Author: Will Slatyer
Publisher: PartridgeIndia
ISBN: 1482894076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Get Book Here
Book Description
"The Life/Death Rhythms of Ancient Empires" outlines the flow of history from 3000BC to 1400AD to identify the factors that make up dominant, just, prosperous civilisations that can be described as golden cultures. These factors were found to have common features and the cultures themselves could be described in cyclical terms. This meant that the rise and fall of future dominant cultures could be roughly forecast to some degree in terms of hundreds of years. The evolution of capitalism was made possible, during and after actual warfare, by ancient priests and bankers, assisted by the invention of coinage. Capitalism was practised in the ancient world, supported at times by warfare and religion. It was vanquished for centuries by powerful weapons called irresponsible debt, and debasement of currency. The global capitalism of the twenty-first century is dependent on debt and a debased US dollar. A review of ancient history provides the basis for a glimpse into the future. This century's global temperature increase, which so excites environmentalists, can be shown to be part of a thousand year climate cycle. There well might be a human element to global warming but this just exacerbates the centuries' long cyclical pattern. Research has shown that periods of hot-dry and cold-dry climate have effects on human behaviour. Extrapolation of cycles enables forecasts of human behaviour to be made well into the new millennium. Dominant prosperous societies have occurred at roughly 200 year intervals which can suggest time-lines for societies in the present and the future A relatively irreverent history of ancient cultures, war, religion, money and debt produces cyclical analysis enabling a forecast that the USA might lose world dominance in 2040. The next volume "Life/Death Rhythms from the Capitalist Renaissance" will include economic data that will allow refined cyclical forecasts.
Author: Alex Feldman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040009654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book demonstrates how the political economy of mercantilism was not simply a Western invention by various cities and kingdoms during the Renaissance, but was the natural by-product of perpetually limited growth rates and rulers’ relentless pursuits of bullion. It contributes to discussions of the economic history surrounding the so-called “Great Divergence” between East and West, which would consequently lend context and credence to differences of economic thought in the world today. Additionally, it seeks to explain present economic thought as tacitly derived from implicit antique paradigms. This book advances fields of research from numismatics and sigillography to historical materialism and historical political economy. Divided into three parts, Orthodox Mercantilism first examines the political theology (the sovereignty) of the œcumene from the early 11th century. Second, it analyzes its peripheral legislation from the customary laws of newly Christianized dynasties up to the Kormčaja Kniga’s adoption (the Nomokanon) by 13th-century Orthodox dynasties across Eastern Europe. Third, it explores how these dynasties (and their own satellite dynasties) hoarded finite bullion to pay for defense, resulting in the 11–14th-century coinless period across Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. Appealing to students and scholars alike, this book will be of interest to those studying and researching economic and mercantile history, particularly in the context of Byzantine and Eastern European societies.
Author: David C. Conrad
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1604131640
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 153
Get Book Here
Book Description
Explores empires of medieval west Africa.
Author: Bonnie G. Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780197608319
Category : World history
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
"A higher education history textbook on World History"--
Author: Ian Morris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199707618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Get Book Here
Book Description
The world's first known empires took shape in Mesopotamia between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, beginning around 2350 BCE. The next 2,500 years witnessed sustained imperial growth, bringing a growing share of humanity under the control of ever-fewer states. Two thousand years ago, just four major powers--the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han empires--ruled perhaps two-thirds of the earth's entire population. Yet despite empires' prominence in the early history of civilization, there have been surprisingly few attempts to study the dynamics of ancient empires in the western Old World comparatively. Such grand comparisons were popular in the eighteenth century, but scholars then had only Greek and Latin literature and the Hebrew Bible as evidence, and necessarily framed the problem in different, more limited, terms. Near Eastern texts, and knowledge of their languages, only appeared in large amounts in the later nineteenth century. Neither Karl Marx nor Max Weber could make much use of this material, and not until the 1920s were there enough archaeological data to make syntheses of early European and west Asian history possible. But one consequence of the increase in empirical knowledge was that twentieth-century scholars generally defined the disciplinary and geographical boundaries of their specialties more narrowly than their Enlightenment predecessors had done, shying away from large questions and cross-cultural comparisons. As a result, Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to address these deficits and encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE. A substantial introductory discussion of recent thought on the mechanisms of imperial state formation prefaces the five newly commissioned case studies of the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Roman, and Byzantine empires. A final chapter draws on the findings of evolutionary psychology to improve our understanding of ultimate causation in imperial predation and exploitation in a wide range of historical systems from all over the globe. Contributors include John Haldon, Jack Goldstone, Peter Bedford, Josef Wiesehöfer, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel, and Keith Hopkins, whose essay on Roman political economy was completed just before his death in 2004.
Author: A. T. Olmstead
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 671
Get Book Here
Book Description
Out of a lifetime of study of the ancient Near East, Professor Olmstead has gathered previously unknown material into the story of the life, times, and thought of the Persians, told for the first time from the Persian rather than the traditional Greek point of view. "The fullest and most reliable presentation of the history of the Persian Empire in existence."—M. Rostovtzeff
Author: A. Leo Oppenheim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022617767X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494
Get Book Here
Book Description
"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
Author: Christopher I. Beckwith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400829941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 506
Get Book Here
Book Description
An epic account of the rise and fall of the Silk Road empires The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization. Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.
Author: Martin Jacques
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101151455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 631
Get Book Here
Book Description
Greatly revised and expanded, with a new afterword, this update to Martin Jacques’s global bestseller is an essential guide to understanding a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power Soon, China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more Western. Since the first publication of When China Rules the World, the landscape of world power has shifted dramatically. In the three years since the first edition was published, When China Rules the World has proved to be a remarkably prescient book, transforming the nature of the debate on China. Now, in this greatly expanded and fully updated edition, boasting nearly 300 pages of new material, and backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China’s ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, changing the world as we know it. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and is the subject of an immensely popular TED talk.
Author: Samuel Noah Kramer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226452328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Get Book Here
Book Description
“A readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture” from a world-renowned Sumerian scholar (American Journal of Archaeology). The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them. Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world. “An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity.” —Library Journal
