and expert illustrations, experience and appreciate the most famous sights on earth in an exciting new way. Author: Lonely Planet About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013 Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition.

Deterring Democracy

Deterring Democracy PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466801530
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
From World War II until the 1980s, the United States reigned supreme as both the economic and the military leader of the world. The major shifts in global politics that came about with the dismantling of the Eastern bloc have left the United States unchallenged as the preeminent military power, but American economic might has declined drastically in the face of competition, first from Germany and Japan ad more recently from newly prosperous countries elsewhere. In Deterring Democracy, the impassioned dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky points to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this new imbalance. Chomsky reveals a world in which the United States exploits its advantage ruthlessly to enforce its national interests--and in the process destroys weaker nations. The new world order (in which the New World give the orders) has arrived.

Warfare in the Dark Ages

Warfare in the Dark Ages PDF Author: Kelly DeVries
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351873679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
The articles in this volume explore the way in which military developments helped to sculpt, out of very strange and diverse components, our familiar Europe. The period studied covers the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of the Carolingian Empire and its eventual collapse, leaving a vacuum in the heart of Europe into which flowed new forces: the Vikings from outside and the great lords from within.

A Study of History

A Study of History PDF Author: Arnold Toynbee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 760

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Book Description